On the 13th of March Prince Torelli handed the President of the[Pg.135]Neapolitan Chamber of Deputies a sealed packet which contained a royal decree dissolving Parliament. Naples was once more under an irresponsible despotism. The lazzaroni of both the lower and higher classes, if by lazzaroni may be understood the born allies of ignorance, idleness and bigotry, rejoiced and were glad. Nor were they few. Unlike the Austrians in the north, Ferdinand had his party; the 'fidelity of his subjects' of which he boasted, was not purely mythical. Whether, considering its basis, it was much to boast of, need not be discussed.In March, the happy family at Gaeta was increased by a new arrival. Had he been better advised, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, would have never gone to breathe that malarious atmosphere. He had played no conjuror's tricks with his promises to his people; Austrian though he was, he had really acted the part of an Italian prince, and there was nothing to show that he had not acted it sincerely. But a persistent bad luck attended his efforts. Though the ministers appointed by him included men as distinguished as the Marquis Gino Capponi, Baron Ricasoli and Prince Corsini, they failed in winning a strong popular support. Leghorn, where the population, unlike that of the rest of Tuscany, is by nature turbulent, broke into open revolution. In the last crisis, the Grand Duke entrusted the government to the extreme Liberals, Montanelli the professor, and Guerrazzi the novelist; both were honourable men, and Guerrazzi was thought by many to be a man of genius. The vigorous rhetoric of hisAssedio di Firenzehad warmed the patriotism of many young hearts. But, as statesmen, the only talent they showed was for upsetting anyrégimewith which they were connected.[Pg.136]The Grand Duke was asked to convoke a Constituent Assembly, following the example of Rome. If every part of Italy were to do the same, the constitution and form of government of the whole country could be settled by a convention of the various assemblies. The idea was worthy of respect because it pointed to unity; but in view of the existing situation, Tuscany's solitary adhesion would hardly have helped the nation, while it was accompanied by serious risks to the state. The Grand Duke seemed about to yield to the proposal, but, on receiving a strong protest from the Pope, he refused to do so on the ground that it would expose himself and his subjects to the terrors of ecclesiastical censure. He still remained in Tuscany, near Viareggio, till he was informed that a band of Leghornese had set out with the intention of capturing his person. Then he left for Gaeta on board the English shipBull Dog.The republic had been already proclaimed at Florence, with Montanelli and Guerrazzi as its chief administrators. It succeeded in pleasing no one. Civil war was more than once at the threshhold of Florence, for the peasants rose in armed resistance to the new government. In less than two months the restoration of the Grand. Ducal authority was accomplished almost of itself. Unfortunately, the Grand Duke who was to come back was not the same man as he who went away. The air of Gaeta did its work.[Pg.137]CHAPTER VIIIAT BAY1849Novara—Abdication of Charles Albert—Brescia crushed—French Intervention—The Fall of Rome—The Fall of Venice.In the spring of 1848, a date might be found when every Italian ruler except the Duke of Modena wore the appearance of a friend to freedom and independence. In the spring of 1849 no Italian prince preserved that appearance except the King of Sardinia. Many causes contributed to the elimination, but most of all the logic of events. It was a case of the survival of the fittest. What seemed a calamity was a step in advance.Early in March, the Marquis Pallavicini, prisoner of Spielberg, had a long interview with Charles Albert. They sat face to face talking over Italian matters, and the King said confidently that the army was now flourishing; if the die were cast anew, they would win. At parting he embraced the Lombard patriot with the words: 'Dear Pallavicini, how glad I am to have seen you again! You and I had always the same thought; the independence of Italy was the first dream of my youth; it is my dream still, it will be till I die.'Some characters grow small in misfortune, others grow great. The terrible scene at the Palazzo Greppi, the charge of treason, the[Pg.138]shouts of 'death,' had left only one trace on Charles Albert's mind: the burning desire to deliver his accusers.The armistice was denounced on the 12th of March, a truce of eight days being allowed before the recommencement of hostilities. There is such a thing in politics as necessary madness, and it may be doubted if the Sardinian war of 1849 was not this thing. The programme offare da sèhad now to be carried out in stern earnest. Sardinia stood alone, neither from south of the Apennines nor from north of the Alps could help be hoped for. France, which was meditating quite another sort of intervention, refused the loan even of a general. 'They were not going to offend Austria to please Piedmont,' said the French Cabinet. Worse than this, the army was not in the flourishing state of which the King had spoken. The miseries of the retreat, but infinitely more, the incidents of Milan, though wiped out by the King from his own memory, were vividly recollected by all ranks. Affection was not the feeling with which the Piedmontese soldiers regarded the 'fratelli Lombardi.' Did anyone beside the King believe that this army, which had lost faith in its cause, in its leaders and in itself, was going to beat Radetsky? The old Field-Marshal might well show the wildest joy when the denunciation of the armistice was communicated to him. And yet the higher expediency demanded that the sacrifice of Piedmont and of her King for Italy should be consummated.Rattazzi announced the coming campaign to the Chambers on the 14th of March; the news was well received; there was a general feeling that, whatever happened, the present situation could not be prolonged. With regard to the numbers they could put in the field, Austria and[Pg.139]Sardinia were evenly balanced, each having about 80,000 disposable men. The request for a French marshal having been refused, the chief command was given to Chrzanowski, a Pole, who did not know Italian, had not studied the theatre of the war, and was so little favoured by nature that, to the impressionable Italians, his appearance seemed ludicrous. This deplorable appointment was made to satisfy the outcry against Piedmontese generalship; as if it was not enough, the other Polish general, Ramorino, accused of treachery by the revolutionists in 1832, but now praised to the skies by the democratic party, was placed in command of the fifth or Lombard division.Though Radetsky openly gave the word 'To Turin!' Chrzanowski seems to have failed to realise that the Austrians intended to invade Piedmont. He ordered Ramorino, however, with his 8000 Lombards, to occupy the fork formed by the Po and the Ticino, so as to defend the bridge at Pavia, if, by chance, any fraction of the enemy tried to cross it. What Ramorino did was to place his division on the right bank of the Po, and to destroy the bridge of boats at Mezzana Cortebetweenhimself and the enemy. The Austrians crossed the Ticino in the night of the 20th of April, not with a fraction, but with a complete army. Ramorino was deprived of his command, and was afterwards tried by court-martial and shot. Whether his treason was intentional or involuntary, it is certain that, had he stemmed the Austrian advance even for half a day, the future disasters, if not averted, would not have come so rapidly, because the Piedmontese would have been forewarned. On the evening of the 21st, General D'Aspre, with 15,000 men, took a portion of the Sardinian army unawares near Mortara, and, owing to the scattered distribution of the Piedmontese, who would have[Pg.140]outnumbered him had they been concentrated, he succeeded in forcing his way into Mortara by nightfall. The moral effect of this first reverse was bad, but Chrzanowski rashly decided staking the whole fate of the campaign in a field-day, for which purpose he gathered what troops he could collect at La Biccocca, a hill capped with a village about a mile and a half from Novara. Not more than 50,000 men were collected; some had already deserted, and 20,000 were doing nothing on the other side of the Po.Towards eleven o'clock D'Aspre arrived, and lost no time in beginning the attack. He sent post-haste to Radetsky, Appel and Thurn to bring all the reinforcements in their power as fast as possible. D'Aspre's daring was rewarded by his carrying La Biccocca at about mid-day, but the Duke of Genoa retook the position with the aid of the valorous 'Piemonte' brigade, and by two p.m. D'Aspre's brave soldiers were so thoroughly beaten, that nothing could have saved his division from destruction, as he afterwards admitted, had Chrzanowski joined in the pursuit instead of staying behind with more than half the army, in accordance with a preconceived plan of remaining on the defensive.At two o'clock on the 23rd of March, the news started on the wings of the wind, and, as great news will do, swiftly reached every part of the waiting country, that the Sardinians were getting the best of it, that the cause was saved. Men who are not very old remember this as the first strong sensation of their lives—this, and its sequel.Appel and Thurn, and Wratislaw and the old Field-Marshal were on the march, and by four o'clock they were pouring their fresh troops upon the Piedmontese, who had not known how to profit by their success.[Pg.141]Heroism such as few battlefields have seen, disorder such as has rarely disgraced a beaten army, were displayed side by side in Charles Albert's ranks. At eight in the evening, the whole Sardinian army retired into Novara; the Austrians bivouacked on La Biccocca. The Sardinians had lost 4000 in dead and wounded; the losses of the victors were a thousand less.All the day long the King courted death, pressing forward where the balls fell like hail and the confusion was at its height, with the answer of despair to the devoted officers who sought to hold him back: 'Let me die, this is my last day.' But death shuns the seeker. Men fell close beside him, but no charitable ball struck his breast. In the evening he said to his generals: 'We have still 40,000 men, cannot we fall back on Alessandria and still make an honourable stand?' They told him that it could not be done. Radetsky was asked on what terms he would grant an armistice; he replied: 'The occupation of a large district in Piedmont, and the heir to the throne as a hostage.' Then Charles Albert knew what he must do. 'For eighteen years,' he said, 'I have made every effort for the good of the people; I grieve to see that my hopes have failed, not so much for myself as for the country. I have not found death on the field of battle as I ardently desired; perhaps my person is the only obstacle to obtaining juster terms. I abdicate the crown in favour of my son, Victor Emmanuel.' And turning to the Duke of Savoy he said: 'There is your King.'In the night he left Novara alone for Nice. As he passed through the Austrian lines, the sentinels were nearly firing upon his carriage; General Thurn, before whom he was brought, asked for some proof that[Pg.142]he was in fact the 'Count de Barge' in whose name his passport was made out. A Bersagliere prisoner who recognised the King, at a sign from him gave the required testimony, and he was allowed to pass. At Nice he was received by the governor, a son of Santorre di Santa Rosa, and to him he addressed the last words spoken by him on Italian ground: 'In whatever time, in whatever place, a regular government raises the flag of war with Austria, the Austrians will find me among their enemies as a simple soldier.' Then he continued his journey to Oporto.The principal side-issue of the campaign of 1849 was the revolution at Brescia. Had the original plan been carried out, which was to throw the Sardinian army into Lombardy (and it is doubtful whether, even after Radetsky's invasion of Piedmont, it would not have been better to adhere to it), a corresponding movement on the part of the inhabitants would have become of the greatest importance. To Brescia, which was the one Lombard town where the Piedmontese had been received in 1848 with real effusion, the Sardinian Minister of War despatched Count Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco with arms and ammunition, and orders to reassume the colonelcy of the National Guard which he held in the previous year, and to take the general control of the movement as far as Brescia was concerned. Martinengo succeeded in transporting the arms through the enemy's country from the Piedmontese frontier to Iseo, and thence to his native city. When he reached Brescia, he found that the Austrians had evacuated the town, though they still occupied the castle which frowns down upon it. This was the 23rd of March: Novara was fought and lost, Piedmont was powerless to come to the[Pg.143]assistance of the people she had commanded to rise. What was to be done? Plainly common sense suggested an honourable compromise with the Austrian commandant, by which he should be allowed to reoccupy the city on condition that no hair of the citizens' heads was touched. This is what Bergamo and the other towns did, nor are they to be blamed.Not so Brescia. Here, where love of liberty was an hereditary instinct from the long connection of Brescia with free Venice, where hatred of the stranger, planted by the ruthless soldiery of Gaston de Foix, had but gone on maturing through three centuries, where the historical title of 'Valiant,' coming down from a remote antiquity, was still no fable; here, with a single mind, the inhabitants resolved upon as desperate a resistance as was ever offered by one little town to a great army.The Austrian bombardment was begun by the Irish General, Nugent-Lavall, who, dying in the midst of it, left all his fortune to the heroic city which he was attacking. The Austrians, flushed with their victory over Charles Albert's army of 80,000, were seized with rage at the sight of their power defied by a town of less than half that number of souls. But with that rage was mingled, even in the mind of Haynau, an admiration not to be repressed.Haynau who was sent to replace Nugent, was already known at Brescia, where he had been appointed military governor after the resumption of Austrian authority in 1848. In order to punish the 'persistent opposition manifested to the legitimate Imperial and Royal Government,' and as an example to the other towns, he had imposed on the Brescian householders and the landed proprietors of the province a[Pg.144]fine of half a million francs.He now returned, and what he did may be best read in his own report on the operations. 'It was then,' he wrote, 'that began the most murderous fight; a fight prolonged by the insurgents from barricade to barricade, from house to house, with extraordinary obstinacy. I should never have believed that so bad a cause could have been sustained with such perseverance. In spite of this desperate defence, and although the assault could only be effected in part, and with the help of cannons of heavy calibre, our brave troops with heroic courage, but at the cost of great losses, occupied a first line of houses; but as all my columns could not penetrate into the town at the same time, I ordered the suspension of the attack at nightfall, limiting myself to holding the ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hand should be immediately put to death, and that the houses from which shots came should be burnt. It is thus that conflagrations, partly caused by the troops, partly by the bombardment, broke out in various parts of the town.'During the ten days' struggle, the citizens did not flinch for a moment. Count Martinengo was the guiding spirit of the defence, and scarcely left the most exposed of the barricades night or day. From the nobles to the poorest of the people, all did their duty. A youth named Tito Speri led and animated the populace. The horrors of the[Pg.145]repression make one think of the fall of Khartoum. Not even in Hungary, where he went from Brescia to continue his 'system,' did Haynau so blacken his own and his country's name as here. In a boys' school kept by a certain Guidi, the master's wife, his mother and ten of his pupils were slaughtered. A little hunchback tailor was carried to the barracks to be slowly burnt alive. But stray details do not give the faintest idea of the whole. And for all this, Haynau was in a far higher degree responsible than the actual executants of the vengeance to which he hounded on his ignorant soldiers, maddened with the lust of blood.Such was General Haynau, 'whose brave devotion to his master's service was the veteran's sole crime,' said theQuarterly Review(June 1853), but who was judged otherwise by some in England. Wherefore was he soundly beaten by the brewers in the employment of Messrs Barclay & Perkins; and the nice words of theQuarterlycould not undo that beating, redress for which Lord Palmerston blandly advised the complainant to seek 'before the common tribunals.' He thought it best to neglect the advice, and to leave the country.Among the curious taxes levied at Brescia during the six months after its fall was one of £500 for 'the expenses of the hangman.' Count Martinengo escaped after the Austrians were in possession of the town through the courageous assistance given to him by a few young men of the working class. Camozzi's band of Bergamasques, which started for the relief of the sister city, was driven back with loss.The end was come, but woe to the victors.Following the Italian flag to where it still floated, we pass from Brescia in the dust to Rome still inviolate, though soon to be assailed by the bearers of another tricolor. A few days after Novara,[Pg.146]the Triumvirate issued a proclamation, in which they said: 'The Republic in Rome has to prove to Italy and to Europe that our work is eminently religious, a work of education and of morality; that the accusations of intolerance, anarchy and violent upturning of things are false; that, thanks to the republican principle, united as one family of good men under the eye of God, and following the impulse of those who are first among us in genius and virtue, we march to the attainment of true order, law and power united.' Englishmen who were in Rome at the time attest how well the pledge was kept. Peace and true freedom prevailed under the republican banner as no man remembered them to have prevailed before in Rome. The bitter provocation of the quadruple attack was not followed by revengeful acts on the parts of the government against those who were politically and religiously associated with him at whose bidding that attack was made. Nothing like a national party was terrorised or kept under by fear of violence. 'That at such a time,' writes Henry Lushington, who was not favourable to Mazzini, 'not one lawless or evil deed was done would have been rather a miracle than a merit, but on much concurrent testimony it is clear that the efforts of the government to preserve order were incessant, and to a remarkable degree successful.' He adds that the streets were far safer for ordinary passengers under the Triumvirs than under the Papacy.Of great help in quieting the passions of the lower orders was the people's tribune, Ciceruacchio, who had not put on black cloth clothes, or asked for the ministry of war, or of fine arts, according to the usual wont of successful tribunes. Ciceruacchio had the sense of humour of the genuine Romanpopolano, and it never came into his[Pg.147]head to make himself ridiculous. His influence had been first acquired by works of charity in the Tiber floods. Being a strong swimmer, he ventured where no one else would go, and had saved many lives. At first a wine-carrier, he made money by letting out conveyances and dealing in forage, but he gave away most of what he made. He opposed the whole force of his popularity to a war of classes. 'Viva chi c'ia e chi non c'ia quattrini!'[4]was his favourite cry. Once when a young poet read him a sonnet in his honour he stopped him at the line 'Thou art greater than all patricians,' saying that he would not have that published: 'I respect the nobility, and never dream of being higher than they. I am a poor man of the people, and such I will always remain.'When the siege came, Ciceruacchio was invaluable in providing the troops with forage, horses, and even victuals, which he procured by making private sorties on his own account during the night; his intimate knowledge of every path enabling him to go unobserved. He planned the earthworks, at which he laboured with his hands, and when fighting was going on, he shouldered a musket and ran with his two sons, one of them a mere child, to wherever the noise of guns directed him. No picture of Rome in 1849 would be complete without the burly figure and jocund face of Angelo Brunetti.The republican government found Rome with a mere shadow of an army; the efforts to create one had been too spasmodic to do anything but make confusion worse confounded by changes and experiments soon abandoned. Perseverance and intelligence now had a different result, and the little army, called into existence by the republic, proved admirable in discipline, various and fantastic as were its components.[Pg.148]Towards the end of April, Garibaldi, who had been stationed at Rieti, was ordered to bring his legion to Rome. Those who witnessed the arrival saw one of the strangest scenes ever beheld in the Eternal City. The men wore pointed hats with black, waving plumes; thin and gaunt, their faces dark as copper, with naked legs, long beards and wild dark hair hanging down their backs, they looked like a company of Salvator Rosa's brigands. Beautiful as a statue amidst his extraordinary host rode the Chief, mounted on a white horse, which he sat like a centaur. 'He was quite a show, everyone stopping to look at him,' adds the sculptor Gibson, to whom these details are owed. 'Probably,' writes another Englishman, 'a human face so like a lion, and still retaining the humanity nearest the image of its Maker, was never seen.' Garibaldi wore the historic red shirt, and a small cap ornamented with gold.The origin of the red shirt might have remained in poetic uncertainty had it not been mentioned a few years ago in a volume of reminiscences published by an English naval officer. The men employed in the Saladéros or great slaughtering and salting establishments for cattle in the Argentine provinces wore scarlet woollen shirts; owing to the blockade of Buenos Ayres, a merchant at Monte Video had a quantity of these on his hands, and as economy was a great object to the government, they bought the lot cheap for their Italian legion, little thinking that they were making the 'Camicia Rossa' immortal in song and story.The coming to Rome of the 1200 legionaries aroused private fears in the hearts of the more timid inhabitants, but Garibaldi knew how to keep his wild followers in hand, and gallant was the service they rendered to Roman liberty.[Pg.149]That liberty was now on the eve of its peril. The preliminaries of the French intervention in Rome are tolerably well known; here it suffices to say that every new contribution to a more precise knowledge of the facts only serves to confirm the charge of dissimulation, or, to use a plainer and far better adapted word, of dishonesty, brought against the French government for their part in the matter. White, indeed, do Austria, Spain and Naples appear—the avowed upholders of priestly despotism—beside the ruler of republican France and his ministers, whose plan it was not to fight the Roman republic: fighting was far from their counsels, but to betray it. It is proved that the restoration of the Temporal Power was the aim of the expedition from the first; it is equally proved that the French sought to get inside Rome by distinct disclaimers of any such intention. 'We do not go to Italy,' they said, 'to impose with our arms a system of government, but to assure the rights of liberty, and to preserve a legitimate interference in the affairs of the peninsula.' They adopted a curious method of assuring the rights of liberty.The Pope would not have anything to do with the affair. 'If you say openly that you are going to give me back my Temporal Power, well and good; if not, I prefer the aid of Austria.' So he replied to the flattering tales whispered in his ear, while tales no less flattering were being whispered in the ear of Mazzini. He declined to give the French any guarantees as to his future mode of governing; it cannot be said, therefore, that they were under the delusion that they were restoring a constitutional sovereign.Efforts have been made to cast the responsibility of the Roman intervention entirely on Louis Napoleon. Even Mazzini favoured that view, but it is impossible to separate the President of the Republic[Pg.150]from the 325 deputies who voted the supplies for the expedition on the 2nd of April. Does anyone pretend that they were hoodwinked any more than Ledru Rollin was hoodwinked, or the minority, which, roused by his vigorous speech, voted against the grant? Louis Napoleon was far less Papal in his sentiments than were most of the assenting deputies; his own opinion was more truly represented by the letter which, as a private citizen, he wrote to the 'Constitutionnel' in December 1848 than by his subsequent course as President. In this letter he declared that a military demonstration would be perilous even to the interests which it was intended to safeguard. He had but one fixed purpose: to please France, so as to get himself made Emperor. France must be held answerable for the means taken to please her.General Oudinot landed at Civitavecchia on the 25th of April, his friendly assurances having persuaded the local authorities to oppose no resistance, an unfortunate error, but the last. The correct judgment formed by the Roman Government of the designs of the invaders was considerably assisted by a French officer, Colonel Leblanc, who was sent to Rome by Oudinot to come to an agreement with Mazzini for the amicable reception of the French, and who, losing his temper, revealed more than he was meant to reveal. His last words, 'Les Italiens ne se battent pas,' unquestionably expressed the belief of the whole French force, from the general-in-chief to the youngest drummer. They were soon going to have a chance of testing its accuracy.The Roman Assembly passed a vote that 'force should be repelled by force.' Well-warned, therefore, but with the proverbialcoeur léger, Oudinot advanced on Rome with 8000 men early on the 30th of April. At[Pg.151]eleven o'clock the two columns came in sight of St Peter's, and soon after, the first which moved towards Porta Angelica was attacked by Colonel Masi. Garibaldi attacked the second column a mile out of Porta San Pancrazio. At the first moment the superior numbers of the French told, and the Italians fell back on Villa Pamphilli, but Colonel Galetti arrived with reinforcements, and before long Garibaldi drove the French from the Pamphilli Gardens and had them in full retreat along the Civitavecchia road. Oudinot was beaten, Rome was victorious. 'This does not surprise us Romans; but it will astonish Paris!' ran a manifesto of the hour; the words are a little childish, but men are apt to be childish when they are deeply moved. And as to the astonishment of Paris, all the words in the world would fail to paint its proportions. Paris was indeed astonished.Garibaldi had not the chief command of the Roman army, or he would have done more; there was nothing to prevent the Italians from driving Oudinot into the sea. The Triumvirate, when appealed to directly by Garibaldi, refused their sanction, either fearing to leave the capital exposed to the Neapolitans who were advancing, or (and this seems to have been the real reason) still hoping that France would repudiate Oudinot and come to terms. Garibaldi was right on this occasion, and Mazzini was wrong. When you are at war, nothing is so ruinous as to be afraid of damaging the enemy.The French ministers, bombarded with reproaches by friends and foes, and most uneasy lest their troops in Italy should be destroyed before they could send reinforcements, did disown Oudinot's march on Rome, and Ferdinand de Lesseps was despatched nominally 'to arrange matters in a pacific sense,' but actually to gain time.[Pg.152]In a sitting in the French Assembly, a member of the opposition said to the President of the Council: 'You are going to reinstate the Pope!' 'No, no,' ejaculated Odilon Barrot. 'You are going to do the same as Austria,' cried Lamoricière. 'We should be culpable if we did,' was the answer. Lesseps' instructions, very vague, for the rest, were given to him in this spirit. That Lesseps acted in good faith has been generally admitted, and was always believed by Mazzini. It was to the interest of the French Government to choose a tool who did not see how far he was a tool. But if Lesseps had no suspicions, if he had not strong suspicions of the real object of his employers, then he was already at this date a man singularly easy to deceive.The French envoy was commissioned to treat, not with the Triumvirate, but with the Roman Assembly: a piece of insolence which the former would have done well to reply to by sending him about his business. Lesseps, however, thought that he would gain by speaking in person to Mazzini, and in order that the interview should remain a secret, he decided to go to him alone in the dead of the night and unannounced. Having made the needful inquiries, he proceeded to the palace of the Consulta, the doors of which seem to have been left open all night; there were guards, but they were asleep, and the French diplomatist traversed the long suite of splendid apartments, opening one into the other without corridors. At last he reached the simply-furnished room where, upon an iron bedstead, Mazzini slept. Lesseps watched him sleeping, fascinated by the beauty of his magnificent head as it lay in repose. He still looked very young, though there was hardly a state in Europe where he was not proscribed. When Lesseps had gazed his full, he called 'Mazzini, Mazzini!' The Triumvir awoke, sat up and[Pg.153]asked if he had come to assassinate him? Lesseps told him his name, and a long conversation followed. One thing, at least, that Lesseps said in this interview was strictly true, namely, that Mazzini must not count on the French republican soldiers objecting to fire on republicans: 'The French soldier would burn down the cottage of his mother if ordered by his superiors to do so.' The discipline of a great army is proof against politics.Lesseps was himself in much fear of being assassinated. He believed that his footsteps were dogged by three individuals, one of whom was an ex-French convict. He complained to Mazzini, who said that he could do nothing, which probably shows that he gave no credence to the story. Then Lesseps had recourse to Ciceruacchio, 'a man of the people who had great influence on the population, and who had organised the revolution.' The tribune seems to have quieted his fears and guaranteed his safety.The French envoy could not help being struck by the tender care taken of his wounded fellow-countrymen by the Princess Belgiojoso and other noble ladies who attended the hospitals. Of prisoners who were not wounded there were none, as they had been sent back scot-free to their general a few days after the 30th of April. He was struck also by the firm resolve of all classes not to restore the Pope. Some liked the existing government, some did not, but all prayed heaven to be henceforth delivered from the rule of an infallible sovereign.Whatever was the measure of confidence which Mazzini felt in Lesseps, he was firm as iron on the main point—the non-admittance of the 'friendly' French troops into Rome. Lesseps dragged on the negotiations till his government had finished the preparations for[Pg.154]sending to Rome a force which should not be much less than twice in number the whole military resources of the republic. Then they recalled him, and, in order not to be bound by anything that he might have said, they set about the rumour that he was mad. Indignant at such treatment, Lesseps left the diplomatic service, and turned his attention to engineering. This was the origin of the Suez Canal.While all these things were going on, the Austrians moved from Ferrara and Modena towards Bologna, the Spaniards landed at Fiumicino, and 16,000 Neapolitans, commanded by Ferdinand II., encamped near Albano. Garibaldi was attacked on the 9th of May by the Neapolitan vanguard, which he obliged to fall back. On the 18th, he completely defeated King Ferdinand's army near Velletri, and the King ordered a general retreat into his own dominions, which was accomplished in haste and confusion.By the end of May, Oudinot's forces were increased to over 35,000 men. The defenders of Rome, under the chief command of General Rosselli, were about 20,000, of whom half were volunteers. Colonel Marnara's Lombard Legion of Bersaglieri was, in smartness of appearance and perfect discipline, equal to any regular troops; in its ranks were the sons of the best and richest Lombard families, such as Dandolo, Morosini and many others. Medici's legion was also composed of educated and well-to-do young men. The Bolognese, under the Marquis Melara, had the impetuous daring of their race, and Count Angelo Masina did wonders with his forty lancers. Wherever Garibaldi was—it was always in the hottest places—there were to be seen, at no great distance, the patriot monk, Ugo Bassi, riding upon a fiery horse, and the young poet of Free Italy, Goffredo Mameli, with his slight, boyish[Pg.155]figure, and his fair hair floating in the breeze. Nor must we omit from the list of Garibaldi's bodyguard Forbes, the Englishman, and Anghiar, the devoted negro, who followed his master like a dog.Oudinot formally disavowed all Lesseps' proceedings from first to last, and announced, on the 1st of June, that he had orders to take Rome as soon as possible. Out of regard, however, for the French residents, he would not begin the attack 'till the morning of Monday the 4th.' Now, though no one knew it but the French general, that Monday morning began with Sunday's dawn, when the French attacked Melara's sleeping battalion at the Roman outposts. It was easy for the French to drive back these 300 men, and to occupy the Villa Corsini ('Villa,' in the Roman sense, means a garden) and the position dominating Porta San Pancrazio; but Galetti came up and retook them all, to lose them again by nine o'clock. Then Garibaldi, who was ill, hurried to the scene from his sick-bed, and thrice that day he retook and thrice he lost the contested positions—a brief statement, which represents prodigies of valour, and the oblation of as noble blood as ever watered the earth of Rome. Melara, Masina, Daverio, Dandolo, Mameli: every schoolboy would know these names if they belonged to ancient, not to modern, history. Bright careers, full of promise, cut short; lives renounced, not only voluntarily, but with joy, and to what end? Not for interest or fame—not even in the hope of winning; but that, erect and crowned with the roses of martyrdom, Rome might send her dying salutation to the world.At sunset the French had established their possession of all the points outside the Gate of San Pancrazio, except the Vascello, a villa which had been seized from their very teeth by Medici, who held it against all comers. Monte Mario was also in their hands.[Pg.156]Mazzini, whose judgment was obscured by his attribution of the Italian policy of France to Louis Napoleon alone, hoped for a revolution in Paris, but Ledru Rollin's attempt at agitation completely failed, and the country applauded its government now that the mask was thrown away. The reasons for revolutions in Paris have always been the same; they have to do with something else than the garrotting of sister-republics.Oudinot tightened his cordon; on the 12th of June he invited the city to capitulate. The answer was a refusal; so, with the aid of his excellent artillery, he crept on, his passage contested at each step, but not arrested, till, on the 27th, the Villa Savorelli, Garibaldi's headquarters, fell into the hands of the enemy, and, on the night of the 29th, the French were within the city walls. St Peter's day is the great feast of Rome, and this time, as usual, the cupola of St Peter's was illuminated, the Italian flag flying from the highest point. The thunderstorm, which proverbially accompanies the feast, raged during the night; the French shells flew in all directions; the fight raged fiercer than the storm; Medici held out among the crumbling walls of the Vascello, which had been bombarded for a week; the heroic Manara fell fighting at Villa Spada; Garibaldi, descending into themêlée, dealt blows right and left: he seemed possessed by some supernatural power. Those around him say that it is impossible that he would have much longer escaped death, but suddenly a message came summoning him to the Assembly—it saved his life. When he appeared at the door of the Chamber, the deputies rose and burst into wild applause. He seemed puzzled, but, looking down upon himself, he read the explanation; he was covered with blood, his clothes were honeycombed by balls and[Pg.157]bayonet thrusts, his sabre was so bent with striking that it would not go more than half into its sheath.What the Assembly wanted to know was whether the defence could be prolonged; Garibaldi had only to say that it could not. They voted, therefore, the following decree: 'In the name of God and of the People: the Roman Constituent Assembly discontinues a defence which has become impossible, and remains at its post.' At its post it remained till the French soldiers invaded the Capitol, where it sat, when, yielding to brute force, the deputies dispersed.Mazzini, who would have resisted still, when all resistance was impossible, wandered openly about the city like a man in a dream. He felt as though he were looking on at the funeral of his best-beloved. How it was that he was not killed or arrested is a mystery. At the end of a week his friends induced him to leave Rome with an English passport.On the 2nd of July, before the French made their official entry, Garibaldi called his soldiers together in the square of the Vatican, and told them that he was going to seek some field where the foreigner could still be fought. Who would might follow him; 'I cannot offer you honours or pay; I offer you hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, death.'Three thousand followed him. Beside her husband rode Anita; not even for the sake of the child soon to come would she stay behind in safety. Ugo Bassi was there; Anghiar was dead, Mameli was dying in a hospital, but there was 'the partisan or brigand Forbes,' as he was described in a letter of the Austrian general D'Aspre to the French general Oudinot, with a good handful of Garibaldi's best surviving officers. Ciceruacchio came with his two sons, and offered himself as[Pg.158]guide. No one knew what the plan was, or if there was one. Like knights of old in search of adventures, they set out in search of their country's foes. It was the last desperate venture of men who did not know how to yield.After wandering hither and thither, and suffering severe hardships, the column reached the republic of San Marino. The brave hospitality of that Rock of freedom prevented Garibaldi from falling into the clutches of the Austrians, who surrounded the republic. He treated with the Regent for the immunity of his followers, who had laid down their arms; and, in the night, he himself escaped with Anita, Ugo Bassi, Forbes, Ciceruacchio and a few others. They hoped to take their swords to Venice, but a storm arose, and the boats on which they embarked were driven out of their course. Some of them were stranded on the shore which bounds the pine-forest of Ravenna, and here, hope being indeed gone, the Chief separated from his companions. Of these, Ugo Bassi, and an officer named Livraghi, were soon captured by the Austrians, who conveyed them to Bologna, where they were shot. Ciceruacchio and his sons were taken in another place, and shot as soon as taken. The boat which contained Colonel Forbes was caught at sea by an Austrian cruiser: he was kept in Austrian prisons for two months, and was constantly reminded that he would be either shot or hung; but the English Government succeeded in getting him liberated, and he lived to take part in more fortunate fights under Garibaldi's standard.Meanwhile, Anita was dying in a peasant's cottage, to which Garibaldi carried her when the strong will and dauntless heart could no longer stand in place of the strength that was finished. This was the 4th of August. Scarcely had she breathed her last breath when Garibaldi,[Pg.159]broken down with grief as he was, had to fly from the spot. The Austrians were hunting for him in all directions. All the Roman fugitives were proclaimed outlaws, and the population was forbidden to give them even bread or water. Nevertheless—aided in secret by peasants, priests and all whose help he was obliged to seek—Garibaldi made good his flight from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, the whole route being overrun by Austrians. When once the western coast was reached, he was able, partly by sea and partly by land, to reach the Piedmontese territory, where his life was safe. Not even there, however, could he rest; he was told, politely but firmly, that his presence was embarrassing, and for the second time he left Europe—first for Tunis and then for the United States.While the French besieged Rome, the Austrians had not been idle. They took Bologna in May, after eight days' resistance; and in June, after twenty days' attack by sea and land, Ancona fell into their hands. In these towns they pursued means of 'pacification' resembling those employed at Brescia. All who possessed what by a fiction could be called arms were summarily slaughtered. At Ancona, a woman of bad character hid a rusty nail in the bed of her husband, whom she wished to get rid of; she then denounced him to the military tribunal, and two hours later an English family, whose house was near the barracks, heard the ring of the volley of musketry which despatched him. Austria had also occupied the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; and when, in July, Leopold II. returned to his state, which had restored him by general consent and without any foreign intervention, he entered Florence between two files of Austrian soldiery, in violation of the article of the Statute to which he had sworn, which stipulated that no foreign[Pg.160]occupation should be invited or tolerated. The Grand Duke wrote to the Emperor of Austria, from Gaeta, humbly begging the loan of his arms. Francis Joseph replied with supreme contempt, that it would have been a better thing if Leopold had never forgotten to whose family he belonged, but he granted the prayer. Such was the way in which the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, that had done much in Tuscany to win respect if not love, destroyed all its rights to the goodwill of the Tuscan people, and removed what might have been a serious obstacle to Italian unity.Austria, unable alone to cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain, but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who had taken over the government after the Fusion, Venice had been ruled by Manin on the terms which he himself proposed: 'Are you ready,' he asked the Venetian Assembly, 'to invest the Government with unlimited powers in order to direct the defence and maintain order?' He warned them that he should be obliged to impose upon them enormous sacrifices, but they replied by voting the order of the day: 'Venice resists the Austrians at all costs; to this end the President Manin is invested with plenary powers.' All the deputies then raised their right hand, and swore to defend the city to the last extremity. They kept their word.It is hard to say which was the most admirable: Manin's fidelity to his trust, or the people's fidelity to him. To keep up the spirits, to maintain the decorum of a besieged city even for a few weeks or a few[Pg.161]months, is a task not without difficulty; but when the months run into a second year, when the real pinch of privations has been felt by everyone, not as a sudden twinge, but as a long-drawn-out pain, when the bare necessities of life fail, and a horrible disease, cholera, enters as auxiliary under the enemy's black-and-yellow, death-and-pestilence flag; then, indeed, the task becomes one which only a born leader of men could perform.The financial administration of the republic was a model of order and economy. Generous voluntary assistance was afforded by all classes, from the wealthy patrician and the Jewish merchant to the poorest gondolier. Mazzini once said bitterly that it was easier to get his countrymen to give their blood than their money; here they gave both. The capable manner in which Manin conducted the foreign policy of the republic is also a point that deserves mention, as it won the esteem even of statesmen of the old school, though it was powerless to obtain their help.The time was gone when France was disposed to do anything for Venice; no one except the Archbishop of Paris, who was afterwards to die by the hand of an assassin, said a word for her.In the past year, Lord Palmerston, though he tried to localise the war, and to prevent the co-operation of the south, abounded in good advice to Austria. He repeated till he was tired of repeating, that she would do well to retire from her Italian possessions of her own accord. If the French did not come now, he said, they would come some day, and then her friends and allies would give her scanty support. As for Lombardy, it was notorious that a considerable Austrian party was in favour of giving it up, including the Archduke Ranieri, who was strongly attached to Italy, which was the land of his birth. As for[Pg.162]Venice, Austria had against her both the principle of nationality, now the rallying cry of Germany, and the principle of ancient prescription which could be energetically invoked against her by a state to which her title went back no farther than the transfer effected by Buonaparte in the treaty of Campo Formio. These were his arguments; but he was convinced, by this time, that arguments unsupported by big battalions might as well be bestowed on the winds as on the Cabinet of Vienna. From the moment that Radetsky recovered Lombardy for his master, the Italian policy of the Austrian Government was entirely inspired by him, and he was determined that while he lived, what Austria had got she should keep. It was thus that, in reply to Manin's appeal to Lord Palmerston, he only received the cold comfort of the recommendation that Venice should come to terms with her enemy.The Venetian army of 20,000 men was reduced by casualties and sickness to 18,000 or less. It always did its duty. The defence of Fort Malghera, the great fort which commanded the road to Padua and the bridge of the Venice railway, would have done credit to the most experienced troops in the world. The garrison numbered 2500; the besiegers, under Haynau, 30,000. Radetsky, with three archdukes, came to see the siege, but, tired with waiting, they went away before it was ended. The bombardment began on the 4th of May; in the three days and nights ending with the 25th over 60,000 projectiles fell on the fort. During the night of the 25th the Commandant, Ulloa, by order of Government, quietly evacuated the place, and withdrew his troops; only the next morning the Austrians found out that Malghera was abandoned, and proceeded to take possession of the heap of ruins, which was all[Pg.163]that remained.After the beginning of July, an incessant bombardment was directed against the city itself. Women and children lived in the cellars; fever stalked through the place, but the war feeling was as strong as ever—nay, stronger. Moreover, the provisions became daily scarcer, the day came when hunger was already acutely felt, when the time might be reckoned by hours before the famished defenders must let drop their weapons, and Venice, her works of art and her population, must fall a prey to the savage vengeance of the Austrians, who would enter by force and without conditions.And this is what Manin prevented. The cry was still for resistance; for the first time bitter words were spoken against the man who had served his country so well. But he, who had never sacrificed one iota to popularity, did not swerve. His great influence prevailed. The capitulation was arranged on the 22nd, and signed on the 24th of July. Manin had calculated correctly; on that day there was literally nothing left to eat in Venice.In the last sad hours that Manin spent in Venice all the love of his people, clouded for an instant, burst forth anew. Not, indeed, in shouts and acclamations, but in tears and sobs; 'Our poor father, how much he has suffered!' they were heard saying. He embarked on a French vessel bound for Marseilles, poor, worn out and exiled for ever from the city which he had guided for eighteen months; if, indeed, no spark of his spirit animated the dust which it was the first care of liberated Venice to welcome home. The Austrians broke up his doorstep on which, according to a Venetian custom, his name was engraved. Another martyr, Ugo Bassi, had kissed the stone, exclaiming:[Pg.164]'Next to God and Italy—before the Pope—Manin!' The people gathered up the broken fragments and kept them as relics, even as in their hearts they kept his memory, till the arrival of that day of redemption which, in the darkest hour, he foretold.[Pg.165]CHAPTER IX'J'ATTENDS MON ASTRE'1849-1850The House of Savoy—A King who keeps his Word—Sufferings of the Lombards—Charles Albert's Death.Circumstances more gloomy than those under which Victor Emmanuel II. ascended the throne of his ancestors it would be hard to imagine.An army twice beaten, a bankrupt exchequer, a triumphant invader waiting to dictate terms; this was but the beginning of the inventory of the royal inheritance. The internal condition of the kingdom, even apart from the financial ruin which had succeeded to the handsome surplus of two years before, was full of embarrassments of the gravest kind. There was a party representing the darkest-dyed clericalism and reaction whose machinations had not been absent in the disaster of Novara. Who was it that disseminated among the troops engaged in the battle broadsides printed with the words: 'Soldiers, for whom do you think you are fighting? The King is betrayed; at Turin they have proclaimed the republic'? There were other broadsides in which Austria was called the supporter of thrones and altars. The dreadful indiscipline witnessed towards the end of, and after the conflict was due more to the demoralising doctrines that had been introduced into the army than to the insubordination of panic. There was another party[Pg.166]strengthened by the recent misfortunes and recruited by exiles from all parts of Italy, which was democratic to the verge of republicanism in Piedmont and over that verge at Genoa, where a revolution broke out before the new King's reign was a week old. Constitutional government stood between the fires of these two parties, both fanned by Austrian bellows, the first openly, the second in secret.Victor Emmanuel was not popular. The indifference to danger which he had shown conspicuously during the war would have awakened enthusiasm in most countries, but in Piedmont it was so thoroughly taken for granted that the Princes of the House of Savoy did not know fear, that it was looked on as an ordinary fact. The Austrian origin of the Duchess of Savoy formed a peg on which to hang unfriendly theories. It is impossible not to compassionate the poor young wife who now found herself Queen of a people which hated her race, after having lived since her marriage the most dreary of lives at the dismallest court in Europe. At first, as a bride, she seemed to have a desire to break through the frozen etiquette which surrounded her; it is told how she once begged and prayed her husband to take her for a walk under the Porticoes of Turin, which she had looked at only from the outside. The young couple enjoyed their airing, but when it reached Charles Albert's ears, he ordered his son to be immediately placed under military arrest. The chilling formalism which invaded even the private life of these royal personages, shutting the door to 'good comradeship' even between husband and wife, may have had much to do with driving Victor Emmanuel from the side of the Princess, whom, nevertheless, he loved and venerated, to unworthy pleasures, the habit of indulgence in which is far easier to contract than to cure.
On the 13th of March Prince Torelli handed the President of the[Pg.135]Neapolitan Chamber of Deputies a sealed packet which contained a royal decree dissolving Parliament. Naples was once more under an irresponsible despotism. The lazzaroni of both the lower and higher classes, if by lazzaroni may be understood the born allies of ignorance, idleness and bigotry, rejoiced and were glad. Nor were they few. Unlike the Austrians in the north, Ferdinand had his party; the 'fidelity of his subjects' of which he boasted, was not purely mythical. Whether, considering its basis, it was much to boast of, need not be discussed.
In March, the happy family at Gaeta was increased by a new arrival. Had he been better advised, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, would have never gone to breathe that malarious atmosphere. He had played no conjuror's tricks with his promises to his people; Austrian though he was, he had really acted the part of an Italian prince, and there was nothing to show that he had not acted it sincerely. But a persistent bad luck attended his efforts. Though the ministers appointed by him included men as distinguished as the Marquis Gino Capponi, Baron Ricasoli and Prince Corsini, they failed in winning a strong popular support. Leghorn, where the population, unlike that of the rest of Tuscany, is by nature turbulent, broke into open revolution. In the last crisis, the Grand Duke entrusted the government to the extreme Liberals, Montanelli the professor, and Guerrazzi the novelist; both were honourable men, and Guerrazzi was thought by many to be a man of genius. The vigorous rhetoric of hisAssedio di Firenzehad warmed the patriotism of many young hearts. But, as statesmen, the only talent they showed was for upsetting anyrégimewith which they were connected.
[Pg.136]The Grand Duke was asked to convoke a Constituent Assembly, following the example of Rome. If every part of Italy were to do the same, the constitution and form of government of the whole country could be settled by a convention of the various assemblies. The idea was worthy of respect because it pointed to unity; but in view of the existing situation, Tuscany's solitary adhesion would hardly have helped the nation, while it was accompanied by serious risks to the state. The Grand Duke seemed about to yield to the proposal, but, on receiving a strong protest from the Pope, he refused to do so on the ground that it would expose himself and his subjects to the terrors of ecclesiastical censure. He still remained in Tuscany, near Viareggio, till he was informed that a band of Leghornese had set out with the intention of capturing his person. Then he left for Gaeta on board the English shipBull Dog.The republic had been already proclaimed at Florence, with Montanelli and Guerrazzi as its chief administrators. It succeeded in pleasing no one. Civil war was more than once at the threshhold of Florence, for the peasants rose in armed resistance to the new government. In less than two months the restoration of the Grand. Ducal authority was accomplished almost of itself. Unfortunately, the Grand Duke who was to come back was not the same man as he who went away. The air of Gaeta did its work.
[Pg.137]
In the spring of 1848, a date might be found when every Italian ruler except the Duke of Modena wore the appearance of a friend to freedom and independence. In the spring of 1849 no Italian prince preserved that appearance except the King of Sardinia. Many causes contributed to the elimination, but most of all the logic of events. It was a case of the survival of the fittest. What seemed a calamity was a step in advance.
Early in March, the Marquis Pallavicini, prisoner of Spielberg, had a long interview with Charles Albert. They sat face to face talking over Italian matters, and the King said confidently that the army was now flourishing; if the die were cast anew, they would win. At parting he embraced the Lombard patriot with the words: 'Dear Pallavicini, how glad I am to have seen you again! You and I had always the same thought; the independence of Italy was the first dream of my youth; it is my dream still, it will be till I die.'
Some characters grow small in misfortune, others grow great. The terrible scene at the Palazzo Greppi, the charge of treason, the[Pg.138]shouts of 'death,' had left only one trace on Charles Albert's mind: the burning desire to deliver his accusers.
The armistice was denounced on the 12th of March, a truce of eight days being allowed before the recommencement of hostilities. There is such a thing in politics as necessary madness, and it may be doubted if the Sardinian war of 1849 was not this thing. The programme offare da sèhad now to be carried out in stern earnest. Sardinia stood alone, neither from south of the Apennines nor from north of the Alps could help be hoped for. France, which was meditating quite another sort of intervention, refused the loan even of a general. 'They were not going to offend Austria to please Piedmont,' said the French Cabinet. Worse than this, the army was not in the flourishing state of which the King had spoken. The miseries of the retreat, but infinitely more, the incidents of Milan, though wiped out by the King from his own memory, were vividly recollected by all ranks. Affection was not the feeling with which the Piedmontese soldiers regarded the 'fratelli Lombardi.' Did anyone beside the King believe that this army, which had lost faith in its cause, in its leaders and in itself, was going to beat Radetsky? The old Field-Marshal might well show the wildest joy when the denunciation of the armistice was communicated to him. And yet the higher expediency demanded that the sacrifice of Piedmont and of her King for Italy should be consummated.
Rattazzi announced the coming campaign to the Chambers on the 14th of March; the news was well received; there was a general feeling that, whatever happened, the present situation could not be prolonged. With regard to the numbers they could put in the field, Austria and[Pg.139]Sardinia were evenly balanced, each having about 80,000 disposable men. The request for a French marshal having been refused, the chief command was given to Chrzanowski, a Pole, who did not know Italian, had not studied the theatre of the war, and was so little favoured by nature that, to the impressionable Italians, his appearance seemed ludicrous. This deplorable appointment was made to satisfy the outcry against Piedmontese generalship; as if it was not enough, the other Polish general, Ramorino, accused of treachery by the revolutionists in 1832, but now praised to the skies by the democratic party, was placed in command of the fifth or Lombard division.
Though Radetsky openly gave the word 'To Turin!' Chrzanowski seems to have failed to realise that the Austrians intended to invade Piedmont. He ordered Ramorino, however, with his 8000 Lombards, to occupy the fork formed by the Po and the Ticino, so as to defend the bridge at Pavia, if, by chance, any fraction of the enemy tried to cross it. What Ramorino did was to place his division on the right bank of the Po, and to destroy the bridge of boats at Mezzana Cortebetweenhimself and the enemy. The Austrians crossed the Ticino in the night of the 20th of April, not with a fraction, but with a complete army. Ramorino was deprived of his command, and was afterwards tried by court-martial and shot. Whether his treason was intentional or involuntary, it is certain that, had he stemmed the Austrian advance even for half a day, the future disasters, if not averted, would not have come so rapidly, because the Piedmontese would have been forewarned. On the evening of the 21st, General D'Aspre, with 15,000 men, took a portion of the Sardinian army unawares near Mortara, and, owing to the scattered distribution of the Piedmontese, who would have[Pg.140]outnumbered him had they been concentrated, he succeeded in forcing his way into Mortara by nightfall. The moral effect of this first reverse was bad, but Chrzanowski rashly decided staking the whole fate of the campaign in a field-day, for which purpose he gathered what troops he could collect at La Biccocca, a hill capped with a village about a mile and a half from Novara. Not more than 50,000 men were collected; some had already deserted, and 20,000 were doing nothing on the other side of the Po.
Towards eleven o'clock D'Aspre arrived, and lost no time in beginning the attack. He sent post-haste to Radetsky, Appel and Thurn to bring all the reinforcements in their power as fast as possible. D'Aspre's daring was rewarded by his carrying La Biccocca at about mid-day, but the Duke of Genoa retook the position with the aid of the valorous 'Piemonte' brigade, and by two p.m. D'Aspre's brave soldiers were so thoroughly beaten, that nothing could have saved his division from destruction, as he afterwards admitted, had Chrzanowski joined in the pursuit instead of staying behind with more than half the army, in accordance with a preconceived plan of remaining on the defensive.
At two o'clock on the 23rd of March, the news started on the wings of the wind, and, as great news will do, swiftly reached every part of the waiting country, that the Sardinians were getting the best of it, that the cause was saved. Men who are not very old remember this as the first strong sensation of their lives—this, and its sequel.
Appel and Thurn, and Wratislaw and the old Field-Marshal were on the march, and by four o'clock they were pouring their fresh troops upon the Piedmontese, who had not known how to profit by their success.[Pg.141]Heroism such as few battlefields have seen, disorder such as has rarely disgraced a beaten army, were displayed side by side in Charles Albert's ranks. At eight in the evening, the whole Sardinian army retired into Novara; the Austrians bivouacked on La Biccocca. The Sardinians had lost 4000 in dead and wounded; the losses of the victors were a thousand less.
All the day long the King courted death, pressing forward where the balls fell like hail and the confusion was at its height, with the answer of despair to the devoted officers who sought to hold him back: 'Let me die, this is my last day.' But death shuns the seeker. Men fell close beside him, but no charitable ball struck his breast. In the evening he said to his generals: 'We have still 40,000 men, cannot we fall back on Alessandria and still make an honourable stand?' They told him that it could not be done. Radetsky was asked on what terms he would grant an armistice; he replied: 'The occupation of a large district in Piedmont, and the heir to the throne as a hostage.' Then Charles Albert knew what he must do. 'For eighteen years,' he said, 'I have made every effort for the good of the people; I grieve to see that my hopes have failed, not so much for myself as for the country. I have not found death on the field of battle as I ardently desired; perhaps my person is the only obstacle to obtaining juster terms. I abdicate the crown in favour of my son, Victor Emmanuel.' And turning to the Duke of Savoy he said: 'There is your King.'
In the night he left Novara alone for Nice. As he passed through the Austrian lines, the sentinels were nearly firing upon his carriage; General Thurn, before whom he was brought, asked for some proof that[Pg.142]he was in fact the 'Count de Barge' in whose name his passport was made out. A Bersagliere prisoner who recognised the King, at a sign from him gave the required testimony, and he was allowed to pass. At Nice he was received by the governor, a son of Santorre di Santa Rosa, and to him he addressed the last words spoken by him on Italian ground: 'In whatever time, in whatever place, a regular government raises the flag of war with Austria, the Austrians will find me among their enemies as a simple soldier.' Then he continued his journey to Oporto.
The principal side-issue of the campaign of 1849 was the revolution at Brescia. Had the original plan been carried out, which was to throw the Sardinian army into Lombardy (and it is doubtful whether, even after Radetsky's invasion of Piedmont, it would not have been better to adhere to it), a corresponding movement on the part of the inhabitants would have become of the greatest importance. To Brescia, which was the one Lombard town where the Piedmontese had been received in 1848 with real effusion, the Sardinian Minister of War despatched Count Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco with arms and ammunition, and orders to reassume the colonelcy of the National Guard which he held in the previous year, and to take the general control of the movement as far as Brescia was concerned. Martinengo succeeded in transporting the arms through the enemy's country from the Piedmontese frontier to Iseo, and thence to his native city. When he reached Brescia, he found that the Austrians had evacuated the town, though they still occupied the castle which frowns down upon it. This was the 23rd of March: Novara was fought and lost, Piedmont was powerless to come to the[Pg.143]assistance of the people she had commanded to rise. What was to be done? Plainly common sense suggested an honourable compromise with the Austrian commandant, by which he should be allowed to reoccupy the city on condition that no hair of the citizens' heads was touched. This is what Bergamo and the other towns did, nor are they to be blamed.
Not so Brescia. Here, where love of liberty was an hereditary instinct from the long connection of Brescia with free Venice, where hatred of the stranger, planted by the ruthless soldiery of Gaston de Foix, had but gone on maturing through three centuries, where the historical title of 'Valiant,' coming down from a remote antiquity, was still no fable; here, with a single mind, the inhabitants resolved upon as desperate a resistance as was ever offered by one little town to a great army.
The Austrian bombardment was begun by the Irish General, Nugent-Lavall, who, dying in the midst of it, left all his fortune to the heroic city which he was attacking. The Austrians, flushed with their victory over Charles Albert's army of 80,000, were seized with rage at the sight of their power defied by a town of less than half that number of souls. But with that rage was mingled, even in the mind of Haynau, an admiration not to be repressed.
Haynau who was sent to replace Nugent, was already known at Brescia, where he had been appointed military governor after the resumption of Austrian authority in 1848. In order to punish the 'persistent opposition manifested to the legitimate Imperial and Royal Government,' and as an example to the other towns, he had imposed on the Brescian householders and the landed proprietors of the province a[Pg.144]fine of half a million francs.
He now returned, and what he did may be best read in his own report on the operations. 'It was then,' he wrote, 'that began the most murderous fight; a fight prolonged by the insurgents from barricade to barricade, from house to house, with extraordinary obstinacy. I should never have believed that so bad a cause could have been sustained with such perseverance. In spite of this desperate defence, and although the assault could only be effected in part, and with the help of cannons of heavy calibre, our brave troops with heroic courage, but at the cost of great losses, occupied a first line of houses; but as all my columns could not penetrate into the town at the same time, I ordered the suspension of the attack at nightfall, limiting myself to holding the ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hand should be immediately put to death, and that the houses from which shots came should be burnt. It is thus that conflagrations, partly caused by the troops, partly by the bombardment, broke out in various parts of the town.'
During the ten days' struggle, the citizens did not flinch for a moment. Count Martinengo was the guiding spirit of the defence, and scarcely left the most exposed of the barricades night or day. From the nobles to the poorest of the people, all did their duty. A youth named Tito Speri led and animated the populace. The horrors of the[Pg.145]repression make one think of the fall of Khartoum. Not even in Hungary, where he went from Brescia to continue his 'system,' did Haynau so blacken his own and his country's name as here. In a boys' school kept by a certain Guidi, the master's wife, his mother and ten of his pupils were slaughtered. A little hunchback tailor was carried to the barracks to be slowly burnt alive. But stray details do not give the faintest idea of the whole. And for all this, Haynau was in a far higher degree responsible than the actual executants of the vengeance to which he hounded on his ignorant soldiers, maddened with the lust of blood.
Such was General Haynau, 'whose brave devotion to his master's service was the veteran's sole crime,' said theQuarterly Review(June 1853), but who was judged otherwise by some in England. Wherefore was he soundly beaten by the brewers in the employment of Messrs Barclay & Perkins; and the nice words of theQuarterlycould not undo that beating, redress for which Lord Palmerston blandly advised the complainant to seek 'before the common tribunals.' He thought it best to neglect the advice, and to leave the country.
Among the curious taxes levied at Brescia during the six months after its fall was one of £500 for 'the expenses of the hangman.' Count Martinengo escaped after the Austrians were in possession of the town through the courageous assistance given to him by a few young men of the working class. Camozzi's band of Bergamasques, which started for the relief of the sister city, was driven back with loss.
The end was come, but woe to the victors.
Following the Italian flag to where it still floated, we pass from Brescia in the dust to Rome still inviolate, though soon to be assailed by the bearers of another tricolor. A few days after Novara,[Pg.146]the Triumvirate issued a proclamation, in which they said: 'The Republic in Rome has to prove to Italy and to Europe that our work is eminently religious, a work of education and of morality; that the accusations of intolerance, anarchy and violent upturning of things are false; that, thanks to the republican principle, united as one family of good men under the eye of God, and following the impulse of those who are first among us in genius and virtue, we march to the attainment of true order, law and power united.' Englishmen who were in Rome at the time attest how well the pledge was kept. Peace and true freedom prevailed under the republican banner as no man remembered them to have prevailed before in Rome. The bitter provocation of the quadruple attack was not followed by revengeful acts on the parts of the government against those who were politically and religiously associated with him at whose bidding that attack was made. Nothing like a national party was terrorised or kept under by fear of violence. 'That at such a time,' writes Henry Lushington, who was not favourable to Mazzini, 'not one lawless or evil deed was done would have been rather a miracle than a merit, but on much concurrent testimony it is clear that the efforts of the government to preserve order were incessant, and to a remarkable degree successful.' He adds that the streets were far safer for ordinary passengers under the Triumvirs than under the Papacy.
Of great help in quieting the passions of the lower orders was the people's tribune, Ciceruacchio, who had not put on black cloth clothes, or asked for the ministry of war, or of fine arts, according to the usual wont of successful tribunes. Ciceruacchio had the sense of humour of the genuine Romanpopolano, and it never came into his[Pg.147]head to make himself ridiculous. His influence had been first acquired by works of charity in the Tiber floods. Being a strong swimmer, he ventured where no one else would go, and had saved many lives. At first a wine-carrier, he made money by letting out conveyances and dealing in forage, but he gave away most of what he made. He opposed the whole force of his popularity to a war of classes. 'Viva chi c'ia e chi non c'ia quattrini!'[4]was his favourite cry. Once when a young poet read him a sonnet in his honour he stopped him at the line 'Thou art greater than all patricians,' saying that he would not have that published: 'I respect the nobility, and never dream of being higher than they. I am a poor man of the people, and such I will always remain.'
When the siege came, Ciceruacchio was invaluable in providing the troops with forage, horses, and even victuals, which he procured by making private sorties on his own account during the night; his intimate knowledge of every path enabling him to go unobserved. He planned the earthworks, at which he laboured with his hands, and when fighting was going on, he shouldered a musket and ran with his two sons, one of them a mere child, to wherever the noise of guns directed him. No picture of Rome in 1849 would be complete without the burly figure and jocund face of Angelo Brunetti.
The republican government found Rome with a mere shadow of an army; the efforts to create one had been too spasmodic to do anything but make confusion worse confounded by changes and experiments soon abandoned. Perseverance and intelligence now had a different result, and the little army, called into existence by the republic, proved admirable in discipline, various and fantastic as were its components.
[Pg.148]Towards the end of April, Garibaldi, who had been stationed at Rieti, was ordered to bring his legion to Rome. Those who witnessed the arrival saw one of the strangest scenes ever beheld in the Eternal City. The men wore pointed hats with black, waving plumes; thin and gaunt, their faces dark as copper, with naked legs, long beards and wild dark hair hanging down their backs, they looked like a company of Salvator Rosa's brigands. Beautiful as a statue amidst his extraordinary host rode the Chief, mounted on a white horse, which he sat like a centaur. 'He was quite a show, everyone stopping to look at him,' adds the sculptor Gibson, to whom these details are owed. 'Probably,' writes another Englishman, 'a human face so like a lion, and still retaining the humanity nearest the image of its Maker, was never seen.' Garibaldi wore the historic red shirt, and a small cap ornamented with gold.
The origin of the red shirt might have remained in poetic uncertainty had it not been mentioned a few years ago in a volume of reminiscences published by an English naval officer. The men employed in the Saladéros or great slaughtering and salting establishments for cattle in the Argentine provinces wore scarlet woollen shirts; owing to the blockade of Buenos Ayres, a merchant at Monte Video had a quantity of these on his hands, and as economy was a great object to the government, they bought the lot cheap for their Italian legion, little thinking that they were making the 'Camicia Rossa' immortal in song and story.
The coming to Rome of the 1200 legionaries aroused private fears in the hearts of the more timid inhabitants, but Garibaldi knew how to keep his wild followers in hand, and gallant was the service they rendered to Roman liberty.
[Pg.149]That liberty was now on the eve of its peril. The preliminaries of the French intervention in Rome are tolerably well known; here it suffices to say that every new contribution to a more precise knowledge of the facts only serves to confirm the charge of dissimulation, or, to use a plainer and far better adapted word, of dishonesty, brought against the French government for their part in the matter. White, indeed, do Austria, Spain and Naples appear—the avowed upholders of priestly despotism—beside the ruler of republican France and his ministers, whose plan it was not to fight the Roman republic: fighting was far from their counsels, but to betray it. It is proved that the restoration of the Temporal Power was the aim of the expedition from the first; it is equally proved that the French sought to get inside Rome by distinct disclaimers of any such intention. 'We do not go to Italy,' they said, 'to impose with our arms a system of government, but to assure the rights of liberty, and to preserve a legitimate interference in the affairs of the peninsula.' They adopted a curious method of assuring the rights of liberty.
The Pope would not have anything to do with the affair. 'If you say openly that you are going to give me back my Temporal Power, well and good; if not, I prefer the aid of Austria.' So he replied to the flattering tales whispered in his ear, while tales no less flattering were being whispered in the ear of Mazzini. He declined to give the French any guarantees as to his future mode of governing; it cannot be said, therefore, that they were under the delusion that they were restoring a constitutional sovereign.
Efforts have been made to cast the responsibility of the Roman intervention entirely on Louis Napoleon. Even Mazzini favoured that view, but it is impossible to separate the President of the Republic[Pg.150]from the 325 deputies who voted the supplies for the expedition on the 2nd of April. Does anyone pretend that they were hoodwinked any more than Ledru Rollin was hoodwinked, or the minority, which, roused by his vigorous speech, voted against the grant? Louis Napoleon was far less Papal in his sentiments than were most of the assenting deputies; his own opinion was more truly represented by the letter which, as a private citizen, he wrote to the 'Constitutionnel' in December 1848 than by his subsequent course as President. In this letter he declared that a military demonstration would be perilous even to the interests which it was intended to safeguard. He had but one fixed purpose: to please France, so as to get himself made Emperor. France must be held answerable for the means taken to please her.
General Oudinot landed at Civitavecchia on the 25th of April, his friendly assurances having persuaded the local authorities to oppose no resistance, an unfortunate error, but the last. The correct judgment formed by the Roman Government of the designs of the invaders was considerably assisted by a French officer, Colonel Leblanc, who was sent to Rome by Oudinot to come to an agreement with Mazzini for the amicable reception of the French, and who, losing his temper, revealed more than he was meant to reveal. His last words, 'Les Italiens ne se battent pas,' unquestionably expressed the belief of the whole French force, from the general-in-chief to the youngest drummer. They were soon going to have a chance of testing its accuracy.
The Roman Assembly passed a vote that 'force should be repelled by force.' Well-warned, therefore, but with the proverbialcoeur léger, Oudinot advanced on Rome with 8000 men early on the 30th of April. At[Pg.151]eleven o'clock the two columns came in sight of St Peter's, and soon after, the first which moved towards Porta Angelica was attacked by Colonel Masi. Garibaldi attacked the second column a mile out of Porta San Pancrazio. At the first moment the superior numbers of the French told, and the Italians fell back on Villa Pamphilli, but Colonel Galetti arrived with reinforcements, and before long Garibaldi drove the French from the Pamphilli Gardens and had them in full retreat along the Civitavecchia road. Oudinot was beaten, Rome was victorious. 'This does not surprise us Romans; but it will astonish Paris!' ran a manifesto of the hour; the words are a little childish, but men are apt to be childish when they are deeply moved. And as to the astonishment of Paris, all the words in the world would fail to paint its proportions. Paris was indeed astonished.
Garibaldi had not the chief command of the Roman army, or he would have done more; there was nothing to prevent the Italians from driving Oudinot into the sea. The Triumvirate, when appealed to directly by Garibaldi, refused their sanction, either fearing to leave the capital exposed to the Neapolitans who were advancing, or (and this seems to have been the real reason) still hoping that France would repudiate Oudinot and come to terms. Garibaldi was right on this occasion, and Mazzini was wrong. When you are at war, nothing is so ruinous as to be afraid of damaging the enemy.
The French ministers, bombarded with reproaches by friends and foes, and most uneasy lest their troops in Italy should be destroyed before they could send reinforcements, did disown Oudinot's march on Rome, and Ferdinand de Lesseps was despatched nominally 'to arrange matters in a pacific sense,' but actually to gain time.
[Pg.152]In a sitting in the French Assembly, a member of the opposition said to the President of the Council: 'You are going to reinstate the Pope!' 'No, no,' ejaculated Odilon Barrot. 'You are going to do the same as Austria,' cried Lamoricière. 'We should be culpable if we did,' was the answer. Lesseps' instructions, very vague, for the rest, were given to him in this spirit. That Lesseps acted in good faith has been generally admitted, and was always believed by Mazzini. It was to the interest of the French Government to choose a tool who did not see how far he was a tool. But if Lesseps had no suspicions, if he had not strong suspicions of the real object of his employers, then he was already at this date a man singularly easy to deceive.
The French envoy was commissioned to treat, not with the Triumvirate, but with the Roman Assembly: a piece of insolence which the former would have done well to reply to by sending him about his business. Lesseps, however, thought that he would gain by speaking in person to Mazzini, and in order that the interview should remain a secret, he decided to go to him alone in the dead of the night and unannounced. Having made the needful inquiries, he proceeded to the palace of the Consulta, the doors of which seem to have been left open all night; there were guards, but they were asleep, and the French diplomatist traversed the long suite of splendid apartments, opening one into the other without corridors. At last he reached the simply-furnished room where, upon an iron bedstead, Mazzini slept. Lesseps watched him sleeping, fascinated by the beauty of his magnificent head as it lay in repose. He still looked very young, though there was hardly a state in Europe where he was not proscribed. When Lesseps had gazed his full, he called 'Mazzini, Mazzini!' The Triumvir awoke, sat up and[Pg.153]asked if he had come to assassinate him? Lesseps told him his name, and a long conversation followed. One thing, at least, that Lesseps said in this interview was strictly true, namely, that Mazzini must not count on the French republican soldiers objecting to fire on republicans: 'The French soldier would burn down the cottage of his mother if ordered by his superiors to do so.' The discipline of a great army is proof against politics.
Lesseps was himself in much fear of being assassinated. He believed that his footsteps were dogged by three individuals, one of whom was an ex-French convict. He complained to Mazzini, who said that he could do nothing, which probably shows that he gave no credence to the story. Then Lesseps had recourse to Ciceruacchio, 'a man of the people who had great influence on the population, and who had organised the revolution.' The tribune seems to have quieted his fears and guaranteed his safety.
The French envoy could not help being struck by the tender care taken of his wounded fellow-countrymen by the Princess Belgiojoso and other noble ladies who attended the hospitals. Of prisoners who were not wounded there were none, as they had been sent back scot-free to their general a few days after the 30th of April. He was struck also by the firm resolve of all classes not to restore the Pope. Some liked the existing government, some did not, but all prayed heaven to be henceforth delivered from the rule of an infallible sovereign.
Whatever was the measure of confidence which Mazzini felt in Lesseps, he was firm as iron on the main point—the non-admittance of the 'friendly' French troops into Rome. Lesseps dragged on the negotiations till his government had finished the preparations for[Pg.154]sending to Rome a force which should not be much less than twice in number the whole military resources of the republic. Then they recalled him, and, in order not to be bound by anything that he might have said, they set about the rumour that he was mad. Indignant at such treatment, Lesseps left the diplomatic service, and turned his attention to engineering. This was the origin of the Suez Canal.
While all these things were going on, the Austrians moved from Ferrara and Modena towards Bologna, the Spaniards landed at Fiumicino, and 16,000 Neapolitans, commanded by Ferdinand II., encamped near Albano. Garibaldi was attacked on the 9th of May by the Neapolitan vanguard, which he obliged to fall back. On the 18th, he completely defeated King Ferdinand's army near Velletri, and the King ordered a general retreat into his own dominions, which was accomplished in haste and confusion.
By the end of May, Oudinot's forces were increased to over 35,000 men. The defenders of Rome, under the chief command of General Rosselli, were about 20,000, of whom half were volunteers. Colonel Marnara's Lombard Legion of Bersaglieri was, in smartness of appearance and perfect discipline, equal to any regular troops; in its ranks were the sons of the best and richest Lombard families, such as Dandolo, Morosini and many others. Medici's legion was also composed of educated and well-to-do young men. The Bolognese, under the Marquis Melara, had the impetuous daring of their race, and Count Angelo Masina did wonders with his forty lancers. Wherever Garibaldi was—it was always in the hottest places—there were to be seen, at no great distance, the patriot monk, Ugo Bassi, riding upon a fiery horse, and the young poet of Free Italy, Goffredo Mameli, with his slight, boyish[Pg.155]figure, and his fair hair floating in the breeze. Nor must we omit from the list of Garibaldi's bodyguard Forbes, the Englishman, and Anghiar, the devoted negro, who followed his master like a dog.
Oudinot formally disavowed all Lesseps' proceedings from first to last, and announced, on the 1st of June, that he had orders to take Rome as soon as possible. Out of regard, however, for the French residents, he would not begin the attack 'till the morning of Monday the 4th.' Now, though no one knew it but the French general, that Monday morning began with Sunday's dawn, when the French attacked Melara's sleeping battalion at the Roman outposts. It was easy for the French to drive back these 300 men, and to occupy the Villa Corsini ('Villa,' in the Roman sense, means a garden) and the position dominating Porta San Pancrazio; but Galetti came up and retook them all, to lose them again by nine o'clock. Then Garibaldi, who was ill, hurried to the scene from his sick-bed, and thrice that day he retook and thrice he lost the contested positions—a brief statement, which represents prodigies of valour, and the oblation of as noble blood as ever watered the earth of Rome. Melara, Masina, Daverio, Dandolo, Mameli: every schoolboy would know these names if they belonged to ancient, not to modern, history. Bright careers, full of promise, cut short; lives renounced, not only voluntarily, but with joy, and to what end? Not for interest or fame—not even in the hope of winning; but that, erect and crowned with the roses of martyrdom, Rome might send her dying salutation to the world.
At sunset the French had established their possession of all the points outside the Gate of San Pancrazio, except the Vascello, a villa which had been seized from their very teeth by Medici, who held it against all comers. Monte Mario was also in their hands.
[Pg.156]Mazzini, whose judgment was obscured by his attribution of the Italian policy of France to Louis Napoleon alone, hoped for a revolution in Paris, but Ledru Rollin's attempt at agitation completely failed, and the country applauded its government now that the mask was thrown away. The reasons for revolutions in Paris have always been the same; they have to do with something else than the garrotting of sister-republics.
Oudinot tightened his cordon; on the 12th of June he invited the city to capitulate. The answer was a refusal; so, with the aid of his excellent artillery, he crept on, his passage contested at each step, but not arrested, till, on the 27th, the Villa Savorelli, Garibaldi's headquarters, fell into the hands of the enemy, and, on the night of the 29th, the French were within the city walls. St Peter's day is the great feast of Rome, and this time, as usual, the cupola of St Peter's was illuminated, the Italian flag flying from the highest point. The thunderstorm, which proverbially accompanies the feast, raged during the night; the French shells flew in all directions; the fight raged fiercer than the storm; Medici held out among the crumbling walls of the Vascello, which had been bombarded for a week; the heroic Manara fell fighting at Villa Spada; Garibaldi, descending into themêlée, dealt blows right and left: he seemed possessed by some supernatural power. Those around him say that it is impossible that he would have much longer escaped death, but suddenly a message came summoning him to the Assembly—it saved his life. When he appeared at the door of the Chamber, the deputies rose and burst into wild applause. He seemed puzzled, but, looking down upon himself, he read the explanation; he was covered with blood, his clothes were honeycombed by balls and[Pg.157]bayonet thrusts, his sabre was so bent with striking that it would not go more than half into its sheath.
What the Assembly wanted to know was whether the defence could be prolonged; Garibaldi had only to say that it could not. They voted, therefore, the following decree: 'In the name of God and of the People: the Roman Constituent Assembly discontinues a defence which has become impossible, and remains at its post.' At its post it remained till the French soldiers invaded the Capitol, where it sat, when, yielding to brute force, the deputies dispersed.
Mazzini, who would have resisted still, when all resistance was impossible, wandered openly about the city like a man in a dream. He felt as though he were looking on at the funeral of his best-beloved. How it was that he was not killed or arrested is a mystery. At the end of a week his friends induced him to leave Rome with an English passport.
On the 2nd of July, before the French made their official entry, Garibaldi called his soldiers together in the square of the Vatican, and told them that he was going to seek some field where the foreigner could still be fought. Who would might follow him; 'I cannot offer you honours or pay; I offer you hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, death.'
Three thousand followed him. Beside her husband rode Anita; not even for the sake of the child soon to come would she stay behind in safety. Ugo Bassi was there; Anghiar was dead, Mameli was dying in a hospital, but there was 'the partisan or brigand Forbes,' as he was described in a letter of the Austrian general D'Aspre to the French general Oudinot, with a good handful of Garibaldi's best surviving officers. Ciceruacchio came with his two sons, and offered himself as[Pg.158]guide. No one knew what the plan was, or if there was one. Like knights of old in search of adventures, they set out in search of their country's foes. It was the last desperate venture of men who did not know how to yield.
After wandering hither and thither, and suffering severe hardships, the column reached the republic of San Marino. The brave hospitality of that Rock of freedom prevented Garibaldi from falling into the clutches of the Austrians, who surrounded the republic. He treated with the Regent for the immunity of his followers, who had laid down their arms; and, in the night, he himself escaped with Anita, Ugo Bassi, Forbes, Ciceruacchio and a few others. They hoped to take their swords to Venice, but a storm arose, and the boats on which they embarked were driven out of their course. Some of them were stranded on the shore which bounds the pine-forest of Ravenna, and here, hope being indeed gone, the Chief separated from his companions. Of these, Ugo Bassi, and an officer named Livraghi, were soon captured by the Austrians, who conveyed them to Bologna, where they were shot. Ciceruacchio and his sons were taken in another place, and shot as soon as taken. The boat which contained Colonel Forbes was caught at sea by an Austrian cruiser: he was kept in Austrian prisons for two months, and was constantly reminded that he would be either shot or hung; but the English Government succeeded in getting him liberated, and he lived to take part in more fortunate fights under Garibaldi's standard.
Meanwhile, Anita was dying in a peasant's cottage, to which Garibaldi carried her when the strong will and dauntless heart could no longer stand in place of the strength that was finished. This was the 4th of August. Scarcely had she breathed her last breath when Garibaldi,[Pg.159]broken down with grief as he was, had to fly from the spot. The Austrians were hunting for him in all directions. All the Roman fugitives were proclaimed outlaws, and the population was forbidden to give them even bread or water. Nevertheless—aided in secret by peasants, priests and all whose help he was obliged to seek—Garibaldi made good his flight from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, the whole route being overrun by Austrians. When once the western coast was reached, he was able, partly by sea and partly by land, to reach the Piedmontese territory, where his life was safe. Not even there, however, could he rest; he was told, politely but firmly, that his presence was embarrassing, and for the second time he left Europe—first for Tunis and then for the United States.
While the French besieged Rome, the Austrians had not been idle. They took Bologna in May, after eight days' resistance; and in June, after twenty days' attack by sea and land, Ancona fell into their hands. In these towns they pursued means of 'pacification' resembling those employed at Brescia. All who possessed what by a fiction could be called arms were summarily slaughtered. At Ancona, a woman of bad character hid a rusty nail in the bed of her husband, whom she wished to get rid of; she then denounced him to the military tribunal, and two hours later an English family, whose house was near the barracks, heard the ring of the volley of musketry which despatched him. Austria had also occupied the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; and when, in July, Leopold II. returned to his state, which had restored him by general consent and without any foreign intervention, he entered Florence between two files of Austrian soldiery, in violation of the article of the Statute to which he had sworn, which stipulated that no foreign[Pg.160]occupation should be invited or tolerated. The Grand Duke wrote to the Emperor of Austria, from Gaeta, humbly begging the loan of his arms. Francis Joseph replied with supreme contempt, that it would have been a better thing if Leopold had never forgotten to whose family he belonged, but he granted the prayer. Such was the way in which the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, that had done much in Tuscany to win respect if not love, destroyed all its rights to the goodwill of the Tuscan people, and removed what might have been a serious obstacle to Italian unity.
Austria, unable alone to cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain, but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who had taken over the government after the Fusion, Venice had been ruled by Manin on the terms which he himself proposed: 'Are you ready,' he asked the Venetian Assembly, 'to invest the Government with unlimited powers in order to direct the defence and maintain order?' He warned them that he should be obliged to impose upon them enormous sacrifices, but they replied by voting the order of the day: 'Venice resists the Austrians at all costs; to this end the President Manin is invested with plenary powers.' All the deputies then raised their right hand, and swore to defend the city to the last extremity. They kept their word.
It is hard to say which was the most admirable: Manin's fidelity to his trust, or the people's fidelity to him. To keep up the spirits, to maintain the decorum of a besieged city even for a few weeks or a few[Pg.161]months, is a task not without difficulty; but when the months run into a second year, when the real pinch of privations has been felt by everyone, not as a sudden twinge, but as a long-drawn-out pain, when the bare necessities of life fail, and a horrible disease, cholera, enters as auxiliary under the enemy's black-and-yellow, death-and-pestilence flag; then, indeed, the task becomes one which only a born leader of men could perform.
The financial administration of the republic was a model of order and economy. Generous voluntary assistance was afforded by all classes, from the wealthy patrician and the Jewish merchant to the poorest gondolier. Mazzini once said bitterly that it was easier to get his countrymen to give their blood than their money; here they gave both. The capable manner in which Manin conducted the foreign policy of the republic is also a point that deserves mention, as it won the esteem even of statesmen of the old school, though it was powerless to obtain their help.
The time was gone when France was disposed to do anything for Venice; no one except the Archbishop of Paris, who was afterwards to die by the hand of an assassin, said a word for her.
In the past year, Lord Palmerston, though he tried to localise the war, and to prevent the co-operation of the south, abounded in good advice to Austria. He repeated till he was tired of repeating, that she would do well to retire from her Italian possessions of her own accord. If the French did not come now, he said, they would come some day, and then her friends and allies would give her scanty support. As for Lombardy, it was notorious that a considerable Austrian party was in favour of giving it up, including the Archduke Ranieri, who was strongly attached to Italy, which was the land of his birth. As for[Pg.162]Venice, Austria had against her both the principle of nationality, now the rallying cry of Germany, and the principle of ancient prescription which could be energetically invoked against her by a state to which her title went back no farther than the transfer effected by Buonaparte in the treaty of Campo Formio. These were his arguments; but he was convinced, by this time, that arguments unsupported by big battalions might as well be bestowed on the winds as on the Cabinet of Vienna. From the moment that Radetsky recovered Lombardy for his master, the Italian policy of the Austrian Government was entirely inspired by him, and he was determined that while he lived, what Austria had got she should keep. It was thus that, in reply to Manin's appeal to Lord Palmerston, he only received the cold comfort of the recommendation that Venice should come to terms with her enemy.
The Venetian army of 20,000 men was reduced by casualties and sickness to 18,000 or less. It always did its duty. The defence of Fort Malghera, the great fort which commanded the road to Padua and the bridge of the Venice railway, would have done credit to the most experienced troops in the world. The garrison numbered 2500; the besiegers, under Haynau, 30,000. Radetsky, with three archdukes, came to see the siege, but, tired with waiting, they went away before it was ended. The bombardment began on the 4th of May; in the three days and nights ending with the 25th over 60,000 projectiles fell on the fort. During the night of the 25th the Commandant, Ulloa, by order of Government, quietly evacuated the place, and withdrew his troops; only the next morning the Austrians found out that Malghera was abandoned, and proceeded to take possession of the heap of ruins, which was all[Pg.163]that remained.
After the beginning of July, an incessant bombardment was directed against the city itself. Women and children lived in the cellars; fever stalked through the place, but the war feeling was as strong as ever—nay, stronger. Moreover, the provisions became daily scarcer, the day came when hunger was already acutely felt, when the time might be reckoned by hours before the famished defenders must let drop their weapons, and Venice, her works of art and her population, must fall a prey to the savage vengeance of the Austrians, who would enter by force and without conditions.
And this is what Manin prevented. The cry was still for resistance; for the first time bitter words were spoken against the man who had served his country so well. But he, who had never sacrificed one iota to popularity, did not swerve. His great influence prevailed. The capitulation was arranged on the 22nd, and signed on the 24th of July. Manin had calculated correctly; on that day there was literally nothing left to eat in Venice.
In the last sad hours that Manin spent in Venice all the love of his people, clouded for an instant, burst forth anew. Not, indeed, in shouts and acclamations, but in tears and sobs; 'Our poor father, how much he has suffered!' they were heard saying. He embarked on a French vessel bound for Marseilles, poor, worn out and exiled for ever from the city which he had guided for eighteen months; if, indeed, no spark of his spirit animated the dust which it was the first care of liberated Venice to welcome home. The Austrians broke up his doorstep on which, according to a Venetian custom, his name was engraved. Another martyr, Ugo Bassi, had kissed the stone, exclaiming:
[Pg.164]'Next to God and Italy—before the Pope—Manin!' The people gathered up the broken fragments and kept them as relics, even as in their hearts they kept his memory, till the arrival of that day of redemption which, in the darkest hour, he foretold.
Circumstances more gloomy than those under which Victor Emmanuel II. ascended the throne of his ancestors it would be hard to imagine.
An army twice beaten, a bankrupt exchequer, a triumphant invader waiting to dictate terms; this was but the beginning of the inventory of the royal inheritance. The internal condition of the kingdom, even apart from the financial ruin which had succeeded to the handsome surplus of two years before, was full of embarrassments of the gravest kind. There was a party representing the darkest-dyed clericalism and reaction whose machinations had not been absent in the disaster of Novara. Who was it that disseminated among the troops engaged in the battle broadsides printed with the words: 'Soldiers, for whom do you think you are fighting? The King is betrayed; at Turin they have proclaimed the republic'? There were other broadsides in which Austria was called the supporter of thrones and altars. The dreadful indiscipline witnessed towards the end of, and after the conflict was due more to the demoralising doctrines that had been introduced into the army than to the insubordination of panic. There was another party[Pg.166]strengthened by the recent misfortunes and recruited by exiles from all parts of Italy, which was democratic to the verge of republicanism in Piedmont and over that verge at Genoa, where a revolution broke out before the new King's reign was a week old. Constitutional government stood between the fires of these two parties, both fanned by Austrian bellows, the first openly, the second in secret.
Victor Emmanuel was not popular. The indifference to danger which he had shown conspicuously during the war would have awakened enthusiasm in most countries, but in Piedmont it was so thoroughly taken for granted that the Princes of the House of Savoy did not know fear, that it was looked on as an ordinary fact. The Austrian origin of the Duchess of Savoy formed a peg on which to hang unfriendly theories. It is impossible not to compassionate the poor young wife who now found herself Queen of a people which hated her race, after having lived since her marriage the most dreary of lives at the dismallest court in Europe. At first, as a bride, she seemed to have a desire to break through the frozen etiquette which surrounded her; it is told how she once begged and prayed her husband to take her for a walk under the Porticoes of Turin, which she had looked at only from the outside. The young couple enjoyed their airing, but when it reached Charles Albert's ears, he ordered his son to be immediately placed under military arrest. The chilling formalism which invaded even the private life of these royal personages, shutting the door to 'good comradeship' even between husband and wife, may have had much to do with driving Victor Emmanuel from the side of the Princess, whom, nevertheless, he loved and venerated, to unworthy pleasures, the habit of indulgence in which is far easier to contract than to cure.