Schiavi or siam si; ma schiavi almen frementi.[Pg.19]Like Foscolo's, Alfieri's life was a lesson in independence: angry at the scant measure of freedom in Piedmont, he could never be induced to go near his sovereign till Charles Emmanuel was staying at Florence as a proscript. Then the poet went to pay his respects to him, and was received with the good-humoured banter: 'Well, Signor Conte, here am I, a king, in the condition you would like to see them all.'Against the classical, not to say pagan, leanings of these two poets, a reaction set in with Alessandro Manzoni, the founder of Italian Romanticism, to which he gave an aspect differing from that which the same movement wore in France, because he was an ardent Catholic at a time when Christianity had almost the charm of novelty. His religious outpourings combine the fervour of the Middle Ages with modern expansion, and he freed the Italian language from pedantic restrictions without impairing its dignity. It was once the fashion to inveigh against Manzoni for, as it was said, inculcating resignation; but he did nothing of the kind. As a young man he had sung of the Italians as 'Figli tutti d'un solo Riscatto,' and though he was not of those who fight either with the sword or the pen, yet that 'Riscatto' was the dream of his youth and manhood, and the joy of his old age. His gentleness was never contaminated by servility, and the love for his country, profound if placid, which appears in every line of his writings, appealed to a class that could not be reached by fiery turbulence of thought.In an age when newspapers have taken the place of books, it may seem strange to ascribe any serious effect to the works of poets and romancists; but in the Italy of that date there were no newspapers to speak of; the ordinary channels of opinion were blocked up. Books were still not only read, but discussed and thought over, and every slight[Pg.20]allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than you can degrade, the heart of man piecemeal. In this sense not literature only but also music helped, who can say how effectually, to bring Italy back to life. The land was refreshed by a flood of purely national song, full of the laughter and the tears of Italian character, of the sunshine and the storms of Italian nature. Music, the only art uncageable as the human soul, descended as a gift from heaven upon the people whose articulate utterance was stifled. And... No speech may evinceFeeling like music.[Pg.21]CHAPTER IITHE WORK OF THE CARBONARI1815-1821Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples and in Piedmont—The Conspiracy against Charles Albert.Considering what the state of the country was after 1815, and how apparently inexhaustible were the resources of the Empire of which the petty princes of the peninsula were but puppets, it is remarkable that political agitation, with a view to reversing the decisions of Vienna, should have begun so soon, and on so large a scale. Not that the nation, as a whole, was yet prepared to move; every revolution, till 1848, was partial in the sense that the mass of the people stood aloof, because unconvinced of the possibility of loosening their chains. But, during that long succession of years, the number of Italians ready to embark on enterprises of the most desperate character, accounting as nothing the smallness of the chance of success, seems enormous when the risks they ran and the difficulties they faced are fully recognised. Among the means which were effective in first rousing Italy from her lethargy, and in fostering the will to acquire her independence at all costs, the secret society of the Carbonari undoubtedly occupies the front rank. The Carbonari acted in two ways; by what they did and by what they caused to be done by others who were outside their society, and perhaps unfavourable to it,[Pg.22]but who were none the less sensible of the pressure it exercised. The origin of Carbonarism has been sought in vain; as a specimen of the childish fables that once passed for its history may be noticed the legend that Francis I. of France once stumbled on a charcoal burner's hut when hunting 'on the frontiers of his kingdom next to Scotland,' and was initiated into the rites similar to those in use among the sectaries of the nineteenth century. Those rites referred to vengeance which was to be taken on the wolf that slew the lamb; the wolf standing for tyrants and oppressors, and the lamb for Jesus Christ, the sinless victim, by whom all the oppressed were represented. The Carbonari themselves generally believed that they were heirs to an organisation started in Germany before the eleventh century, under the name of the Faith of the Kohlen-Brenners, of which Theobald de Brie, who was afterwards canonised, was a member. Theobald was adopted as patron saint of the modern society, and his fancied portrait figured in all the lodges. That any weight should have been attached to these pretensions to antiquity may appear strange to us, as it certainly did not matter whether an association bent on the liberation of Italy had or had not existed in German forests eight hundred years before; age and mystery, however, have a great popular attraction, the first as an object of reverence, the second as food for curiosity with the profane, and a bond of union among the initiated. The religious symbolism of the Carbonari, their oaths and ceremonies, and the axes, blocks and other furniture of the initiatory chamber, were well calculated to impress the poorer and more ignorant and excitable of the brethren. The Vatican affected to believe that Carbonarism was an offshoot of Freemasonry, but, in spite of sundry points of[Pg.23]resemblance, such as the engagements of mutual help assumed by members, there seems to have been no real connection between the two. Political Freemasonry remained somewhat of an exotic in Italy, and was inclined to regard France as its centre. As far as can be ascertained, it gave a general support to Napoleon, while Carbonarism rejected every foreign yoke. The practical aims of the Carbonari may be summed up in two words: freedom and independence. From the first they had the penetration to grasp the fact that independence, even if obtained, could not be preserved without freedom; but though their predilections were theoretically republican, they did not make a particular form of government a matter of principle. Nor were they agreed in a definite advocacy of the unity of Italy.A Genoese of the name of Malghella, who was Murat's Minister of Police, was the first person to give a powerful impetus to Carbonarism, of which he has even been called the inventor, but the inference goes too far. Malghella ended miserably; after the fall of Murat he was arrested by the Austrians, who consigned him as a new subject to the Sardinian Government, which immediately put him in prison. His name is hardly known, but no Italian of his time worked more assiduously, or in some respects more intelligently, for the emancipation of Italy. Whatever was truly Italian in Murat's policy must be mainly attributed to him. As early as 1813 he urged the King to declare himself frankly for independence, and to grant a constitution to his Neapolitan subjects. But Malghella did not find the destined saviour of Italy in Murat; his one lasting work was to establish Carbonarism on so strong a basis that, when the Bourbons returned, there were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Carbonari in all parts of the realm. The discovery was not a pleasant one to the restored rulers, and the Prince of Canosa, the new Minister[Pg.24]of Police, thought to counteract the evil done by his predecessor by setting up an abominable secret society called the Calderai del Contrapeso (Braziers of the Counterpoise), principally recruited from the refuse of the people, lazzaroni, bandits and let-out convicts, who were provided by Government with 20,000 muskets, and were sworn to exterminate all enemies of the Church of Rome, whether Jansenists, Freemasons or Carbonari. This association committed some horrible excesses, but otherwise it had no results. The Carbonari closed in their ranks, and learnt to observe more strictly their rules of secrecy. From the kingdom of Naples, Carbonarism spread to the Roman states, and found a congenial soil in Romagna, which became the focus whence it spread over the rest of Italy. It was natural that it should take the colour, more or less, of the places where it grew. In Romagna, where political assassination is in the blood of the people, a dagger was substituted for the symbolical woodman's axe in the initiatory rites. It was probably only in Romagna that the conventional threat against informers was often carried out. The Romagnols invested Carbonarism with the wild intensity of their own temperament, resolute even to crime, but capable of supreme impersonal enthusiasm. The ferment of expectancy that prevailed in Romagna is reflected in the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, whom young Count Pietro Gamba made a Carbonaro, and who looked forward to seeing the Italians send the barbarians of all nations back to their own dens, as to the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence. His lower apartments, he writes, were full of the bayonets, fusils and cartridges of his Carbonari cronies; 'I suppose that they consider me[Pg.25]as a dépôt, to be sacrificed in case of accidents. It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object—the very poetry of politics. Only think—free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothing like it since the days of Augustus.'The movement on which such great hopes were set was to begin in the kingdom of Naples in the spring of 1820. The concession of the hard-won Spanish Constitution in the month of March encouraged the Neapolitans to believe that they might get a like boon from their own King if they directed all the forces at their command to this single end. To avoid being compromised, they sought rather to dissociate themselves from the patriots of other parts of Italy than to co-operate with them in an united effort. The Carbonari of the Neapolitan kingdom, who were the entire authors of the revolution, which, after many unfortunate delays, broke out on the 1st of July, had good cause for thinking that they were in a position to dictate terms; the mistake they made was to suppose that a charter conceded by a Bourbon of Naples could ever be worth the paper on which it was written. Not only among the people, but in the army the Carbonari had thousands of followers on whom they could rely, and several whole regiments were only waiting their orders to rise in open revolt. The scheme was to take possession of the persons of the King and the royal family, and retain them as hostages till the Constitution was granted. Such extreme measures were not necessary. The standard of rebellion was raised at Monteforte by two officers named Morelli and Silvati, who had brought over a troop of cavalry from Nola, and by the priest Menechini. In all Neapolitan insurrections there was sure to be a priest; the Neapolitan Church, much though there is to be laid to its account, must be admitted to have frequently shown sympathy with the[Pg.26]popular side. Menechini enjoyed an immense, if brief, popularity which he used to allay the anger of the mob and to procure the safety of obnoxious persons. The King sent two generals and a body of troops against the Chartists, but when the Carbonari symbols were recognised on the insurgent flags, the troops showed such clear signs of wishing to go over to the enemy that they were quietly taken back to Naples. The cry of 'God, the King, and the Constitution,' was taken up through the land; General Pepe, who had long been a Carbonaro in secret, was enthusiastically hailed as commander of the Chartist forces, which practically comprised the whole army. The King was powerless; besides which, when pushed up into any corner people who do not mind breaking their word have a facility for hard swearing. On the 13th of July, Ferdinand standing at the altar of the royal chapel, with his hand on the Bible, swore to defend and maintain the Constitution which he had just granted. If he failed to do so, he called upon his subjects to disobey him, and God to call him to account. These words he read from a written form; as if they were not enough, he added, with his eyes on the cross, and his face turned towards heaven: 'Omnipotent God, who with Thine infinite power canst read the soul of man and the future, do Thou, if I speak falsely, or intend to break my oath, at this moment direct the thunder of Thy vengeance on my head.'The Neapolitans had got their liberties, but they soon found themselves face to face with perplexities which would have taxed the powers of men both wiser and more experienced in free government than they were. In the first place, although a revolution may be made by a sect, a government cannot be carried on by one. The Carbonari who had[Pg.27]won the day were blind to this self-evident truth; and, to make matters worse, there was a split in their party, some of them being disposed to throw off the Bourbon yoke altogether; a natural desire, but as it was only felt by a minority, it added to the general confusion. Then came, as it was sure to come, the cry for separation from Sicily. The Sicilians wanted back the violated constitution obtained for them by the English in 1812, and would have nothing to do with that offered them from Naples. In every one of the struggles between Sicily and Naples, it is impossible to refuse sympathy to the islanders, who, in the pride of their splendid independent history, deemed themselves the victims of an inferior race; but it is equally impossible to ignore that, politically, they were in the wrong. In union, and in union alone, lay the only chance of resisting the international plot to keep the South Italian populations in perpetual bondage. The Sicilian revolt was put down at first mildly, and finally, as mildness had no effect, with the usual violence by the Neapolitan Constitutional Government, which could not avoid losing credit and popularity in the operation. Meanwhile, the three persons who traded under the name of Europe met at Troppau, and came readily to the conclusion that 'the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance exercised an incontestable right in taking common measures of security against states which the overthrow of authority by revolt placed in a hostile attitude towards every legitimate government.' The assumption was too broadly stated, even for Lord Castlereagh's acceptance; but he was contented to make a gentle protest, which he further nullified by allowing that, in the present case, intervention was very likely justified. France expressed no disapproval. Only the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Spain gave the Constitutionalrégimetacit[Pg.28]support by recognising it. The Emperor of Russia was very anxious to take part in the business, and would have sent off an army instantly had not his royal brother of Prussia hesitated to consent to the inconvenience of a Cossack march through his territory. The work was left, therefore, to the Emperor of Austria. Before entering upon it, it occurred to these three to invite the King of Naples to meet them at Laybach. They knew his character.Ferdinand assured his Parliament that he was going to Laybach solely to induce the Holy Alliance to think better of its opposition, and to agree, at least, to all the principal features of the new state of things. Most foolishly the Parliament, which, according to the Constitution, might have vetoed his leaving the country, let him go. Before starting he wrote an open letter to his dear son, the Duke of Calabria, who was appointed Regent, in which he said: 'I shall defend the events of the past July before the Congress. I firmly desire the Spanish Constitution for my kingdom; and although I rely on the justice of the assembled sovereigns, and on their old friendship, still it is well to tell you that, in whatever circumstance it may please God to place me, my course will be what I have manifested on this sheet, strong and unchangeable either by force or by the flattery of others.'Brave words! News came in due time of the sequel. On the 9th of February 1821, the Regent received a letter from the King, in which he gave the one piece of advice that the people should submit to their fate quietly. He was coming back with 50,000 Austrians, and a Russian army was ready to start if wanted. Nevertheless, to prevent a sudden outbreak before the foreign troops arrived, the Regent carried on a game of duplicity to the last, and pretended to second, whilst he[Pg.29]really baulked, the preparations for resistance decreed by Parliament. Baron Poerio, the father of two patriot martyrs of the future, sustained the national dignity by urging Parliament to yield only to force, and to defy the barbarous horde which was bearing down on the country. The closing scene is soon told. On the 7th of March, in the mountains near Rieti, General Guglielmo Pepe, with 8000 regular troops and a handful of militia, encountered an overwhelmingly superior force of Austrians. The Neapolitans stood out well for six hours, but on the Austrian reserves coming up, they were completely routed, and obliged to fly in all directions.'Order reigned' in the kingdom of Naples. In Sicily, a gallant attempt at insurrection was begun, but there was not the spirit to go on with it, and General Rossaroll, its initiator, had to fly to Spain. The afterpiece is what might have been expected; an insensate desire for vengeance got hold of Ferdinand, and the last years of his life were spent in hunting down his enemies, real or imaginary. Morelli and Silvati were hung, the fugitives, Pepe and Rossaroll, were condemned to death, but this was only the beginning. The Austrian commander counselled mercy, but in this respect the King showed an independent mind. A court-martial was instituted to examine the conduct of ecclesiastics, public functionaries and soldiers, from the year 1793 downwards. No one was safe who had expressed a dislike of absolutism within the last thirty years. A blameless gentleman who was a Carbonaro, was conducted through Naples on the back of an ass, and beaten with a whip, to which nails were attached. Eight hundred persons are said to have perished at the hands of the state in one year. Ferdinand himself expired on the 3rd of January 1825, after misgoverning for sixty-five years.[Pg.30]The Neapolitan revolution had just collapsed, when another broke out in Piedmont, which, though short in duration, was to have far-reaching consequences.At that time, the King of Sardinia was Victor Emmanuel I., who succeeded his brother Charles Emmanuel in 1802, when the latter abdicated and retired to Rome, where he joined the Society of Jesus. Victor Emmanuel's only son was dead, and the throne would devolve on his youngest brother, Charles Felix, Duke of Genoa, whom reasons of state led to abandon the wish to become a monk, which he had formed as a boy of eleven, on being taken to visit a convent near Turin. But Charles Felix, though married, was without children, and the legitimate heir-presumptive was Charles Albert, Prince of Carignano, who represented the younger branch of the family, which divided from the main line in the early part of the seventeenth century. Charles Albert's father was the luckless Prince Charles of Carignano, who, alone of his house, came to terms with Napoleon, who promised him a pension, which was not paid. His mother, a Saxon Princess, paraded the streets of Turin, dressed in the last republican fashion, with her infant son in her arms. Afterwards, she gave him a miscellaneous education, that included a large dose of Rousseau from a Swiss professor. The boy was shifted from place to place, happier when his mother forgot him, than when, in temporary recollection of his existence, she called him to her. Once when he was travelling with the Princess and her second husband, M. de Montléart, Charles Albert was made to sit on the box of the carriage, in a temperature many degrees below zero.His uncles (as the King and Charles Felix called themselves, though they were his cousins) heard with natural horror of the vagaries of[Pg.31]the Princess of Carignano, and they extended their antipathy from the mother to the son, even when he was a child. In Victor Emmanuel, this antipathy was moderated by the easy good-nature of his character; in Charles Felix, it degenerated into an intense hatred.It is a singular thing that Prince Metternich, from the very first, had an instinctive feeling that the unfortunate boy, who seemed the most hopeless and helpless of human creatures, would prove the evil genius of the Austrian power. He therefore set to work to deprive him of his eventual rights. He was confident of success, as fortune had arranged matters in a manner that offered a ready-made plan for carrying out the design. Victor Emmanuel had four daughters, precluded from reigning by the Salic law, which was in force in Piedmont. His wife, the Queen Maria Teresa, a woman of great beauty and insatiable ambition, was sister to the Austrian Archduke Francis d'Este, Duke of Modena. Francis had never married, having been robbed of his intended bride, the Archduchess Marie-Louise, by her betrothal to Napoleon. What simpler than to marry the eldest of the Sardinian princesses to her uncle, abrogate the Salic law, and calmly await the desired consummation of an Austrian prince, by right of his wife, occupying the Sardinian throne?The first step was soon taken; princesses came into the world to be sacrificed. The plot ran on for some time, the Queen, who was in the habit of calling Charles Albert 'that little vagrant,' giving it her indefatigable support. Victor Emmanuel was weak, and stood in considerable awe of his wife, who had obtained a great ascendancy over him in the miserable days of their residence in the island of Sardinia. His nephew, who was almost or wholly unknown to him, partook[Pg.32]of the nature of a disagreeable myth. Nevertheless he had a sense of justice, as well as Savoy blood, in his veins—he resisted; but the day came when his surrender seemed probable. Just at that moment, however, the Duke of Modena prematurely revealed the project by asking through his representative at the Congress of Vienna for the port of Spezia, in order that he might conveniently connect his own state with his prospective possession, the island of Sardinia. Prince Talleyrand was alarmed by the vision of Austria supreme in the Mediterranean, and through his opposition the conspiracy, for the time, was upset, and the rights of Charles Albert were recognised.Curiously enough, Prince Metternich had insisted on the young Prince, then seventeen, visiting the headquarters of the Allies. Charles Felix (who was unconnected with the Modena scheme) wrote a letter to the King on this subject, in which he stated it as his belief that the Austrian plan was to get Charles Albert accidentally killed, or to plunge him in vice, or to make him contract a discreditable marriage. This was why they had invited him to their camp. He adds the characteristic remark that their nephew would be in no less danger at the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington 'à cause de la religion.' Have him home and have him married, is his advice. 'We are well treated, because there is the expectation of soon devouring our remains by extinguishing the House of Savoy. It is the habit of the cabinet of Vienna; it was thus they made an end of the House of Este.'These counsels were the more likely to impress Victor Emmanuel from his knowledge that they were inspired by no shadow of personal interest in 'the little vagrant,' but by the race-feeling alone. The Queen contrived to prevent the immediate recall of the Prince of[Pg.33]Carignano, but she was obliged to give way, and he was definitely established in Piedmont. In 1818 he was married at Florence to the Archduchess Maria Teresa of Tuscany, who, on the 14th of March 1820, gave birth to the child that was to become the first King of Italy.Very soon after his return to his country, the hopes of the Liberal party began to centre in the young Prince, whom some of their more ardent spirits already saluted as the rising sun. Those who made his acquaintance were fascinated by the charm of manner which he could always exert when he chose, and were confirmed in their hopes by his evident susceptibility to the magnetism of new ideas and fatalistic ambitions. What they did not perceive was, that in his nature lay that ingrained tendency to drift before the wind, which is the most dangerous thing in politics. In the mid-sea of events he might change his course without conscious insincerity, but with the self-abandonment of a mind which, under pressure, loses the sense of personal responsibility.In Piedmont, Carbonarism had made great way among the upper classes and among the younger officers; the flower of the country was enrolled in its ranks, and the impatience to take some action towards procuring free institutions for themselves, and doing something for their Lombard brothers, had reached fever heat in the spring of 1821, when the affairs of Naples were creating much excitement. The principal conspirators, noble young men, full of unselfish ardour, were the chosen friends and companions of the Prince of Carignano. It was formerly the opinion that they made him the confidant of their plans from the first, that he was one of them, in short—a Carbonaro bound by all the oaths and obligations of the society. The judgment of his conduct afterwards is, of course, much affected by this point; were[Pg.34]the assumption correct, the invectives launched against him, not by any means only by republican writers, would hardly seem excessive. But by the light of documents issued in recent times, it appears more just as well as more charitable to suppose that Charles Albert's complicity was of a much less precise character. A little encouragement from a prince goes a long way.According to his own account, he was taken by surprise when, on the and or 3rd of March, his friends Carail, Collegno, Santa Rosa and Lisio came to tell him in secret that they belonged to societies which had been long working for the independence of Italy, and that they reckoned on him, knowing well his affection for his country, to aid them in obtaining from the King some few first concessions, which would be the prelude of a glorious future. It is clear that he ought either to have broken with them altogether from that moment or to have cast his lot with them for good or evil. He tried a middle course. He induced the conspirators to put off the revolution by which they intended to enforce their demands, and he conveyed to the King information of what had happened, asking at the same time that no measures should be taken against incriminated persons.In fact, no precautions of any kind seem to have been taken. Victor Emmanuel, frightened at first, was soon reassured. The revolution, which was to have begun on the 8th, actually broke out on the 10th of March at Alessandria, where the counter orders issued at Charles. Albert's request, after the interview just described, were not obeyed. The garrison 'pronounced' in favour of the Spanish Constitution. It was now impossible to draw back. From Alessandria the revolution spread to the capital. The bulk of the army sympathised with the movement, and relied on the support of the people.[Pg.35]The greatest ladies mixed with the crowds which gathered under the Carbonaro flag—black, blue and red. On the other hand, there were a few devoted servants of the House of Savoy who beheld these novelties with the sensations of a quiet person who sees from his window the breaking loose of a menagerie. Invincibly ignorant of all that was really inspiring in this first breath of freedom, they saw nothing in it but an unwarrantable attack on the authority of their amiable, if weak, old King, for whom they would gladly have shed every drop of their blood—not from the rational esteem which the people of Italy, like the people of England, now feel for their sovereign, but from the pure passion of loyalty which made the cavalier stand blindly by his prince, whether he was good or bad, in the right or in the wrong. Men of their type watched the evolution of Piedmont into Italy from first to last with the same presentiment of evil, the same moral incapacity of appreciation. A handful of these loyal servitors hurried to Victor Emmanuel to offer their assistance. They marshalled their troop in battle-array in the courtyard of the palace. Their arms were antiquated pistols and rapiers, and they themselves were veterans, some of them of eighty years, mounted on steeds as ancient. The King thanked them, but declined their services; nor would he givecarte blancheto Captain Raimondi, who assured him that with his one company he could suppress the insurrection if invested with full powers. Soon after this refusal, a firing of guns announced that the citadel was in the hands of the insurgents. The troops within and without fraternised; it was a fine moment for those who knew history and who were bent in their hearts on driving the foreigner out of Italy. Here at the citadel of Turin, during the siege of 1706, occurred the memorable deed of Pietro Micca, the peasant-soldier, who,[Pg.36]when he heard the enemy thundering at the door of the gallery, thought life and the welcome of wife and child and the happy return to his village of less account than duty, and fired the mine which sent him and three companies of French Grenadiers to their final reckoning.After vacillating for two or three days, Victor Emmanuel abdicated on the 13th of March. The Queen desired to be appointed regent, but, to her intense vexation, the appointment was given to Charles Albert. A more unenviable honour never fell to the lot of man.Deserted by the ministers of the crown, who resigned in a body, alone in the midst of a triumphant revolution, appealed to in the name of those sentiments of patriotism which he could never hear invoked unmoved, the young Prince uttered the words which were as good as a surrender: 'I, too, am an Italian!' That evening he allowed the Spanish Constitution to be proclaimed subject to the arrival of the orders of the new King.The new King! No one remembered that there existed such a person. Nor had anyone recollected that the Spanish Constitution abrogated the Salic law, and that hence, instead of a new King, they had a new Queen—the wife of the Duke of Modena! An eminent Turinese jurisconsulist, who was probably the only possessor of a copy of the charter in the town which was screaming itself hoarse for it, divulged this awkward discovery.—Several hours were spent in anxious discussion, when the brilliant suggestion was made that the article should be cancelled. The article was cancelled.But Charles Felix could not be disposed of so easily. The news of the[Pg.37]late events reached him at Modena of all places in the world, the rallying-point of the Prince of Carignano's bitterest foes. He was not long in sending his orders. He repudiated everything that had been done, and commanded Charles Albert, 'if he had a drop of our royal blood left in his veins,' to leave the capital instantly for Novara, where he was to await his further instructions.Charles Albert obeyed. He was accompanied on his journey—or, as it may be called, his flight—by such of the troops as remained loyal. At Novara he found a sentence of exile, in a fresh order, to quit Piedmontese territory. Tuscany was indicated as the state where he was to reside.The Austrians crossed the frontier with the consent of the King. Charles Felix's opinion of Austria has been already given; another time he said: 'Austria is a sort of bird-lime which, if you get it on your fingers, you can never rub off.' If anything was needed to increase his loathing for the revolution, it was the necessity in which it placed him, as he thought, of calling in this unloved ally. But Charles Felix was not the man to hesitate. Not caring a straw for the privilege of wearing a crown himself, his belief in the divine right of kings, and the obligation to defend it, amounted to monomania. The Austrian offer was therefore accepted. On her part Austria declined the obliging proposal of the Czar of a loan of 100,000 men. She felt that she could do the work unaided, nor was she mistaken.On the 8th of April the Constitutionalist troops which marched towards Novara, sanguine that the loyal regiments there quartered would end by joining them, were met by an armed resistance, in which the newly-arrived Austrians assisted. Their defeat was complete, and it was the signal of the downfall of the revolution. The leaders retired[Pg.38]from Turin to Alessandria, and thence to Genoa, that had risen last and was last to submit. Thus most of them escaped by sea, which was fortunate, as Charles Felix had the will to establish a White Terror, and was only prevented by the circumstance that nearly all the proposed victims were outside his kingdom. Capital sentences were sent after them by the folio: there was hardly a noble family which had not one of its members condemned to death. When his brother, Victor Emmanuel, recommended mercy, he told him that he was entirely ready to give him back the crown, but that, while he reigned, he should reign after his own ideas. He seems to have had thoughts of hanging the Prince of Carignano, and for a long time he seriously meant to devise the kingdom to his son, the infant Prince Victor. Thus a new set of obstacles arose between Charles Albert and the throne.Of the personal friends of that ill-starred Prince all escaped. One of them, the noble-minded Count Santorre di Santa Rosa, died fighting for liberty in Greece. In the miseries of exile and poverty he had never lost faith in his country, but fearlessly maintained that 'the emancipation of Italy was an event of the nineteenth century.' To another, Giacinta di Collegno, it was reserved to receive the dying breath of Charles Albert, when as an exiled and crownless king he found rest, at last, at Oporto.There were deeper reasons than any which appear on the surface for the failure of the revolutionary movements of this period. North and south, though the populations exhibited a childish delight at the overthrow of the old, despotic form of government, their effervescence ended as rapidly as it began. They did not really understand what was going on. 'By-the-bye, whatisthis same constitution they are making such a noise about?' asked a lazzarone who had been shouting[Pg.39]'Viva la Costituzione' all the day. Within a few weeks of the breakdown at Novara, Count Confalonieri wrote wisely to Gino Capponi that revolutions are not made by high intelligences, but by the masses which are moved by enthusiasm, and for a possibility of success, the word Constitution, the least magical of words, should have been replaced by the more comprehensible and stirring call: 'War to the stranger.' But this, instead of sounding from every housetop, was purposely stifled at Naples, and kept a mysterious secret in Piedmont.[Pg.40]CHAPTER IIIPRISON AND SCAFFOLD1821-1831Political Trials in Venetia and Lombardy—Risings in the South and Centre—Ciro Menotti.The Austrians fully expected a rising in Lombardy in the middle of March, and that they were not without serious fears as to its consequences is proved by the preparations which they quietly made to abandon Milan, if necessary. The Court travelling-carriages were got ready, and the younger princes were sent away. Carbonarism had been introduced into Lombardy the year before by two Romagnols, Count Laderchi and Pietro Maroncelli. It was their propaganda that put the Austrian Government on the alert, and was the cause of the Imperial decree which denounced the society as a subversive conspiracy, aiming at the destruction of all constituted authority, and pointed to death and confiscation of property as the penalty for joining it. There was the additional clause, destined to bear terrible fruit, which declared accomplices, punishable with life-imprisonment, all who knew of the existence of lodges (Vendite, as they were called) or the names of associates, without informing the police. In the autumn of 1820, Maroncelli and many others, including Silvio Pellico, the young Piedmontese poet, were arrested as Carbonari, while the arrest of the so-called accomplices began with Count Giovanni Arrivabene of Mantua, who had no connection with the society, but was charged with having heard from Pellico that he was a member. Pellico and his companions[Pg.41]were still lying untried in the horrible Venetian prisons, called, from their leaden roofs, the 'Piombi,' when the events of 1821 gave rise to a wholesale batch of new arrests. As soon as they knew of a movement in Piedmont, the Lombard patriots prepared to co-operate in it; that they were actually able to do nothing, was because it broke out prematurely, and also, to some extent, because their head, Count Confalonieri, was incapacitated by severe illness. But though their activity profited not at all to the cause, it was fatal to themselves. The Austrian Government had, as has been stated, a correct general notion of what was going on, but at the beginning it almost entirely lacked proofs which could inculpate individuals. In the matter of arrests, however, there was one sovereign rule which all the despotic Governments in Italy could and did follow in every emergency: it was to lay hands on the most intelligent, distinguished and upright members of the community. This plan never failed; these were the patriots, the conspirators of those days. The second thing which the Austrians made a rule of doing, was to extort from the prisoners some incautious word, some shadow of an assent or admission which would place them on the track of other compromised persons, and furnish them with such scraps of evidence as they deemed sufficient, in order to proceed against those already in their power. In their secret examination of prisoners, they had reduced the system of provocative interrogation to a science. They made use of every subterfuge, and, above all, of fabricated confessions fathered on friends of the prisoner, to extract the exclamation, the nod of the head, the confused answer, which served their purpose. The prisoners,[Pg.42]men of good faith, and inexperienced in the arts of deception, were but children in their hands, and scarcely one of them was not doomed to be the involuntary cause of some other person's ruin—generally that of a dear and intimate friend.The first to be arrested was Gaetano De-Castillia, who went with the Marquis Giorgio Pallavicini on a mission to Piedmont while the revolution there was at its height. They even had an interview with the Prince of Carignano, 'a pale and tall young man, with a charming expression' (so Pallavicini describes him), but had obtained from him no assurance, except the characteristic parting word: 'Let us hope in the future.' When De-Castillia was arrested, Pallavicini, then a youth of twenty, and full of noble sentiments, rushed to the director of the police with the avowal: 'It was I who induced De-Castillia to go to Piedmont; if the journey was a crime, the fault is mine; punish me!' No error could have proved more calamitous; till that moment the Austrians were in ignorance of the Piedmontese mission; De-Castillia was arrested on some far more trifling charge. Pallavicini's generous folly was rewarded by fourteen years' imprisonment, and its first consequence was the arrest of Count Confalonieri, at whose instance the visit to Turin had been made. For months the Austrians had desired to have a clue against him; the opportunity was come at last.Federico Confalonieri, brilliant, handsome, persuasive, of great wealth and ancient lineage, innately aristocratic, but in the best sense, was morally at the head of Lombardy, by the selection of the fittest, which at certain junctures makes one man pre-appointed leader while he is still untried. When in England, the Duke of Sussex prevailed upon him to become a Freemason, but he was not a Carbonaro[Pg.43]in the technical sense, though both friends and foes believed him to be one. He knew, however, more about this and the other secret societies then existing in Italy—even those of the reactionary party—than did most of the initiated. In an amusing passage in his memoirs he relates how, when once forcibly detained in a miserable hostelry in the Calabrian Mountains, a den of brigands, of whom the chief was the landlord, he guessed that this man was a Calderaio, and it occurred to him to make the sign of that bloodthirsty sect. Things changed in a second; the brigand innkeeper was at his feet, the complete household was set in motion to serve him. In 1821, he founded at Milan, not a secret society, but an association in which all the best patriots were enrolled, and of which the sole engagement was the formula, repeated on entering its ranks: 'I swear to God, and on my honour, to exert myself to the utmost of my power, and even at the sacrifice of my life, to redeem Italy from foreign dominion.'Knowing to what extent he was a marked man, Confalonieri would have only exercised common prudence in leaving the country, but he could not reconcile himself to the idea of flight. Anonymous warnings rained upon him: most likely they all came from the same quarter, from Count Bubna, the Austrian Field-Marshal, with whom Confalonieri was personally on friendly terms. On the 12th of December the Countess Bubna made a last effort to save him; her carriage was ready, she implored him to take it and escape across the frontier. He refused, and next day he was arrested.Austrian legal procedure was slow; the trial of the first Carbonari, Silvio Pellico and his companions, did not take place till 1822. On the 22nd of February the sentence of death was read to Silvio Pellico in his Venetian prison, to be commuted to one of fifteen years'[Pg.44]imprisonment at Spielberg, a fortress converted into a convict prison in a bleak position in Moravia. To that rock of sorrow, consecrated for ever by the sufferings of some of the purest of men, Silvio Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli, with nine or ten companions, condemned at the same time, were the first Italians to take the road. Here they remained for the eight years described by the author ofFrancesca da Rimini, inLe Mie Prigioni, a book that served the Italian cause throughout the world. Even now some Italians are indignant at the spirit of saintly resignation which breathes upon Silvio Pellico's pages, at the veil which is drawn over many shocking features in the treatment of the prisoners; they do not know the tremendous force which such reticence gave his narrative.Le Mie Prigionihas the reserve strength of a Greek tragedy.Maroncelli contracted a disease of the leg through the hardships endured; amputation became necessary, but could not be performed till permission was received from Vienna—a detail showing the red-tapism which governed all branches of the Austrian administration. This patriot went, after his release, to America, where he died, poor, blind and mad. Pellico, crushed in soul, devoted his latter years entirely to religion. Only men of iron fibre could come out as they went in. The Spielberg prisoners wore chains, and their food was so bad and scanty that they suffered from continual hunger, with its attendant diseases. Unlike the thieves and assassins confined in the same fortress, the State prisoners were given no news of their families. Such was Spielberg, 'a sepulchre without the peace of the dead.'The State trials of the Lombard patriots in 1823 resulted in seven capital sentences on the Milanese, thirteen on the Brescians, and four[Pg.45]on the Mantuans. The fate of the other prisoners depended on that of Count Confalonieri. If the sentence on him were not carried out, the lives at least of the others might be regarded as safe, since he was looked upon as the head. It is certain that the authorities, and the Emperor himself, had the most firm intention of having him executed; the more merciful decision was solely due to the Countess Confalonieri's journey to Vienna. Accompanied by the prisoner's aged father, this beautiful and heroic woman, a daughter of the noble Milanese house of Casati, went to Vienna before the conclusion of the trial, to be ready for any eventuality. When the sentence of death was passed, it was announced by the Emperor to old Count Confalonieri, whom he advised to return with the Countess Teresa as fast as possible if they wished to see the condemned man alive. Undaunted by the news, the brave wife sought an interview with the Empress, in whom she found a warm advocate, but who was obliged to own, after several attempts to obtain a reprieve, that she despaired of success. Teresa Confalonieri hurried back to Milan through the bitter winter weather, in doubt whether she should arrive before the execution had taken place. But the unceasing efforts of the Empress won the day. The respite was granted on the 13th of January; life-imprisonment was substituted for death. The countess sent her husband the pillow which she had bathed with her tears during her terrible journey; needless to say that it was not given to him. She died broken-hearted with waiting before he was set at liberty in the year 1836.When Count Confalonieri reached Vienna on his way to Spielberg, he was surprised to find himself installed in a luxurious apartment, with[Pg.46]three servants to wait upon him. Though too ill to touch solid food, a sumptuous breakfast and dinner were daily set before him; and but for the constant jingle of his chains, he would have thought himself in a first-class hotel on a journey of pleasure. The object of these attentions was clear when one evening Prince Metternich came to see him, and stayed for three hours, endeavouring by every exquisite flattery, by every promise and persuasion, to worm out of him the secrets of which he alone was believed to be the depositary. The Austrian Government had spent £60,000 on the Milan Commission, and, practically, they were no wiser than when it began. Would Confalonieri enlighten them? Whatever scruples he might have felt during the trial could be now laid aside; there was no question of new arrests. It was from pure, abstract love of knowledge that the Government, or, rather, the Emperor, desired to get at the truth. If he preferred to open his mind to the Emperor in person, His Majesty would grant him a secret audience. Above all, what was the real truth about the Prince of Carignano?All the rest was a blind; it was the wish to have some damnatory evidence against Charles Albert, such as would for ever exclude him from the throne, that had induced the Emperor and his astute minister to make this final attempt.'Confalonieri need never go to Spielberg,' said the Prince; 'let him think of his family, of his adored wife, of his own talents, of his future career, which was on the brink of being blotted out as completely as if he were dead!' Confalonieri was worthy of his race, of his class, of himself; he stood firm, and next morning, almost with a sense of relief, he started for the living grave.'The struggle was decided,' Prince Metternich had said in the course[Pg.47]of the interview, 'and decided not only for our own, but for many generations. Those who still hoped to the contrary were madmen.'Some years of outward quiet doubtless confirmed him in the first opinion, while the second was not likely to be shaken by the next attempt that was made to take up arms for freedom. On the 28th of June 1828, several villages in the province of Salerno rose in obedience to the harangues of two patriotic ecclesiastics, Canon de Luca and Carlo da Celle, superior of a capuchin convent. This was meant to develop into a general insurrection, but it was nowhere followed up, and the sword of vengeance fell speedily on the wretched villagers. Surrounded by the royal troops, they were forced into submission, many were shot on the spot, others were dragged in chains to Salerno, not even a drop of water being allowed them during the journey under the scorching sun. The village of Bosco was rased to the ground. The priest, the monk, and twenty-two insurgents were shot after the repression. The heads of the victims were cut off and placed in iron cages where their wives or mothers were likely to see them. A woman went to Naples to beg for the pardon of her two grandsons, by name Diego and Emilio. The King, with barbarous clemency, told her to choose one. In vain she entreated that if both could not be saved the choice should be left to chance, or decided by someone else. But no; unless she chose they would both be shot. At last she chose Diego. Afterwards she went mad, and was constantly heard wailing: 'I have killed my grandson Emilio.' This anecdote gives a fair notion of Francis I., whose short reign was, however, less signalised by acts of cruelty, though there were enough of these, than by a venality never surpassed. The grooms-in-waiting and ladies-of-the-bedchamber sold the public offices[Pg.48]in the daylight; and the King, who was aware of it, thought it a subject for vulgar jokes with his intimates. Francis died in 1830 of bad humour at the Paris revolution, and was succeeded by Ferdinand II., to be known hereafter as Bomba—then a clownish youth, one of whose first kingly cares was to create St Ignatius Loyola a Field-Marshal.The revolution which upset the throne of Charles X., and ushered in the eighteen years' reign of the Citizen King, seemed likely to have momentous consequences for Italy. The principle of non-intervention proclaimed by French politicians would, if logically enforced, sound the death-knell of the Austrian power in Italy. Dupin, the Minister of War, enlarged on the theme in a speech which appeared to remove all doubt as to the real intentions of the Government. 'One phrase,' he remarked, 'has made a general impression; it expresses the true position of a loyal and generous Government. Not only has the President of the Council laid down the principle that France should abstain from intervention; he has declared that she would not tolerate intervention on the part of others. France might have shut herself up in a cold egotism, and simply said that she would not intervene; this would have been contemptible, but the proclamation of not suffering the interventions of others is the noblest attitude a strong and magnanimous people can assume; it amounts to saying: Not only will I not attack or disturb other nations, but I, France, whose voice is respected by Europe and by the whole world, will never permit others to do so. This is the language held by the ministry and by the ambassadors of Louis Philippe; and it is this which the army, the National Guard, France entire, is ready to maintain.'[Pg.49]Truly language was invented to travesty the truth, and when French politicians say they are going to the right it is an almost sure sign that they are going to the left; nevertheless, is it possible to blame the Italians who read in these assurances a positive promise affecting their own case?The same assurances were repeated again and again through the winter of 1830-31; they were repeated authoritatively as late as March in the latter year. Well may a French writer inquire: 'Was it insanity or treachery?'The good tidings were published by the Italian exiles, who, living close to the great centres of European politics, were the first to intoxicate themselves with the great delusion. From London, Gabriele Rossetti sent the exultant summons:
Schiavi or siam si; ma schiavi almen frementi.
Like Foscolo's, Alfieri's life was a lesson in independence: angry at the scant measure of freedom in Piedmont, he could never be induced to go near his sovereign till Charles Emmanuel was staying at Florence as a proscript. Then the poet went to pay his respects to him, and was received with the good-humoured banter: 'Well, Signor Conte, here am I, a king, in the condition you would like to see them all.'
Against the classical, not to say pagan, leanings of these two poets, a reaction set in with Alessandro Manzoni, the founder of Italian Romanticism, to which he gave an aspect differing from that which the same movement wore in France, because he was an ardent Catholic at a time when Christianity had almost the charm of novelty. His religious outpourings combine the fervour of the Middle Ages with modern expansion, and he freed the Italian language from pedantic restrictions without impairing its dignity. It was once the fashion to inveigh against Manzoni for, as it was said, inculcating resignation; but he did nothing of the kind. As a young man he had sung of the Italians as 'Figli tutti d'un solo Riscatto,' and though he was not of those who fight either with the sword or the pen, yet that 'Riscatto' was the dream of his youth and manhood, and the joy of his old age. His gentleness was never contaminated by servility, and the love for his country, profound if placid, which appears in every line of his writings, appealed to a class that could not be reached by fiery turbulence of thought.
In an age when newspapers have taken the place of books, it may seem strange to ascribe any serious effect to the works of poets and romancists; but in the Italy of that date there were no newspapers to speak of; the ordinary channels of opinion were blocked up. Books were still not only read, but discussed and thought over, and every slight[Pg.20]allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than you can degrade, the heart of man piecemeal. In this sense not literature only but also music helped, who can say how effectually, to bring Italy back to life. The land was refreshed by a flood of purely national song, full of the laughter and the tears of Italian character, of the sunshine and the storms of Italian nature. Music, the only art uncageable as the human soul, descended as a gift from heaven upon the people whose articulate utterance was stifled. And
... No speech may evinceFeeling like music.
Considering what the state of the country was after 1815, and how apparently inexhaustible were the resources of the Empire of which the petty princes of the peninsula were but puppets, it is remarkable that political agitation, with a view to reversing the decisions of Vienna, should have begun so soon, and on so large a scale. Not that the nation, as a whole, was yet prepared to move; every revolution, till 1848, was partial in the sense that the mass of the people stood aloof, because unconvinced of the possibility of loosening their chains. But, during that long succession of years, the number of Italians ready to embark on enterprises of the most desperate character, accounting as nothing the smallness of the chance of success, seems enormous when the risks they ran and the difficulties they faced are fully recognised. Among the means which were effective in first rousing Italy from her lethargy, and in fostering the will to acquire her independence at all costs, the secret society of the Carbonari undoubtedly occupies the front rank. The Carbonari acted in two ways; by what they did and by what they caused to be done by others who were outside their society, and perhaps unfavourable to it,[Pg.22]but who were none the less sensible of the pressure it exercised. The origin of Carbonarism has been sought in vain; as a specimen of the childish fables that once passed for its history may be noticed the legend that Francis I. of France once stumbled on a charcoal burner's hut when hunting 'on the frontiers of his kingdom next to Scotland,' and was initiated into the rites similar to those in use among the sectaries of the nineteenth century. Those rites referred to vengeance which was to be taken on the wolf that slew the lamb; the wolf standing for tyrants and oppressors, and the lamb for Jesus Christ, the sinless victim, by whom all the oppressed were represented. The Carbonari themselves generally believed that they were heirs to an organisation started in Germany before the eleventh century, under the name of the Faith of the Kohlen-Brenners, of which Theobald de Brie, who was afterwards canonised, was a member. Theobald was adopted as patron saint of the modern society, and his fancied portrait figured in all the lodges. That any weight should have been attached to these pretensions to antiquity may appear strange to us, as it certainly did not matter whether an association bent on the liberation of Italy had or had not existed in German forests eight hundred years before; age and mystery, however, have a great popular attraction, the first as an object of reverence, the second as food for curiosity with the profane, and a bond of union among the initiated. The religious symbolism of the Carbonari, their oaths and ceremonies, and the axes, blocks and other furniture of the initiatory chamber, were well calculated to impress the poorer and more ignorant and excitable of the brethren. The Vatican affected to believe that Carbonarism was an offshoot of Freemasonry, but, in spite of sundry points of[Pg.23]resemblance, such as the engagements of mutual help assumed by members, there seems to have been no real connection between the two. Political Freemasonry remained somewhat of an exotic in Italy, and was inclined to regard France as its centre. As far as can be ascertained, it gave a general support to Napoleon, while Carbonarism rejected every foreign yoke. The practical aims of the Carbonari may be summed up in two words: freedom and independence. From the first they had the penetration to grasp the fact that independence, even if obtained, could not be preserved without freedom; but though their predilections were theoretically republican, they did not make a particular form of government a matter of principle. Nor were they agreed in a definite advocacy of the unity of Italy.
A Genoese of the name of Malghella, who was Murat's Minister of Police, was the first person to give a powerful impetus to Carbonarism, of which he has even been called the inventor, but the inference goes too far. Malghella ended miserably; after the fall of Murat he was arrested by the Austrians, who consigned him as a new subject to the Sardinian Government, which immediately put him in prison. His name is hardly known, but no Italian of his time worked more assiduously, or in some respects more intelligently, for the emancipation of Italy. Whatever was truly Italian in Murat's policy must be mainly attributed to him. As early as 1813 he urged the King to declare himself frankly for independence, and to grant a constitution to his Neapolitan subjects. But Malghella did not find the destined saviour of Italy in Murat; his one lasting work was to establish Carbonarism on so strong a basis that, when the Bourbons returned, there were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Carbonari in all parts of the realm. The discovery was not a pleasant one to the restored rulers, and the Prince of Canosa, the new Minister[Pg.24]of Police, thought to counteract the evil done by his predecessor by setting up an abominable secret society called the Calderai del Contrapeso (Braziers of the Counterpoise), principally recruited from the refuse of the people, lazzaroni, bandits and let-out convicts, who were provided by Government with 20,000 muskets, and were sworn to exterminate all enemies of the Church of Rome, whether Jansenists, Freemasons or Carbonari. This association committed some horrible excesses, but otherwise it had no results. The Carbonari closed in their ranks, and learnt to observe more strictly their rules of secrecy. From the kingdom of Naples, Carbonarism spread to the Roman states, and found a congenial soil in Romagna, which became the focus whence it spread over the rest of Italy. It was natural that it should take the colour, more or less, of the places where it grew. In Romagna, where political assassination is in the blood of the people, a dagger was substituted for the symbolical woodman's axe in the initiatory rites. It was probably only in Romagna that the conventional threat against informers was often carried out. The Romagnols invested Carbonarism with the wild intensity of their own temperament, resolute even to crime, but capable of supreme impersonal enthusiasm. The ferment of expectancy that prevailed in Romagna is reflected in the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, whom young Count Pietro Gamba made a Carbonaro, and who looked forward to seeing the Italians send the barbarians of all nations back to their own dens, as to the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence. His lower apartments, he writes, were full of the bayonets, fusils and cartridges of his Carbonari cronies; 'I suppose that they consider me[Pg.25]as a dépôt, to be sacrificed in case of accidents. It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object—the very poetry of politics. Only think—free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothing like it since the days of Augustus.'
The movement on which such great hopes were set was to begin in the kingdom of Naples in the spring of 1820. The concession of the hard-won Spanish Constitution in the month of March encouraged the Neapolitans to believe that they might get a like boon from their own King if they directed all the forces at their command to this single end. To avoid being compromised, they sought rather to dissociate themselves from the patriots of other parts of Italy than to co-operate with them in an united effort. The Carbonari of the Neapolitan kingdom, who were the entire authors of the revolution, which, after many unfortunate delays, broke out on the 1st of July, had good cause for thinking that they were in a position to dictate terms; the mistake they made was to suppose that a charter conceded by a Bourbon of Naples could ever be worth the paper on which it was written. Not only among the people, but in the army the Carbonari had thousands of followers on whom they could rely, and several whole regiments were only waiting their orders to rise in open revolt. The scheme was to take possession of the persons of the King and the royal family, and retain them as hostages till the Constitution was granted. Such extreme measures were not necessary. The standard of rebellion was raised at Monteforte by two officers named Morelli and Silvati, who had brought over a troop of cavalry from Nola, and by the priest Menechini. In all Neapolitan insurrections there was sure to be a priest; the Neapolitan Church, much though there is to be laid to its account, must be admitted to have frequently shown sympathy with the[Pg.26]popular side. Menechini enjoyed an immense, if brief, popularity which he used to allay the anger of the mob and to procure the safety of obnoxious persons. The King sent two generals and a body of troops against the Chartists, but when the Carbonari symbols were recognised on the insurgent flags, the troops showed such clear signs of wishing to go over to the enemy that they were quietly taken back to Naples. The cry of 'God, the King, and the Constitution,' was taken up through the land; General Pepe, who had long been a Carbonaro in secret, was enthusiastically hailed as commander of the Chartist forces, which practically comprised the whole army. The King was powerless; besides which, when pushed up into any corner people who do not mind breaking their word have a facility for hard swearing. On the 13th of July, Ferdinand standing at the altar of the royal chapel, with his hand on the Bible, swore to defend and maintain the Constitution which he had just granted. If he failed to do so, he called upon his subjects to disobey him, and God to call him to account. These words he read from a written form; as if they were not enough, he added, with his eyes on the cross, and his face turned towards heaven: 'Omnipotent God, who with Thine infinite power canst read the soul of man and the future, do Thou, if I speak falsely, or intend to break my oath, at this moment direct the thunder of Thy vengeance on my head.'
The Neapolitans had got their liberties, but they soon found themselves face to face with perplexities which would have taxed the powers of men both wiser and more experienced in free government than they were. In the first place, although a revolution may be made by a sect, a government cannot be carried on by one. The Carbonari who had[Pg.27]won the day were blind to this self-evident truth; and, to make matters worse, there was a split in their party, some of them being disposed to throw off the Bourbon yoke altogether; a natural desire, but as it was only felt by a minority, it added to the general confusion. Then came, as it was sure to come, the cry for separation from Sicily. The Sicilians wanted back the violated constitution obtained for them by the English in 1812, and would have nothing to do with that offered them from Naples. In every one of the struggles between Sicily and Naples, it is impossible to refuse sympathy to the islanders, who, in the pride of their splendid independent history, deemed themselves the victims of an inferior race; but it is equally impossible to ignore that, politically, they were in the wrong. In union, and in union alone, lay the only chance of resisting the international plot to keep the South Italian populations in perpetual bondage. The Sicilian revolt was put down at first mildly, and finally, as mildness had no effect, with the usual violence by the Neapolitan Constitutional Government, which could not avoid losing credit and popularity in the operation. Meanwhile, the three persons who traded under the name of Europe met at Troppau, and came readily to the conclusion that 'the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance exercised an incontestable right in taking common measures of security against states which the overthrow of authority by revolt placed in a hostile attitude towards every legitimate government.' The assumption was too broadly stated, even for Lord Castlereagh's acceptance; but he was contented to make a gentle protest, which he further nullified by allowing that, in the present case, intervention was very likely justified. France expressed no disapproval. Only the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Spain gave the Constitutionalrégimetacit[Pg.28]support by recognising it. The Emperor of Russia was very anxious to take part in the business, and would have sent off an army instantly had not his royal brother of Prussia hesitated to consent to the inconvenience of a Cossack march through his territory. The work was left, therefore, to the Emperor of Austria. Before entering upon it, it occurred to these three to invite the King of Naples to meet them at Laybach. They knew his character.
Ferdinand assured his Parliament that he was going to Laybach solely to induce the Holy Alliance to think better of its opposition, and to agree, at least, to all the principal features of the new state of things. Most foolishly the Parliament, which, according to the Constitution, might have vetoed his leaving the country, let him go. Before starting he wrote an open letter to his dear son, the Duke of Calabria, who was appointed Regent, in which he said: 'I shall defend the events of the past July before the Congress. I firmly desire the Spanish Constitution for my kingdom; and although I rely on the justice of the assembled sovereigns, and on their old friendship, still it is well to tell you that, in whatever circumstance it may please God to place me, my course will be what I have manifested on this sheet, strong and unchangeable either by force or by the flattery of others.'
Brave words! News came in due time of the sequel. On the 9th of February 1821, the Regent received a letter from the King, in which he gave the one piece of advice that the people should submit to their fate quietly. He was coming back with 50,000 Austrians, and a Russian army was ready to start if wanted. Nevertheless, to prevent a sudden outbreak before the foreign troops arrived, the Regent carried on a game of duplicity to the last, and pretended to second, whilst he[Pg.29]really baulked, the preparations for resistance decreed by Parliament. Baron Poerio, the father of two patriot martyrs of the future, sustained the national dignity by urging Parliament to yield only to force, and to defy the barbarous horde which was bearing down on the country. The closing scene is soon told. On the 7th of March, in the mountains near Rieti, General Guglielmo Pepe, with 8000 regular troops and a handful of militia, encountered an overwhelmingly superior force of Austrians. The Neapolitans stood out well for six hours, but on the Austrian reserves coming up, they were completely routed, and obliged to fly in all directions.
'Order reigned' in the kingdom of Naples. In Sicily, a gallant attempt at insurrection was begun, but there was not the spirit to go on with it, and General Rossaroll, its initiator, had to fly to Spain. The afterpiece is what might have been expected; an insensate desire for vengeance got hold of Ferdinand, and the last years of his life were spent in hunting down his enemies, real or imaginary. Morelli and Silvati were hung, the fugitives, Pepe and Rossaroll, were condemned to death, but this was only the beginning. The Austrian commander counselled mercy, but in this respect the King showed an independent mind. A court-martial was instituted to examine the conduct of ecclesiastics, public functionaries and soldiers, from the year 1793 downwards. No one was safe who had expressed a dislike of absolutism within the last thirty years. A blameless gentleman who was a Carbonaro, was conducted through Naples on the back of an ass, and beaten with a whip, to which nails were attached. Eight hundred persons are said to have perished at the hands of the state in one year. Ferdinand himself expired on the 3rd of January 1825, after misgoverning for sixty-five years.
The Neapolitan revolution had just collapsed, when another broke out in Piedmont, which, though short in duration, was to have far-reaching consequences.
At that time, the King of Sardinia was Victor Emmanuel I., who succeeded his brother Charles Emmanuel in 1802, when the latter abdicated and retired to Rome, where he joined the Society of Jesus. Victor Emmanuel's only son was dead, and the throne would devolve on his youngest brother, Charles Felix, Duke of Genoa, whom reasons of state led to abandon the wish to become a monk, which he had formed as a boy of eleven, on being taken to visit a convent near Turin. But Charles Felix, though married, was without children, and the legitimate heir-presumptive was Charles Albert, Prince of Carignano, who represented the younger branch of the family, which divided from the main line in the early part of the seventeenth century. Charles Albert's father was the luckless Prince Charles of Carignano, who, alone of his house, came to terms with Napoleon, who promised him a pension, which was not paid. His mother, a Saxon Princess, paraded the streets of Turin, dressed in the last republican fashion, with her infant son in her arms. Afterwards, she gave him a miscellaneous education, that included a large dose of Rousseau from a Swiss professor. The boy was shifted from place to place, happier when his mother forgot him, than when, in temporary recollection of his existence, she called him to her. Once when he was travelling with the Princess and her second husband, M. de Montléart, Charles Albert was made to sit on the box of the carriage, in a temperature many degrees below zero.
His uncles (as the King and Charles Felix called themselves, though they were his cousins) heard with natural horror of the vagaries of[Pg.31]the Princess of Carignano, and they extended their antipathy from the mother to the son, even when he was a child. In Victor Emmanuel, this antipathy was moderated by the easy good-nature of his character; in Charles Felix, it degenerated into an intense hatred.
It is a singular thing that Prince Metternich, from the very first, had an instinctive feeling that the unfortunate boy, who seemed the most hopeless and helpless of human creatures, would prove the evil genius of the Austrian power. He therefore set to work to deprive him of his eventual rights. He was confident of success, as fortune had arranged matters in a manner that offered a ready-made plan for carrying out the design. Victor Emmanuel had four daughters, precluded from reigning by the Salic law, which was in force in Piedmont. His wife, the Queen Maria Teresa, a woman of great beauty and insatiable ambition, was sister to the Austrian Archduke Francis d'Este, Duke of Modena. Francis had never married, having been robbed of his intended bride, the Archduchess Marie-Louise, by her betrothal to Napoleon. What simpler than to marry the eldest of the Sardinian princesses to her uncle, abrogate the Salic law, and calmly await the desired consummation of an Austrian prince, by right of his wife, occupying the Sardinian throne?
The first step was soon taken; princesses came into the world to be sacrificed. The plot ran on for some time, the Queen, who was in the habit of calling Charles Albert 'that little vagrant,' giving it her indefatigable support. Victor Emmanuel was weak, and stood in considerable awe of his wife, who had obtained a great ascendancy over him in the miserable days of their residence in the island of Sardinia. His nephew, who was almost or wholly unknown to him, partook[Pg.32]of the nature of a disagreeable myth. Nevertheless he had a sense of justice, as well as Savoy blood, in his veins—he resisted; but the day came when his surrender seemed probable. Just at that moment, however, the Duke of Modena prematurely revealed the project by asking through his representative at the Congress of Vienna for the port of Spezia, in order that he might conveniently connect his own state with his prospective possession, the island of Sardinia. Prince Talleyrand was alarmed by the vision of Austria supreme in the Mediterranean, and through his opposition the conspiracy, for the time, was upset, and the rights of Charles Albert were recognised.
Curiously enough, Prince Metternich had insisted on the young Prince, then seventeen, visiting the headquarters of the Allies. Charles Felix (who was unconnected with the Modena scheme) wrote a letter to the King on this subject, in which he stated it as his belief that the Austrian plan was to get Charles Albert accidentally killed, or to plunge him in vice, or to make him contract a discreditable marriage. This was why they had invited him to their camp. He adds the characteristic remark that their nephew would be in no less danger at the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington 'à cause de la religion.' Have him home and have him married, is his advice. 'We are well treated, because there is the expectation of soon devouring our remains by extinguishing the House of Savoy. It is the habit of the cabinet of Vienna; it was thus they made an end of the House of Este.'
These counsels were the more likely to impress Victor Emmanuel from his knowledge that they were inspired by no shadow of personal interest in 'the little vagrant,' but by the race-feeling alone. The Queen contrived to prevent the immediate recall of the Prince of[Pg.33]Carignano, but she was obliged to give way, and he was definitely established in Piedmont. In 1818 he was married at Florence to the Archduchess Maria Teresa of Tuscany, who, on the 14th of March 1820, gave birth to the child that was to become the first King of Italy.
Very soon after his return to his country, the hopes of the Liberal party began to centre in the young Prince, whom some of their more ardent spirits already saluted as the rising sun. Those who made his acquaintance were fascinated by the charm of manner which he could always exert when he chose, and were confirmed in their hopes by his evident susceptibility to the magnetism of new ideas and fatalistic ambitions. What they did not perceive was, that in his nature lay that ingrained tendency to drift before the wind, which is the most dangerous thing in politics. In the mid-sea of events he might change his course without conscious insincerity, but with the self-abandonment of a mind which, under pressure, loses the sense of personal responsibility.
In Piedmont, Carbonarism had made great way among the upper classes and among the younger officers; the flower of the country was enrolled in its ranks, and the impatience to take some action towards procuring free institutions for themselves, and doing something for their Lombard brothers, had reached fever heat in the spring of 1821, when the affairs of Naples were creating much excitement. The principal conspirators, noble young men, full of unselfish ardour, were the chosen friends and companions of the Prince of Carignano. It was formerly the opinion that they made him the confidant of their plans from the first, that he was one of them, in short—a Carbonaro bound by all the oaths and obligations of the society. The judgment of his conduct afterwards is, of course, much affected by this point; were[Pg.34]the assumption correct, the invectives launched against him, not by any means only by republican writers, would hardly seem excessive. But by the light of documents issued in recent times, it appears more just as well as more charitable to suppose that Charles Albert's complicity was of a much less precise character. A little encouragement from a prince goes a long way.
According to his own account, he was taken by surprise when, on the and or 3rd of March, his friends Carail, Collegno, Santa Rosa and Lisio came to tell him in secret that they belonged to societies which had been long working for the independence of Italy, and that they reckoned on him, knowing well his affection for his country, to aid them in obtaining from the King some few first concessions, which would be the prelude of a glorious future. It is clear that he ought either to have broken with them altogether from that moment or to have cast his lot with them for good or evil. He tried a middle course. He induced the conspirators to put off the revolution by which they intended to enforce their demands, and he conveyed to the King information of what had happened, asking at the same time that no measures should be taken against incriminated persons.
In fact, no precautions of any kind seem to have been taken. Victor Emmanuel, frightened at first, was soon reassured. The revolution, which was to have begun on the 8th, actually broke out on the 10th of March at Alessandria, where the counter orders issued at Charles. Albert's request, after the interview just described, were not obeyed. The garrison 'pronounced' in favour of the Spanish Constitution. It was now impossible to draw back. From Alessandria the revolution spread to the capital. The bulk of the army sympathised with the movement, and relied on the support of the people.[Pg.35]The greatest ladies mixed with the crowds which gathered under the Carbonaro flag—black, blue and red. On the other hand, there were a few devoted servants of the House of Savoy who beheld these novelties with the sensations of a quiet person who sees from his window the breaking loose of a menagerie. Invincibly ignorant of all that was really inspiring in this first breath of freedom, they saw nothing in it but an unwarrantable attack on the authority of their amiable, if weak, old King, for whom they would gladly have shed every drop of their blood—not from the rational esteem which the people of Italy, like the people of England, now feel for their sovereign, but from the pure passion of loyalty which made the cavalier stand blindly by his prince, whether he was good or bad, in the right or in the wrong. Men of their type watched the evolution of Piedmont into Italy from first to last with the same presentiment of evil, the same moral incapacity of appreciation. A handful of these loyal servitors hurried to Victor Emmanuel to offer their assistance. They marshalled their troop in battle-array in the courtyard of the palace. Their arms were antiquated pistols and rapiers, and they themselves were veterans, some of them of eighty years, mounted on steeds as ancient. The King thanked them, but declined their services; nor would he givecarte blancheto Captain Raimondi, who assured him that with his one company he could suppress the insurrection if invested with full powers. Soon after this refusal, a firing of guns announced that the citadel was in the hands of the insurgents. The troops within and without fraternised; it was a fine moment for those who knew history and who were bent in their hearts on driving the foreigner out of Italy. Here at the citadel of Turin, during the siege of 1706, occurred the memorable deed of Pietro Micca, the peasant-soldier, who,[Pg.36]when he heard the enemy thundering at the door of the gallery, thought life and the welcome of wife and child and the happy return to his village of less account than duty, and fired the mine which sent him and three companies of French Grenadiers to their final reckoning.
After vacillating for two or three days, Victor Emmanuel abdicated on the 13th of March. The Queen desired to be appointed regent, but, to her intense vexation, the appointment was given to Charles Albert. A more unenviable honour never fell to the lot of man.
Deserted by the ministers of the crown, who resigned in a body, alone in the midst of a triumphant revolution, appealed to in the name of those sentiments of patriotism which he could never hear invoked unmoved, the young Prince uttered the words which were as good as a surrender: 'I, too, am an Italian!' That evening he allowed the Spanish Constitution to be proclaimed subject to the arrival of the orders of the new King.
The new King! No one remembered that there existed such a person. Nor had anyone recollected that the Spanish Constitution abrogated the Salic law, and that hence, instead of a new King, they had a new Queen—the wife of the Duke of Modena! An eminent Turinese jurisconsulist, who was probably the only possessor of a copy of the charter in the town which was screaming itself hoarse for it, divulged this awkward discovery.—Several hours were spent in anxious discussion, when the brilliant suggestion was made that the article should be cancelled. The article was cancelled.
But Charles Felix could not be disposed of so easily. The news of the[Pg.37]late events reached him at Modena of all places in the world, the rallying-point of the Prince of Carignano's bitterest foes. He was not long in sending his orders. He repudiated everything that had been done, and commanded Charles Albert, 'if he had a drop of our royal blood left in his veins,' to leave the capital instantly for Novara, where he was to await his further instructions.
Charles Albert obeyed. He was accompanied on his journey—or, as it may be called, his flight—by such of the troops as remained loyal. At Novara he found a sentence of exile, in a fresh order, to quit Piedmontese territory. Tuscany was indicated as the state where he was to reside.
The Austrians crossed the frontier with the consent of the King. Charles Felix's opinion of Austria has been already given; another time he said: 'Austria is a sort of bird-lime which, if you get it on your fingers, you can never rub off.' If anything was needed to increase his loathing for the revolution, it was the necessity in which it placed him, as he thought, of calling in this unloved ally. But Charles Felix was not the man to hesitate. Not caring a straw for the privilege of wearing a crown himself, his belief in the divine right of kings, and the obligation to defend it, amounted to monomania. The Austrian offer was therefore accepted. On her part Austria declined the obliging proposal of the Czar of a loan of 100,000 men. She felt that she could do the work unaided, nor was she mistaken.
On the 8th of April the Constitutionalist troops which marched towards Novara, sanguine that the loyal regiments there quartered would end by joining them, were met by an armed resistance, in which the newly-arrived Austrians assisted. Their defeat was complete, and it was the signal of the downfall of the revolution. The leaders retired[Pg.38]from Turin to Alessandria, and thence to Genoa, that had risen last and was last to submit. Thus most of them escaped by sea, which was fortunate, as Charles Felix had the will to establish a White Terror, and was only prevented by the circumstance that nearly all the proposed victims were outside his kingdom. Capital sentences were sent after them by the folio: there was hardly a noble family which had not one of its members condemned to death. When his brother, Victor Emmanuel, recommended mercy, he told him that he was entirely ready to give him back the crown, but that, while he reigned, he should reign after his own ideas. He seems to have had thoughts of hanging the Prince of Carignano, and for a long time he seriously meant to devise the kingdom to his son, the infant Prince Victor. Thus a new set of obstacles arose between Charles Albert and the throne.
Of the personal friends of that ill-starred Prince all escaped. One of them, the noble-minded Count Santorre di Santa Rosa, died fighting for liberty in Greece. In the miseries of exile and poverty he had never lost faith in his country, but fearlessly maintained that 'the emancipation of Italy was an event of the nineteenth century.' To another, Giacinta di Collegno, it was reserved to receive the dying breath of Charles Albert, when as an exiled and crownless king he found rest, at last, at Oporto.
There were deeper reasons than any which appear on the surface for the failure of the revolutionary movements of this period. North and south, though the populations exhibited a childish delight at the overthrow of the old, despotic form of government, their effervescence ended as rapidly as it began. They did not really understand what was going on. 'By-the-bye, whatisthis same constitution they are making such a noise about?' asked a lazzarone who had been shouting[Pg.39]'Viva la Costituzione' all the day. Within a few weeks of the breakdown at Novara, Count Confalonieri wrote wisely to Gino Capponi that revolutions are not made by high intelligences, but by the masses which are moved by enthusiasm, and for a possibility of success, the word Constitution, the least magical of words, should have been replaced by the more comprehensible and stirring call: 'War to the stranger.' But this, instead of sounding from every housetop, was purposely stifled at Naples, and kept a mysterious secret in Piedmont.
The Austrians fully expected a rising in Lombardy in the middle of March, and that they were not without serious fears as to its consequences is proved by the preparations which they quietly made to abandon Milan, if necessary. The Court travelling-carriages were got ready, and the younger princes were sent away. Carbonarism had been introduced into Lombardy the year before by two Romagnols, Count Laderchi and Pietro Maroncelli. It was their propaganda that put the Austrian Government on the alert, and was the cause of the Imperial decree which denounced the society as a subversive conspiracy, aiming at the destruction of all constituted authority, and pointed to death and confiscation of property as the penalty for joining it. There was the additional clause, destined to bear terrible fruit, which declared accomplices, punishable with life-imprisonment, all who knew of the existence of lodges (Vendite, as they were called) or the names of associates, without informing the police. In the autumn of 1820, Maroncelli and many others, including Silvio Pellico, the young Piedmontese poet, were arrested as Carbonari, while the arrest of the so-called accomplices began with Count Giovanni Arrivabene of Mantua, who had no connection with the society, but was charged with having heard from Pellico that he was a member. Pellico and his companions[Pg.41]were still lying untried in the horrible Venetian prisons, called, from their leaden roofs, the 'Piombi,' when the events of 1821 gave rise to a wholesale batch of new arrests. As soon as they knew of a movement in Piedmont, the Lombard patriots prepared to co-operate in it; that they were actually able to do nothing, was because it broke out prematurely, and also, to some extent, because their head, Count Confalonieri, was incapacitated by severe illness. But though their activity profited not at all to the cause, it was fatal to themselves. The Austrian Government had, as has been stated, a correct general notion of what was going on, but at the beginning it almost entirely lacked proofs which could inculpate individuals. In the matter of arrests, however, there was one sovereign rule which all the despotic Governments in Italy could and did follow in every emergency: it was to lay hands on the most intelligent, distinguished and upright members of the community. This plan never failed; these were the patriots, the conspirators of those days. The second thing which the Austrians made a rule of doing, was to extort from the prisoners some incautious word, some shadow of an assent or admission which would place them on the track of other compromised persons, and furnish them with such scraps of evidence as they deemed sufficient, in order to proceed against those already in their power. In their secret examination of prisoners, they had reduced the system of provocative interrogation to a science. They made use of every subterfuge, and, above all, of fabricated confessions fathered on friends of the prisoner, to extract the exclamation, the nod of the head, the confused answer, which served their purpose. The prisoners,[Pg.42]men of good faith, and inexperienced in the arts of deception, were but children in their hands, and scarcely one of them was not doomed to be the involuntary cause of some other person's ruin—generally that of a dear and intimate friend.
The first to be arrested was Gaetano De-Castillia, who went with the Marquis Giorgio Pallavicini on a mission to Piedmont while the revolution there was at its height. They even had an interview with the Prince of Carignano, 'a pale and tall young man, with a charming expression' (so Pallavicini describes him), but had obtained from him no assurance, except the characteristic parting word: 'Let us hope in the future.' When De-Castillia was arrested, Pallavicini, then a youth of twenty, and full of noble sentiments, rushed to the director of the police with the avowal: 'It was I who induced De-Castillia to go to Piedmont; if the journey was a crime, the fault is mine; punish me!' No error could have proved more calamitous; till that moment the Austrians were in ignorance of the Piedmontese mission; De-Castillia was arrested on some far more trifling charge. Pallavicini's generous folly was rewarded by fourteen years' imprisonment, and its first consequence was the arrest of Count Confalonieri, at whose instance the visit to Turin had been made. For months the Austrians had desired to have a clue against him; the opportunity was come at last.
Federico Confalonieri, brilliant, handsome, persuasive, of great wealth and ancient lineage, innately aristocratic, but in the best sense, was morally at the head of Lombardy, by the selection of the fittest, which at certain junctures makes one man pre-appointed leader while he is still untried. When in England, the Duke of Sussex prevailed upon him to become a Freemason, but he was not a Carbonaro[Pg.43]in the technical sense, though both friends and foes believed him to be one. He knew, however, more about this and the other secret societies then existing in Italy—even those of the reactionary party—than did most of the initiated. In an amusing passage in his memoirs he relates how, when once forcibly detained in a miserable hostelry in the Calabrian Mountains, a den of brigands, of whom the chief was the landlord, he guessed that this man was a Calderaio, and it occurred to him to make the sign of that bloodthirsty sect. Things changed in a second; the brigand innkeeper was at his feet, the complete household was set in motion to serve him. In 1821, he founded at Milan, not a secret society, but an association in which all the best patriots were enrolled, and of which the sole engagement was the formula, repeated on entering its ranks: 'I swear to God, and on my honour, to exert myself to the utmost of my power, and even at the sacrifice of my life, to redeem Italy from foreign dominion.'
Knowing to what extent he was a marked man, Confalonieri would have only exercised common prudence in leaving the country, but he could not reconcile himself to the idea of flight. Anonymous warnings rained upon him: most likely they all came from the same quarter, from Count Bubna, the Austrian Field-Marshal, with whom Confalonieri was personally on friendly terms. On the 12th of December the Countess Bubna made a last effort to save him; her carriage was ready, she implored him to take it and escape across the frontier. He refused, and next day he was arrested.
Austrian legal procedure was slow; the trial of the first Carbonari, Silvio Pellico and his companions, did not take place till 1822. On the 22nd of February the sentence of death was read to Silvio Pellico in his Venetian prison, to be commuted to one of fifteen years'[Pg.44]imprisonment at Spielberg, a fortress converted into a convict prison in a bleak position in Moravia. To that rock of sorrow, consecrated for ever by the sufferings of some of the purest of men, Silvio Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli, with nine or ten companions, condemned at the same time, were the first Italians to take the road. Here they remained for the eight years described by the author ofFrancesca da Rimini, inLe Mie Prigioni, a book that served the Italian cause throughout the world. Even now some Italians are indignant at the spirit of saintly resignation which breathes upon Silvio Pellico's pages, at the veil which is drawn over many shocking features in the treatment of the prisoners; they do not know the tremendous force which such reticence gave his narrative.Le Mie Prigionihas the reserve strength of a Greek tragedy.
Maroncelli contracted a disease of the leg through the hardships endured; amputation became necessary, but could not be performed till permission was received from Vienna—a detail showing the red-tapism which governed all branches of the Austrian administration. This patriot went, after his release, to America, where he died, poor, blind and mad. Pellico, crushed in soul, devoted his latter years entirely to religion. Only men of iron fibre could come out as they went in. The Spielberg prisoners wore chains, and their food was so bad and scanty that they suffered from continual hunger, with its attendant diseases. Unlike the thieves and assassins confined in the same fortress, the State prisoners were given no news of their families. Such was Spielberg, 'a sepulchre without the peace of the dead.'
The State trials of the Lombard patriots in 1823 resulted in seven capital sentences on the Milanese, thirteen on the Brescians, and four[Pg.45]on the Mantuans. The fate of the other prisoners depended on that of Count Confalonieri. If the sentence on him were not carried out, the lives at least of the others might be regarded as safe, since he was looked upon as the head. It is certain that the authorities, and the Emperor himself, had the most firm intention of having him executed; the more merciful decision was solely due to the Countess Confalonieri's journey to Vienna. Accompanied by the prisoner's aged father, this beautiful and heroic woman, a daughter of the noble Milanese house of Casati, went to Vienna before the conclusion of the trial, to be ready for any eventuality. When the sentence of death was passed, it was announced by the Emperor to old Count Confalonieri, whom he advised to return with the Countess Teresa as fast as possible if they wished to see the condemned man alive. Undaunted by the news, the brave wife sought an interview with the Empress, in whom she found a warm advocate, but who was obliged to own, after several attempts to obtain a reprieve, that she despaired of success. Teresa Confalonieri hurried back to Milan through the bitter winter weather, in doubt whether she should arrive before the execution had taken place. But the unceasing efforts of the Empress won the day. The respite was granted on the 13th of January; life-imprisonment was substituted for death. The countess sent her husband the pillow which she had bathed with her tears during her terrible journey; needless to say that it was not given to him. She died broken-hearted with waiting before he was set at liberty in the year 1836.
When Count Confalonieri reached Vienna on his way to Spielberg, he was surprised to find himself installed in a luxurious apartment, with[Pg.46]three servants to wait upon him. Though too ill to touch solid food, a sumptuous breakfast and dinner were daily set before him; and but for the constant jingle of his chains, he would have thought himself in a first-class hotel on a journey of pleasure. The object of these attentions was clear when one evening Prince Metternich came to see him, and stayed for three hours, endeavouring by every exquisite flattery, by every promise and persuasion, to worm out of him the secrets of which he alone was believed to be the depositary. The Austrian Government had spent £60,000 on the Milan Commission, and, practically, they were no wiser than when it began. Would Confalonieri enlighten them? Whatever scruples he might have felt during the trial could be now laid aside; there was no question of new arrests. It was from pure, abstract love of knowledge that the Government, or, rather, the Emperor, desired to get at the truth. If he preferred to open his mind to the Emperor in person, His Majesty would grant him a secret audience. Above all, what was the real truth about the Prince of Carignano?
All the rest was a blind; it was the wish to have some damnatory evidence against Charles Albert, such as would for ever exclude him from the throne, that had induced the Emperor and his astute minister to make this final attempt.
'Confalonieri need never go to Spielberg,' said the Prince; 'let him think of his family, of his adored wife, of his own talents, of his future career, which was on the brink of being blotted out as completely as if he were dead!' Confalonieri was worthy of his race, of his class, of himself; he stood firm, and next morning, almost with a sense of relief, he started for the living grave.
'The struggle was decided,' Prince Metternich had said in the course[Pg.47]of the interview, 'and decided not only for our own, but for many generations. Those who still hoped to the contrary were madmen.'
Some years of outward quiet doubtless confirmed him in the first opinion, while the second was not likely to be shaken by the next attempt that was made to take up arms for freedom. On the 28th of June 1828, several villages in the province of Salerno rose in obedience to the harangues of two patriotic ecclesiastics, Canon de Luca and Carlo da Celle, superior of a capuchin convent. This was meant to develop into a general insurrection, but it was nowhere followed up, and the sword of vengeance fell speedily on the wretched villagers. Surrounded by the royal troops, they were forced into submission, many were shot on the spot, others were dragged in chains to Salerno, not even a drop of water being allowed them during the journey under the scorching sun. The village of Bosco was rased to the ground. The priest, the monk, and twenty-two insurgents were shot after the repression. The heads of the victims were cut off and placed in iron cages where their wives or mothers were likely to see them. A woman went to Naples to beg for the pardon of her two grandsons, by name Diego and Emilio. The King, with barbarous clemency, told her to choose one. In vain she entreated that if both could not be saved the choice should be left to chance, or decided by someone else. But no; unless she chose they would both be shot. At last she chose Diego. Afterwards she went mad, and was constantly heard wailing: 'I have killed my grandson Emilio.' This anecdote gives a fair notion of Francis I., whose short reign was, however, less signalised by acts of cruelty, though there were enough of these, than by a venality never surpassed. The grooms-in-waiting and ladies-of-the-bedchamber sold the public offices[Pg.48]in the daylight; and the King, who was aware of it, thought it a subject for vulgar jokes with his intimates. Francis died in 1830 of bad humour at the Paris revolution, and was succeeded by Ferdinand II., to be known hereafter as Bomba—then a clownish youth, one of whose first kingly cares was to create St Ignatius Loyola a Field-Marshal.
The revolution which upset the throne of Charles X., and ushered in the eighteen years' reign of the Citizen King, seemed likely to have momentous consequences for Italy. The principle of non-intervention proclaimed by French politicians would, if logically enforced, sound the death-knell of the Austrian power in Italy. Dupin, the Minister of War, enlarged on the theme in a speech which appeared to remove all doubt as to the real intentions of the Government. 'One phrase,' he remarked, 'has made a general impression; it expresses the true position of a loyal and generous Government. Not only has the President of the Council laid down the principle that France should abstain from intervention; he has declared that she would not tolerate intervention on the part of others. France might have shut herself up in a cold egotism, and simply said that she would not intervene; this would have been contemptible, but the proclamation of not suffering the interventions of others is the noblest attitude a strong and magnanimous people can assume; it amounts to saying: Not only will I not attack or disturb other nations, but I, France, whose voice is respected by Europe and by the whole world, will never permit others to do so. This is the language held by the ministry and by the ambassadors of Louis Philippe; and it is this which the army, the National Guard, France entire, is ready to maintain.'
Truly language was invented to travesty the truth, and when French politicians say they are going to the right it is an almost sure sign that they are going to the left; nevertheless, is it possible to blame the Italians who read in these assurances a positive promise affecting their own case?
The same assurances were repeated again and again through the winter of 1830-31; they were repeated authoritatively as late as March in the latter year. Well may a French writer inquire: 'Was it insanity or treachery?'
The good tidings were published by the Italian exiles, who, living close to the great centres of European politics, were the first to intoxicate themselves with the great delusion. From London, Gabriele Rossetti sent the exultant summons: