CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XIPREMONITIONS OF THE STORM1857-1858Pisacane's Landing—Orsini's Attempt—The Compact of Plombières—Cavour's Triumph.In spite of the accusation of favouring political assassination which was frequently launched against the Italian secret societies, only one of the faithless Italian princes came to a violent death, and his murder had no connection with politics. Charles III., Duke of Parma, was mortally stabbed in March 1854; some said that the assassin was a groom whom he had struck with a riding-whip; others, that he was the father or brother of one of the victims of the Duke's dissolute habits. The Duchess, a daughter of the Duke de Berry, assumed the Regency on behalf of her son, who was a child. She began by initiating many reforms; but a street disturbance in July gave Austria the desired excuse for meddling in the government, when all progress was, of course, arrested.In December 1856, a soldier named Ageslao Milano attempted to assassinate the King of the Two Sicilies at a review. He belonged to no sect, but he had long premeditated the act. A few days later an earthquake occurred in the kingdom of Naples, by which over ten thousand persons lost their lives. Ferdinand II. grew morose, and shut[Pg.209]himself up in the royal palace of Caserta. The constant lectures of France and England annoyed him without persuading him to take the means to put a stop to them. Not till 1859 did he open the doors of the prisons in which Poerio, Settembrini and their companions were confined. Many plans were made, meanwhile, for their liberation, and English friends even provided a ship by which they were to escape; but the ship foundered: perhaps fortunately, as Garibaldi, with characteristic disinterestedness, had agreed to direct the enterprise, which could not have been otherwise than perilous, and was not unlikely to end in the loss of all concerned.Disaster attended Baron Bentivegna's attempt at a rising at Taormina in 1856, and Carlo Pisacane's landing at Sapri in the summer of the following year had no better result. Pisacane, a son of the Duke Gennaro di San Giovanni of Naples, had fought in the defence of Rome and was a firm adherent of Mazzini, in conjunction with whom he planned his unlucky venture. Pisacane watched the growing ascendency of Piedmont with sorrow; he was one of the few, if not the only one of his party to say that he would as soon have the dominion of Austria as that of the House of Savoy. But if he was an extremist in politics, none the less he was a patriot, who took his life in his hands and offered it up to his country in the spirit of the noblest devotion. He had the slenderest hope of success, but he believed that only by such failures could the people be roused from their apathy. 'For me,' he wrote, 'it will be victory even if I die on the scaffold. This is all I can do, and this I do; the rest depends on the country, not on me. I have only my affections and my life to give, and I give them without hesitation.'[Pg.210]With the young Baron Nicotera and twenty-three others, Pisacane embarked on theCagliari, a steamer belonging to a Sardinian mercantile line, which was bound for Tunis. When at sea, the captain was frightened into obedience, and the ship's course was directed to the isle of Ponza, where several hundred prisoners, mostly political, were undergoing their sentences. The guards made little resistance, and Pisacane opened the prisons, inviting who would to follow him. The first plan had been to make a descent on San Stefano, the island where Settembrini was imprisoned, but that good citizen had refused to admit the liberation of the non-political prisoners, which was an unavoidable feature in the scheme. With the addition of about three hundred men, Pisacane left Ponza for the mainland and disembarked near the village of Sapri, in the province of Salerno. From information received, he imagined that a revolutionary movement was on the point of breaking out in that district. Nothing could be further from the fact. The country people did all the harm they could to the band, which, after making a brave stand against the local militia, was cut to pieces by the royal troops. Pisacane fell fighting; those who were not killed were taken, and amongst these was Nicotera, who was kept in prison till set free by Garibaldi.TheCagliariwas captured and detained with its crew. As two of the seamen were British subjects, the English Government joined Sardinia in demanding its restitution, which, after long delays, was conceded.In 1857, the Emperor of Austria relieved Field-Marshal Radetsky, then in his ninety-third year, of the burden of office. He was given the right of living in any of the royal palaces, even in the Emperor's own residence at Vienna, but he preferred to spend the one remaining year[Pg.211]of his life in Italy. At the same time, the Archduke Maximilian was appointed Viceroy of Lombardy and Venetia. A more naturally amiable and cultivated Prince never had the evil fate forced upon him of attempting impossible tasks. Just married to the lovely Princess Charlotte of Belgium, he came to Italy radiant with happiness, and wishing to make everyone as happy as he was himself. Not even the chilling welcome he received damped his enthusiasm, for he thought the aversion of the population depended on undoubted wrongs, which it was his full intention to redress. He was to learn two things; firstly, that the day of reconciliation was past: there were too many ghosts between the Lombards and Venetians, and the House of Hapsburg. Secondly, that an unseen hand beyond the Brenner would diligently thwart each one of his benevolent designs. The system was, and was to remain, unchanged. It was not carried out quite as it was carried out in the first years after 1849. The exiles were allowed to return and the sequestrations were revoked. It should be said, because it shows the one white spot in Austrian despotism, its civil administration, that on resuming their rights of ownership the proprietors found that their estates had not been badly managed. But the depressing and deadening influence of an anti-national rule continued unabated. Lombardy and Venetia were governed not from Milan, but from Vienna. Very small were the crumbs which the Viceroy obtained, though he went on a journey to Austria expressly to plead for concessions. It is sad to think what an enlightened heir to the great Austrian empire was lost, when Napoleon III. and his own family sent Maximilian of Hapsburg to Queretaro.While Cavour had come to the conclusion that the aid which he believed[Pg.212]essential for the expulsion of the Austrians could only come from the French Emperor, this sovereign was regarded by a not inconsiderable party of Italians as the greatest, if not the sole, obstacle to their liberation. All those, in particular, who came in contact with the French exiles, were impressed by them with the notion that France, the real France, was only waiting for the disappearance of the Man of December to throw herself into their arms. Among the Italians who held these opinions, there were a few with whom it became a fixed idea that the greatest service they could render their country was the removal of Napoleon from the political scene. They conceived and nourished the thought independently of one another; they belonged to no league, but for that reason they were the more dangerous; somewhere or other there was always someone planning to put an end to the Emperor's life. It is not worth while to pause to discuss the ethics of political assassination; civilisation has decided against it, and history proves its usual failure to promote the desired object. What benefit did the Confederate cause derive from the assassination of the good President Lincoln, or the cause of Russian liberty from that of Alexander II.? What will Anarchy gain by the murder of Carnot? It is certain, however, that never were men more convinced that they were executing a wild kind of justice than were the men who plotted against Napoleon III. They looked upon him as one of themselves who had turned traitor. There is a great probability that, in his early days when he was playing at conspiracy in Italy, he was actually enrolled as a Carbonaro. At all events, he had conspired for Italian freedom, and afterwards, to serve his own selfish interests, he extinguished it in Rome. The temporal power of the Pope was kept alive through him.[Pg.213]A true account of the attempts on Napoleon's life will never be written, because the only persons who were able and willing to throw light on the subject, ex-police agents and their kind, are authorities whose word is worth a very limited acceptance. It is pretty sure that there were more plots than the public ever knew of, and that in some cases the plotters were disposed of summarily. Most of them were poor, ignorant creatures, but in January 1858 an attempt was made by a man of an entirely different stamp, Felice Orsini.Born at Meldola in Romagna in 1819, he was of the true Romagnol type in mind and body; daring, resourceful, intolerant of control. From his earliest youth all his actions had but one object, the liberation of his country. His youthful brain was enflamed by Alfieri and Foscolo, who remained his favourite authors. He hated Austria well, and he hated the Papal government as no one but one of its own subjects could hate it. 'When the French landed in Italy' (he told his judges) 'it was hoped that they were come as friends, but they proved the worst of enemies. For a time they were repulsed, then they resumed the cloak of friendship, but only to wait for reinforcements. When these arrived they returned to the assault, a thousand against ten, and we were judicially assassinated.' A succinct and true narrative. During the republic Orsini was sent to Ancona, where anarchy had broken out; by vigorous measures he restored perfect order. In 1854 he was arrested in Hungary and condemned to death, but he escaped from Mantua under romantic circumstances and reached England, where the story of his audacious flight won for him many sympathisers. He was often seen in society. On one occasion he was asked to meet Prince Lucien Buonaparte. Orsini knew Mazzini, but he was impatient of his[Pg.214]mystical leanings, and he disapproved of such enterprises as Pisacane's, by which, as he thought, twenty or thirty men were sacrificed here or there without anything coming of it. He finally repudiated Mazzini's leadership, and in March 1857 he wrote to Cavour, asking him for a passport to return to Italy, and placing at the disposal of the Sardinian government 'the courage and energy which it had pleased God to give him,' provided that government left wavering behind, and showed its unmistakable will to achieve the independence of Italy. Cavour sent no reply, 'because,' he said later, 'the letter was noble and energetic, and I should have had to pay Orsini compliments which I did not deem fitting. 'Unlike Victor Emmanuel, who in after years carried on regular negotiations with Mazzini, Cavour, while ready to make an alliance with the Radicals in the Chamber, was extremely loth to have anything to do with actual revolutionists. His not answering Orsini's letter certainly led up to the attempt of the 14th of January 1858.Having quarrelled with Mazzini, and receiving no encouragement from Cavour, Orsini evolved the plan which on that day he endeavoured to put into execution. He would have preferred to act alone, but since that was impossible, he sought and found without much difficulty two or three accomplices. One of these, Pieri, a teacher of languages, was arrested by the police, who recognised him as an old conspirator, before he threw the bomb which he was carrying. The other bombs were thrown just as the carriage containing the Imperial party drove up to the opera house. A number of people in the street were killed or injured, but the Emperor and Empress escaped unhurt. When they entered the theatre the Rutli scene of the conspirators inGuillaume Tellwas being performed. Not a breath of applause greeted them, though[Pg.215]everyone knew what had happened. Napoleon III. had a striking proof of how little hold he possessed on the affections of his subjects.When at his trial Orsini was asked what he expected would happen if he had succeeded in killing the Emperor he answered: 'We were convinced that the surest way of making a revolution in Italy was to excite one in France, and that the surest way of making a revolution in France was to kill the Emperor.' There is a good deal of curious evidence to show that very elaborate preparations had been made for a revolution in Paris. The French police had orders, however, to keep all this aspect of the affair out of sight. It was to be made to appear the isolated act of a misguided Italian patriot. 'The world possesses an Orsini legend,' writes the late Duke of Saxe-Coburg, who was present at the event, having been invited to join the Emperor at the opera, 'which is quite at variance with facts.' The duke clearly thinks that the conviction of the instability of his throne which was brought home to the Emperor on this occasion, was one of the causes which decided him to try the diversion of public opinion into other channels by means of a foreign war.Everything was done to make Orsini a hero in the eyes of the French public, and to excite sympathy in his cause. Jules Favre by his eloquent defence in which he pleaded not for the life, but for the honour of his client, and still more Orsini's own letter to the Emperor, produced a powerful impression; there was a dramatic interest in the man who, disdaining to crave clemency for himself, tried a last supreme effort in the service of the country he had loved too well. 'Deliver my fatherland, and the blessings of twenty-five million citizens will be with you.' So concluded the letter in which Orsini[Pg.216]told Napoleon, that till Italy was free there would be no peace for Europe—nor for him. It was whispered that the Emperor had a secret interview with the condemned man at the Mazas prison; at any rate, when Orsini mounted the scaffold, he was borne up, not only by his invincible courage, but by the strongest hope, if not the certainty that his last prayer would have only a short time to wait for fulfilment.Though persons who were able to read the signs of the times no longer doubted that Napoleon had resolved to solve the Italian question by force of arms, it suited his purpose to occupy the public mind for the moment with the furious agitation against England and Piedmont as 'dens of assassins,' which led to the fall of the Palmerston administration on the Conspiracy Bill, and seemed to almost place in jeopardy the throne of Victor Emmanuel. Napoleon sent the King of Sardinia demands so sweeping in language so threatening, that the old Savoy blood was fired, and Victor Emmanuel returned the answer: 'Tell the Emperor in whatever terms you think best that this is not the way to treat a faithful ally; that I have never tolerated violence from anyone; that I follow the path of unstained honour, and for that honour I am only answerable to God and to my people. That we have carried our head high for 850 years, and no one will make me lower it; and that, nevertheless, I desire nothing better than to remain his friend.' This reply was benevolently received; Cavour passed through the Chambers a bill which, though not corresponding to the extravagant pretensions of the French Government, gave reasonable security against the concoction of plots of a criminal nature; Napoleon expressed himself satisfied, and three months after, despatched Dr Conneau to Turin, to mention, quite by the way, to the Piedmontese minister, that[Pg.217]he would be glad to have a conversation with him on Italian affairs. This was the preliminary of the interview of Plombières.Plombières is a watering-place in the Vosges, which became famous on the 20th of July 1858, the day on which Napoleon III. and Cavour entered into the compact that laid down the conditions of the Italian war. The Emperor was to bring 200,000 men into Italy, and the King of Sardinia undertook to furnish 100,000. The Austrians were to be expelled from Italy. The kingdom of Upper Italy would embrace the Legations and the Marches then under the Pope. Savoy would be ceded to France. The marriage of the Emperor's cousin with the Princess Clotilde was not made a condition of the war, and only in case it had been made a condition, was Cavour empowered to agree to it. He, therefore, left it uncertain; but he came away from Plombières convinced that nearly everything depended upon its happening. Napoleon was beyond measure anxious for a marriage which would ally him with one of the oldest reigning families in Europe. It would be a fatal mistake, Cavour thought, to join the Emperor, and at the same time, to offend him in a way which he would never forget. Directly after the interview, he wrote a long letter to the King to persuade him to yield the point. After all, where would the Princess find a more promising match? Was it easy to provide husbands for princesses? Were not they generally extremely unhappy in marriage? What had happened to the King's four aunts, all charming princesses, who had married the Duke of Modena, the Duke of Lucca, the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, and the King of Naples? Had they been happy? Prince Napoleon could not be so very bad, as he was known to have hurried to Cannes to pay a last visit to a woman whom he had loved, a great actress, then upon her[Pg.218]deathbed. This reminiscence was a singular one to evoke under the circumstances, but Cavour was not an Englishman, and he was not impressed by the propriety of drawing a veil over facts which everyone knew.The King's instinct told him that his young daughter, pious and simple and destitute even of that seasoning of vanity which is so good and necessary a thing in a woman, but proud at heart like all her race, would derive no compensation from the outward brilliancy of the Imperial Court for the absence of domestic joy which would be her wedded lot unless a surprising change came over the bridegroom. When, however, he was persuaded of the importance, or rather, of the essential character of the concession, he said to Cavour: 'I am making a great sacrifice, but I yield to your arguments. Still my consent is subordinate to the freely given consent of my daughter.' The matter was referred to the Princess, who answered: 'It is the wish of my father; therefore this marriage will be useful to my family and my country, and I accept.' An answer worthy of one who, twelve years later, when the members of the Imperial House were flying, remained quietly in Paris, saying: 'Savoy and fear are not acquainted.'The marriage was celebrated at Turin in January. The King made a present to Cavour, as a souvenir of the event, of a ring representing two heartseases. In thanking him, the minister said: 'Your Majesty knows that I shall never marry.' 'I know,' replied the King; 'your bride is the country.'Though warlike rumours circulated off and on, the secret of the understanding arrived at in the Plombières interview was well preserved, and the words spoken by Napoleon to the Austrian Ambassador at the New Year's Day reception fell on Europe with the effect of a[Pg.219]bombshell. Turning to Baron Hubner, he said: 'Je regrette que les relations entre nous soient si mauvaises; dîtes cependant à votre souverain que mes sentiments pour lui ne sont pas changés.'Even Cavour was startled. Probably till that moment he had never felt sure that Napoleon would not after all throw the Italian cause to the winds. The Emperor's invariable method in dealing with men was to mystify them. He was pleased to pose as a faithful ally, but human intellect was insufficient to fathom what he meant. On this system, skilfully pursued, was reared the whole fabric of Louis Napoleon's reputation for being a profound politician. Bearing the fact in mind, we can easily see why that reputation crumbled away almost entirely when the present became the past. There are few cases in which there is more disagreement between the judgment of contemporaries and that of immediate posterity than the case of the French Emperor.The least surprised, and, among Italians, the most dissatisfied at the New Year's Day pronouncement was Mazzini, who when he read it in theTimesnext morning felt that the Napoleonic war closed the heroic period of Italian Liberation. To men like Mazzini failure is apt to seem more heroic than success, and the war of 1859 did close the period of failure. The justification for calling in foreign arms could only be in necessity, and Mazzini denied the necessity. Charles Albert denied it in 1848 with no less confident a voice. Then, indeed, there did appear a chance of Italy making herself, but was there the slightest prospect, eleven years later, of that chance being repeated? Each student of history may answer for himself. What is plain is, that France and Sardiniatogetherwere to find it an exceedingly hard task even to drive the Austrians out of Lombardy.[Pg.220]The unconquerable dislike of men of principle, like Mazzini, to joining hands with the author of thecoup d'étatwas perfectly explicable. There were doubtless some sincere Bulgarian patriots who disliked joining hands with the Autocrat of all the Russias. The gift of freedom from a despot means a long list of evils. Mazzini grasped the maleficent influence which Napoleon III. would be in a position to exercise over the young state; he knew, moreover, when only two or three other persons in Europe knew it, that the bargain of Plombières was on the principle of give-and-take. How Mazzini was for many years better informed than any cabinet in Europe, remains a secret. 'I know positively,' he wrote on the 4th of January 1859, 'that the idea of the war is only to hand over a zone of Lombardy to Piedmont, and the cession of Savoy and Nice to France: the peace, upon the offer of which they count, would abandon the whole of Venetia to Austria.' A month before this he had disclosed what was certainly true, namely, that Napoleon wanted to place a Murat on the throne of Naples, and to substitute Prince Napoleon for the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The point that is doubtful in the above revelation is the statement that the Emperor never meant to emancipate Venetia. The probabilities are against this. He may, however, have questioned all along whether his troops, with those of the King of Sardinia, would display a superiority over the Austrian forces sufficiently incontestable for him to risk taking them into the mouse-trap of the Quadrilateral. In this one thing Napoleon was amply justified—in having no sort of desire to take a beaten army back to Paris.Mazzini, with the more extreme members of the Party of Action (including Crispi), issued a protest against the Napoleonic war, with[Pg.221]the advice to have nothing to do with it or its authors. But Italy thought otherwise, and Garibaldi, the man who of all others most nearly represented the heart of Italy, rejoiced and was glad. He did not believe a word about the proposed cession of Savoy and Nice; no one did, except Mazzini and his few disciples. What he saw was, that a great step towards independence was about to be taken. In 1856, he not only adhered to Manin's call to all Italians to rally round the house of Savoy, but went further than Manin in accepting unconditionally what he called the 'Savoy Dictatorship,' to which he left full liberty of choice in the matter of ways and means. He did justice then to Cavour's patriotism: it was only after the sacrifice of Nice that a feeling of bitter antagonism grew up in him for the man who he thought had deceived Italy and himself. In December 1858, on a summons from Cavour, he left Caprera (the island which he had bought with a little inheritance falling to him on the death of his brother) and proceeded to Turin, where he was informed of a plan for a rising in Massa and Carrara, which was originally intended to be the signal of the war. The plan was given up, but in March 1859, Garibaldi was told by Victor Emmanuel in person of the imminence of war, and was invited to take part in it as commander of an auxiliary corps of volunteers which took the name of 'Cacciatori delle Alpi.' In this way, all his own followers, not only those in arms, but the great mass of the people which was obedient to his lead, became enrolled in the service of the Sardinian monarchy; a fact of capital importance in the future development of affairs. Without it, the Italian kingdom could not have been formed. And this fact was due to Cavour, who had to fight the arrayed strength of the old, narrow, military caste at Turin, which[Pg.222]had succeeded in getting Garibaldi's sword refused in 1848, and wished for nothing in the world more than to get it refused in 1859. Near the end of his life, Cavour said in the Chamber that the difficulties he encountered in inducing the Sardinian War Office to sanction the appointment were all but insurmountable. Unfortunately, the jealousy of the heads of the regular army for the revolutionary captain never ceased. As for Cavour, even when he opposed Garibaldi politically, he always strove to have the highest personal honour paid to the man of whom he once wrote 'that he had rendered Italy the greatest service it was possible to render her.'True to hisrôleof mystification, one week after the shot fired on the 1st of January, Napoleon inserted an official statement in theMoniteurto the effect that, although public opinion had been agitated by alarming rumours, there was nothing in the foreign relations of France to justify the fears these rumours tended to create. He continued on this tack, with more or less consistency, to the very verge of the outbreak of hostilities. 'The Empire was peace,' as it was always announced to be in the intervals when it was not war; there was no more harmless dove in Europe than the person enthroned in the Tuileries. These assurances were given more credence than they deserved by the Conservative Cabinet then in power in England, and the British ministers believed to the last that war would be averted, to which end they strained every nerve. Besides the wish felt by every English government to preserve European peace, there was at this juncture, not only in the Cabinet, but in the country, so much fear of Napoleon's ambition and restlessness, that for the time being,[Pg.223]sympathy with Italy was relegated to a second place.Meanwhile there was no want of plainness in the language employed in Piedmont. In opening the second session of the sixth Sardinian Parliament, Victor Emmanuel pronounced, on 10th January, the historic phrase declaring that he could not remain insensible to the cry of grief,il grido di dolore, that reached him from all parts of Italy. Every corner of the fair country where theSisounds was electrified. The words, as has since become known, were introduced into the speech by the King himself. As Cavour had foreseen, Austria played into his hands. To Lord Malmesbury's appeal to evacuate the Roman Legations, and to use Austrian influence with the Italian princes in procuring the concession of necessary reforms, Count Buol replied in terms that were the reverse of obliging: 'We do not mean to abdicate our right of intervention, and if we are called upon to help the Italian sovereigns with our arms, we shall do so. We shall not recommend their governments to undertake any reforms. France plays the part of protectress of nationalities; we are, and shall be, protectors of dynastic rights.' Finally, England proposed a congress with a view to general disarmament. Piedmont, counting on the madness of her adversary, risked agreement with this plan. Austria gave a peremptory refusal to have anything to do with it.Cavour now asked Parliament to vote a war loan of £2,000,000, which was passed by a majority of 81 out of 151 votes. No foreign banker would undertake to negotiate the loan, but it was twice covered by Italian buyers, nearly all small capitalists, who put their money into it as a patriotic duty. Amongst the few deputies who opposed the loan was the old apostle of retrogression, Count Solaro della Margherita, who raised his solitary voice against the tide of revolution; and the Savoyard the Marquis Costa de Beauregard whose speech was pathetic[Pg.224]from the melancholy foreboding which pervaded it that the making of Italy meant the unmaking of Savoy. Speaking in the name of his fellow-countrymen, the Marquis reconfirmed the profound love of Savoy for her Royal House and her total lack of solidarity with the aspirations of Italy. With time the Savoyards might have learnt to be Italians as their king had learnt to be an Italian king. Or they might not. Possibly the best solution would have been to join Savoy to the Swiss Confederation, though the martial instincts of the race were not favourable to their Conversion into peaceful Helvetic citizens. From one point of view, that of military defence, the retention of the province was of infinitely more moment to the future Italy than to little Piedmont. Sardinia could keep the peace with France for an indefinite period; Italy cannot. What is true of Savoy is far more true of Nice. To have it in foreign keeping is to have a very partially reformed burglar inside your house.'Notre roi,' said an old ragged fisherman of the Lac de Bourget to the writer of this book,—'Notre roi nous a vendus.' Not willingly did Victor Emmanuel incur that charge, in which the rebound from love to hate was so clearly heard; not willingly did he give up Maurienne, cradle of his race, Hautecombe, grave of his fathers. It was the greatest sacrifice, he said, that Italy could have asked of him. Nor is there any reason to doubt his word. But it is incorrect to suppose, as many have supposed, that Cavour promised at Plombières to give up Savoy (Nice he did not promise) without the King's knowledge. Before he went there, he had brought Victor Emmanuel over to his own belief, justified or not, that without a bait Napoleon could not be got to[Pg.225]move. Directly after the interview, he wrote a full account of it to the King, in which he said: 'When the future fate of Italy was arranged, the Emperor asked me what France would have, and if your Majesty would cede Savoy and the county of Nice?' To which Cavour answered 'Yes' as to Savoy, but objected that Nice was essentially Italian. The Emperor twirled his moustache several times, and only said that these were secondary questions, about which there would be time to think later.Austria was always appealing to the right of treaties and the right of nations; not, as it happened, with much reason, for she had ridden or tried to ride rough-shod through as many treaties and through quite as many rights as most European Powers. In 1816 she was so determined to possess herself of Alessandria and the Upper Novarese that Lord Castlereagh advised Piedmont to join the Austrian Confederation, as then and only then the Emperor might withdraw his pretensions to this large slice of territory of a Prince with whom he was at peace. If he did withdraw them, it was not from respect for the treaties which, a year before, had confirmed the King of Sardinia's rights as an independent sovereign, but from respect for the untoward results to himself which he was afraid, on reflection, might arise from enforcing his claims with the bayonet. But people forget; and it was of vital consequence that virtuous Austria should figure in the coming conflict not as the victim of aggression but as the aggressor. On all sides it was said that the Austrian Government would never commit an error of such magnitude; only Cavour thought the contrary. 'I shallforceher to declare war against us,' he told Mr Odo Russell in December 1858. When asked by the incredulous diplomatist at what date he expected to[Pg.226]perform so great a feat, Cavour quietly answered: 'In the first week of May.' War was actually declared a few days sooner.For months Austria had been pouring troops into Italy, a large portion of which were massed on the frontier line of the Ticino. Who shall count the number of the men brought to fight and die in the Italian plains between 1848 and 1866 to sustain for that short time the weight of a condemned despotism? The supply was inexhaustible; they came from the Hungarian steppes, from the green valleys of Styria, from the mountains of Tyrol, from the woodlands of the Banat and of Bohemia; a blind million battling for a chimera. They came, and how many did not return?Austria's final refusal to adhere to the Congress scheme meant, of course, war, and Cavour called the Chamber and demanded a vote conferring upon Government the power to take such prompt measures as the situation required. 'We trust,' he said, 'that the Chamber will not hesitate to sanction the proposal to invest the King with plenary powers. Who could be a better guardian of our liberty? Who more worthy of the faith of the nation? He it is whose name a ten years' reign had made synonymous with honour and loyalty; who has always held high the tricolor standard of Italy, who now prepares to unsheath his sword for freedom and independence.'When Cavour walked out of the Chamber after the vote had been taken, he said: 'I am leaving the last sitting of the Piedmontese Parliament, the next will be that of the Kingdom of Italy.' At that moment, if ever in his career, the great minister who had fought so long a fight against incalculable obstacles learnt what it is to taste the sweetness of triumph.[Pg.227]CHAPTER XIITHE WAR FOR LOMBARDY1859Austria declares War—Montebello—Garibaldi's Campaign—Palestro—Magenta—The Allies enter Milan—Ricasoli saves Italian Unity—Accession of Francis II.—Solferino—The Armistice of Villafranca.Baron von Kellersperg reached Turin on the 23rd of April, bringing with him the Austrian ultimatum: 'Disarmament within three days, or war.' Cavour read the document, and then drew his watch out of his pocket. It was half-past five in the afternoon. At the same hour on the 26th, he gave Baron von Kellersperg the answer: 'Sardinia having accepted the principle of a general disarmament, as formulated by England, with the adhesion of France, Prussia and Russia, the Sardinian Government has no other explanation to make.' The retort was justified. Austria, which now required Sardinia to disarm, had refused to disarm herself. She must take the consequences.The British Government made a last desperate effort to maintain peace, and the Austrians always said that this was their ruin, as it delayed the invasion of Piedmont for a week. On the 29th appeared the Emperor Francis Joseph's Declaration of War, and on the same day the first Austrian columns crossed the Ticino. The Austrian commander-in-chief was Count Gyulai, who was in high favour with the aristocratic party,[Pg.228]by which his appointment was suggested to, if not forced upon, the Emperor. The latter, not altogether easy in his mind about Gyulai's capabilities, commissioned General Hess, in whom he placed full confidence, to keep his eye on him. Hess could not, however, do much more than take notes of one of the most remarkable and providential series of blunders ever committed by the commander of an army.In spite of the delay which the Austrians ascribed to the English peace negotiations, there was time for them to destroy the Sardinian army before the French came up. Gyulai had 100,000 men in the theatre of war, a number increased up to 200,000 during the campaign. Both Sardinia and her ally mustered much fewer men than were spoken of at Plombières. The Piedmontese could dispose of 56,000 infantry, formed in five divisions, one division of cavalry numbering 4,000, and one brigade of volunteers, to which the name was given of 'Cacciatori delle Alpi.' The enrolment of these was stopped when it had reached the small figure of 4,500 men, a figure that looks out of all proportion with the brilliant part they played. The same influences which cut short the enrolment prevented Cavour from keeping his distinct promise to give Garibaldi, now invested with the official rank of major-general, 10,000 regulars, with a battery and a troop of horse.The French army consisted of 128,000 men, including about 10,000 cavalry. The Emperor's Government had notified beforehand to Vienna that the passage of the Ticino by the Austrian troops would be considered equivalent to a declaration of war, and accordingly, on the 29th of April, diplomatic relations between the two Powers were broken off. The French forces had been really on the move for more than a week—ever since, in fact, by what the Marquis of Normanby called 'an[Pg.229]unpardonable breach of confidence,' the intention of Austria to invade Sardinia was communicated to Paris. The mobilisation was conducted with rapidity; in spite of the snow, which lay deep on the Mont Cenis, the first corps, under Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers, made a swift march over the Alps, and the foremost division entered Turin on the 30th of April. The troops of Canrobert and Niel, who commanded the third and fourth corps, were sent by Toulon and Marseilles, while the generals themselves went on to Turin in advance. MacMahon's corps, which was the second, was on its way from Algiers. The fifth corps, under the command of Prince Napoleon, was despatched at a later date to Tuscany, where it was kept in a state of inactivity, which suggested rather a political than a military mission. General Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angély commanded the Imperial Guard. Napoleon III assumed the supreme command of the allied armies, with General Vaillant as head of the staff.The condition of neither French nor Austrian army was satisfactory. The former had more modern arms and a greater proportion of old soldiers, but it was generally thought that the French cavalry, so far superior to the Prussian in the war of 1870, was inferior to the Austrian in 1859. The commissariat and ambulance arrangements of the French were disgraceful, though they had this advantage, that when there was food to be had the soldiers were allowed to eat it, while the Austrians were limited to half-a-pound of beef a day, and were only allowed to cook once in the twenty-four hours, which led to their having constantly to fight fasting. In point of discipline, they were probably superior to the French, who fought, however, and this should always be remembered of them in Italy, with the best will in the[Pg.230]world. They carried about their pet monkeys and dogs, and were always good-humoured and in good spirits, even when wounded. What would have been the effect on them of even a single defeat is a question which it is useless to discuss.In Napoleon's proclamation to the French people it was stated that the scope of the war was to give Italy to herself, not to make her change masters; the recompense of France would be to have upon her frontiers a friendly people which owed its independence to her. As things stood there were but two alternatives: Austria supreme as far as the Alps, or Italy free to the Adriatic. On the 12th of May, the Imperial yacht, theReine Hortense, steamed into the harbour of Genoa with the Emperor on board. A splendid reception awaited him, and amongst the first to greet him was Cavour. 'You may well rejoice,' said Napoleon, as he embraced the Sardinian statesman, 'for your plans are being realised.'Gyulai, who had insisted on invading Piedmont, contrary to the opinion of Hess (who counselled waiting for reinforcements on the left bank of the Mincio), wasted his time after crossing the Ticino in making plans and changing them while he could unquestionably have thrown himself on Turin had he possessed more resolution, and this was the only operation that could have justified the initial folly of the invasion. The taking of the capital might not have altered the fortunes of the war, but it would have had all the appearance of a triumph, and would have raised themoralof the Austrian soldiers. The allies had time to concentrate their forces near Tortona, and it was left to them to assume the offensive. The Austrians retired towards the Apennines, but made a forward movement on the 20th of May with the object of seizing[Pg.231]the heights of Casteggio which command the road to Piacenza; they were met by the allies at the village of Montebello where Marshal Lannes obtained a victory in 1800. The allies were completely successful in this first battle, the honours of the day falling to the Sardinian cavalry, which showed great gallantry. The Austrian forces were considerably superior in strength.Almost at the same time as the engagement of Montebello, Garibaldi with his diminutive army (which through the weeding-out of men unfit for service was reduced to about 3,500 before it took the field), crossed the Lago Maggiore, and advanced boldly into the heart of the enemy's country. The volunteers had no artillery, and by way of cavalry only some forty or fifty were mounted on their own horses and dignified with the name of 'guides.' They were badly armed and worse equipped; the only good thing they had was an excellent ambulance organised by Dr Bertani, Garibaldi's surgeon-general from Roman days downwards. But they formed a picturesque sight as they marched along gaily to the everlasting song, 'Addio, mia bella, addio'; and a physiognomist would have been struck by their intelligent and often distinguished faces: nobles and poets, budding doctors and lawyers, bristled in the ranks, while the officers were the still young veterans of 1848-1849: Cosenz, hero of Venice; Medici, the defender of the Vascello; Bixio, Sirtori, Cairoli—all the Knights of the Legend.Moving swiftly from place to place, and appearing where and when he was least expected, Garibaldi took the entire country of the Lombard lakes. Gyulai, who at first looked upon the Garibaldian march as a simple diversion intended to draw off his attention, now became[Pg.232]concerned, and dispatched Urban with 10,000 men to destroy the volunteers, and stem the insurrection which everywhere followed in their wake. On the 27th of May Garibaldi drove Urban from his position near San Fermo, and that commander had his mission still unfulfilled when he received the order to retreat after the battle of Magenta. The volunteers were free to pursue their way to Brescia and the Valtellina, where they performed many feats in the latter period of the war, winning the admiration of Hayn, the Austrian general opposed to them, which he was generous enough to express in no measured terms.The great war was meanwhile approaching its climax. After Montebello the whole French army executed a secret flank movement, changing its position from Voghera, where Gyulai believed it to be, and whence he expected it to move on to Piacenza, to the line of the Sesia, between Cameriano and Casale. To mask the main operations, the Sardinian forces were sent to Palestro, on the other side of the Sesia. On the 30th of May, they drove in the outposts of the enemy, and on the 31st fought the important engagement by which the Austrian attempt to retake Palestro was repelled, and great damage caused to Zobel's corps, which was obliged to leave eight guns sticking in the mud. The French Zouaves of the 3rd regiment fought with the Piedmontese, and made the battle famous by the reckless valour of their bayonet charges. Victor Emmanuel, deaf to all remonstrances, placed himself at their head, in consequence of which they elected him their corporal, an honour once paid to the first Napoleon.There is reason to think that after Palestro, Gyulai, having at last realised what Napoleon was about, wished to evacuate Lombardy, but was prevented from doing so by strong protests sent by the Emperor Francis[Pg.233]Joseph, who was at Verona. The Austrian army was in full retreat when it was pulled up near Magenta, with the object of checking the advance of the French, who had already begun to cross the Ticino by the bridges of San Martino and Buffalora, which the Austrians had tried to blow up, but had not succeeded from want of proper powder. In the great battle of the 4th of June, Austrians and French numbered respectively about 60,000 men; no Piedmontese were engaged till the evening, when a battalion of Bersaglieri arrived. The Imperial Guard, with which was Napoleon, had to bear the brunt of the fight for four hours, and ran a good chance of being annihilated; not a brilliant proof of French generalship, but happily the Austrians also committed grave mistakes. MacMahon's arrival at five in the afternoon prevented a catastrophe, and the fighting, which continued far into the night, was from this moment attended by results on the whole advantageous to the French. Not much more can be said. Magenta was very like a drawn battle. The Austrians are calculated to have lost 10,000 men, the French between 4,000 and 5,000. It was expected that the Austrians would renew the attack, but on the 5th, Gyulai ordered the retreat, which was the last order he had the opportunity of giving, as he was deprived of his command immediately after.At mid-day on the 5th, Milan, which was trembling on the verge of revolution, made the pleasurable discovery that there were no Austrians left in the town. The municipality sent out delegates with the keys of the city to Victor Emmanuel. At ten a.m. on the 7th, MacMahon's corps began to file down the streets. Words cannot describe the welcome given to them. How MacMahon lifted to his saddle-bow a child that was in danger of being crushed by the crowd will be[Pg.234]remembered from the pretty incident having passed into English poetry. On the 8th, the King and the Emperor made their entry amidst a new paroxysm of enthusiasm. Napoleon is reported to have exclaimed: 'How this people must have suffered!' In his proclamation 'to the Italian people,' which bears the same date as his entry into Milan, he renewed the assurance of the disinterested motives which had brought him to Italy: 'Your enemies, who are also mine, have endeavoured to diminish the universal sympathy felt in Europe for your cause, by causing it to be believed that I am making war for personal ambition, or to increase French territory. If there are men who fail to comprehend their epoch, I am not one of them. In the enlightened state of public opinion now prevailing, true greatness lies in the moral influence which we exercise rather than in sterile conquests.' The proclamation ended with the words: 'To-morrow you will be the citizens of a great country.' Not the least effusive demonstrations were reserved for Cavour, who joined his Sovereign a few days after the battle of Magenta.Leaving the Milanese to put their faith in princes while yet there was time, a glance must be taken at what had been going on in the rest of Italy, which was becoming a great nation far more rapidly, and in a much fuller sense than Napoleon III. expected or wished. When Austria sent her ultimatum to Turin, the Sardinian minister at the Court of Tuscany invited the Grand Duke's Government to take part in the war of liberation. This they refused to do. On perceiving, however, that he could not depend on his troops, the Grand Duke promised to co-operate with Piedmont, but his advisers did not now think it possible to save the grand ducal throne, unless Leopold II. abdicated in favour of his[Pg.235]son, who was not burdened with the fatal associations of the reaction of ten years before. Leopold probably thought that even his abdication would not keep out the deluge, and he took the more dignified course of declining to yield to force. On the 27th of April, accompanied by the Corps Diplomatique as far as the frontier, he left Tuscany. A Provisional Government was formed with Peruzzi at its head, which hastily raised 8000 men for immediate service under the command of General Ulloa. Before long Prince Napoleon, with the fifth corps of the French army, landed, for no reason that could be avowed, at Leghorn. The real motive was to prepare the way for the fabrication of a new kingdom of Etruria, which existed already in Napoleon's brain. This masterpiece of folly had but a lukewarm supporter in Prince Napoleon, who was the only Napoleon and about the only Frenchman (if he could be called one) who grasped the idea of the unity of Italy and sincerely applauded it. Had Jérôme Napoleon been born with the least comprehension of self-respect and personal dignity, his strong political intelligence and clear logical discernment must have produced something better than the most ineffectual career of the century.On the 8th of May, Baron Ricasoli took office under the Provisional Government as Minister of the Interior, and for nearly twelve months he was the real ruler of Tuscany. He had an ally of great strength, though of humble origin, in Giuseppe Dolfi, the baker, of whom it was currently said that any day he could summon 10,000 men to the Piazza della Signoria, who would obey him to the death. To Dolfi it was due that there were no disorders after the Grand Duke left. What Italy owes to the Lord of Brolio, history will never adequately state, because it is well-nigh impossible fully to realise how critical was[Pg.236]her position during all that year, from causes external and internal, and how disastrous would have been the slightest mistake or wavering in the direction of Tuscan affairs, which formed the central hinge of the whole complicated situation. Fortunate, indeed, was it that there was a man like the Iron Baron, who, by simple force of will, outwitted the enemies of Italy more thoroughly than even Cavour could do with all his astuteness. Austere, aristocratic, immovable from his purpose, indifferent to praise or blame, Ricasoli aimed at one point—the unity of the whole country; and neither Cavour's impatience for annexation to Piedmont, nor the scheme of Farini and Minghetti for averting the wrath of the French Emperor by a temporary and preparatory union of the central states, drew him one inch from the straight road, which was the only one he had ever learnt to walk in.In June, the Duke of Modena and the Duchess-Regent of Parma found it impossible to remain in their states, now that Austrian protection was withdrawn. The latter had done what she could to preserve the duchy for her young son, but the tide was too strong. These revolutions were accomplished quietly; but, some months after, on the incautious return to Parma of a man deeply implicated in the abuses of Charles III.'s government—Colonel Anviti—he was cruelly murdered; an act of vengeance which happily remained alone.After the battle of Magenta, when the Austrian troops were recalled from the Marches and Romagna, those districts rose and demanded the dictatorship of Piedmont. Napoleon foresaw that this would happen as far back as the Plombières interview, and at that date it did not appear that he meant to oppose it. But now, in Paris, the Clerical party were seized with panic, and the Empress-Regent, then, as always, completely under their control, did all in her power to arouse the[Pg.237]Emperor's opposition. The Pope , on his part, knowing that he was secure in Rome—thanks to the French garrison, which, though it hated its office, as the French writer Ampère and others bore witness, was sure to perform it faithfully—had the idea of sending his Swiss troops to put down the growing revolution. With these, and a few Roman troops of the line, Colonel Schmidt marched against Perugia, where, in restoring the Papal authority, he used a ferocity which, though denied by clerical writers, was attested by all contemporary accounts, and was called 'atrocious' by Sir James Hudson in a despatch to Lord John Russell. The significance of such facts, wrote the English minister at Turin, could only be the coming fall of the Pope's Temporal Power.L.C. Farini was sent by Victor Emmanuel to administer the provinces of Modena and Parma, and Massimo d'Azeglio was charged with the same mission in Romagna. The Marches of Ancona had been recovered by the Papal troops, which were concentrated in the district called La Cattolica, near Rimini. A volunteer corps, under the Piedmontese General Mezzacapo, was entrusted with the task of preventing them from crossing into the Legations.In the month of May, when the allies were reaping their first successes, an event occurred at Caserta which precipitated crisis in the South Italy. Ferdinand II. died at forty-eight years of age of a terrible complaint which had attacked him a few months earlier, when he went to meet his son's bride, the Princess Maria Sofia of Bavaria, sister of the Empress of Austria. The news from Upper Italy hastened his end; he is said to have exclaimed not long before he died: 'They have won the cause!'The accession of a youth, of whom nothing bad was known, to a throne[Pg.238]that had been occupied by a sovereign so out of place in modern civilisation as Ferdinand, would appear at first sight a fortunate circumstance for the chances of the dynasty; but it was not so. In an eastern country it matters little whether the best of the inhabitants loathe and detest their ruler; but it matters much whether he knows how to cajole and frighten the masses, and especially the army, into obedience. Naples, more Oriental than western, possessed in Ferdinand a monarch consummately expert in this side of the art of government. Though without the higher military virtues, his army was his favourite plaything; he always wore uniform, never forgot a face he had once seen, and treated the officers with a rather vulgar familiarity, guessing at their weaknesses and making use of them on occasion. The rank and file regarded him as a sort of supernatural being. Francis II., who succeeded him, could scarcely appear in this light even to the most ignorant. Popular opinion considered him not quite sound in his mind. Probably his timorous, awkward ways and his seeming stupidity were simply the result of an education conducted by bigoted priests in a home that was no home: populated as it was by the offspring of a stepmother who hated him. His own mother, the charming Princess Cristina of Savoy, died while the city was rejoicing at his birth. The story is well known of how, shortly after the marriage, Ferdinand thought it diverting to draw a music-stool from under his wife, causing her to fall heavily. It gives a sample of the sufferings of her brief married life. An inheritance of sorrow descended from her to her child.If Francis II. was not popular, neither was the new queen. Far more virile in character and in tastes than her husband, her high spirit was not what the Neapolitans admire in women, and those who were[Pg.239]devoted to the late King accused her of having shown impatience during his illness for the moment when the crown would fall to Francis. Malicious gossip of this kind, however false, serves its end. Thus, from one cause or another, the young King exercised a power sensibly weaker than that of his father, while, besides other enemies, he had an inveterate one in his stepmother, who began weaving a conspiracy to oust him from the throne and place on it the eldest of his half-brothers. This plot received, however, very little popular support.The Sardinian Government sought to persuade Francis to join in the war against Austria; disinterested counsel, as in taking it lay his only hope, but it was opposed by England, Russia and France. In July two of the Swiss regiments at Naples mutinied. The Swiss Government, becoming alive to the discredit cast on the country by mercenary service, had decided that Swiss subjects serving abroad should lose their rights as citizens of the Confederation whilst so employed, and that they should no longer introduce the arms of their respective cantons into their regimental colours. This was the immediate cause of their insubordination. The mutineers, most of whom were unarmed, were ruthlessly shot down in the Campo di Marte to the terror of the population, and the two Swiss regiments which remained quiet were dissolved; by which the monarchy lost the troops that were chiefly to be depended on in emergencies. The Austrians and Bavarians imported in their stead did not form separate regiments, but were incorporated among the native troops, though the regiments that contained them were commonly called 'Bavarian.' They only partially filled the place of the Swiss.[Pg.240]Between the 4th and the 24th of June, no engagement of any magnitude was fought in Lombardy except the attack on Benedek at Melegnano, a battle in which the French lost most men, and gained no strategical advantage. It was supposed to have been fought because Napoleon I. had gained a victory in the same neighbourhood. The Austrians retreated to the Mincio, destroying the bridges over the Adda, Serio, Oglio and Mella as they went; these rivers the allies had to make repassable, which is the excuse given for the dilatory nature of their pursuit of the enemy. The Emperor Francis Joseph had now assumed the command, with Hess as his principle adviser, and Wimpffen and Schlick, famous as the 'One-eyed,' as heads of the two great corps into which the army was divided.On the 22nd of June, the Austrians were ranged along the left bank of the Mincio from Peschiera to Mantua, and the French were massed near Montechiaro, on the Brescia road, which Napoleon had made his headquarters. In withdrawing all their men from the right bank of the river, the Austrians desired to create the impression that they had finally abandoned it. It was their plan, which did not lack boldness, to throw the whole army back upon the right bank, and to perform a concentric movement on Montechiaro, where they hoped to fall unawares on the French and destroy them. They were confident of success, for they knew what a good stand they had made at Magenta, and now that Gyulai was got rid of, and the young Emperor had taken the field, they did not doubt that fortune would turn her wheel. To these men of many nations, the presence of their Emperor was the one inspiration that could rouse them, for if they were fighting for anything, it was for him in the most personal sense; it was to secure his mastery of the[Pg.241]splendid land over which he looked from the castle of Valleggio, on the 23rd of June, whilst his brilliant staff stood round, waiting for the signal to mount and clatter down the steep road to the Mincio bridge. The army now advanced along all its line.Even the soberest writers have not resisted making some reference to the magnificent scene of to-morrow's battle. On one side, the mountain bulwarks rising tier on tier, gorgeous with the trancendent beauty of colour and light of the Italian summer; on the other, the vine-clad hillocks which fall gently away from the blue lake of Garda till they are lost in the

In spite of the accusation of favouring political assassination which was frequently launched against the Italian secret societies, only one of the faithless Italian princes came to a violent death, and his murder had no connection with politics. Charles III., Duke of Parma, was mortally stabbed in March 1854; some said that the assassin was a groom whom he had struck with a riding-whip; others, that he was the father or brother of one of the victims of the Duke's dissolute habits. The Duchess, a daughter of the Duke de Berry, assumed the Regency on behalf of her son, who was a child. She began by initiating many reforms; but a street disturbance in July gave Austria the desired excuse for meddling in the government, when all progress was, of course, arrested.

In December 1856, a soldier named Ageslao Milano attempted to assassinate the King of the Two Sicilies at a review. He belonged to no sect, but he had long premeditated the act. A few days later an earthquake occurred in the kingdom of Naples, by which over ten thousand persons lost their lives. Ferdinand II. grew morose, and shut[Pg.209]himself up in the royal palace of Caserta. The constant lectures of France and England annoyed him without persuading him to take the means to put a stop to them. Not till 1859 did he open the doors of the prisons in which Poerio, Settembrini and their companions were confined. Many plans were made, meanwhile, for their liberation, and English friends even provided a ship by which they were to escape; but the ship foundered: perhaps fortunately, as Garibaldi, with characteristic disinterestedness, had agreed to direct the enterprise, which could not have been otherwise than perilous, and was not unlikely to end in the loss of all concerned.

Disaster attended Baron Bentivegna's attempt at a rising at Taormina in 1856, and Carlo Pisacane's landing at Sapri in the summer of the following year had no better result. Pisacane, a son of the Duke Gennaro di San Giovanni of Naples, had fought in the defence of Rome and was a firm adherent of Mazzini, in conjunction with whom he planned his unlucky venture. Pisacane watched the growing ascendency of Piedmont with sorrow; he was one of the few, if not the only one of his party to say that he would as soon have the dominion of Austria as that of the House of Savoy. But if he was an extremist in politics, none the less he was a patriot, who took his life in his hands and offered it up to his country in the spirit of the noblest devotion. He had the slenderest hope of success, but he believed that only by such failures could the people be roused from their apathy. 'For me,' he wrote, 'it will be victory even if I die on the scaffold. This is all I can do, and this I do; the rest depends on the country, not on me. I have only my affections and my life to give, and I give them without hesitation.'

[Pg.210]With the young Baron Nicotera and twenty-three others, Pisacane embarked on theCagliari, a steamer belonging to a Sardinian mercantile line, which was bound for Tunis. When at sea, the captain was frightened into obedience, and the ship's course was directed to the isle of Ponza, where several hundred prisoners, mostly political, were undergoing their sentences. The guards made little resistance, and Pisacane opened the prisons, inviting who would to follow him. The first plan had been to make a descent on San Stefano, the island where Settembrini was imprisoned, but that good citizen had refused to admit the liberation of the non-political prisoners, which was an unavoidable feature in the scheme. With the addition of about three hundred men, Pisacane left Ponza for the mainland and disembarked near the village of Sapri, in the province of Salerno. From information received, he imagined that a revolutionary movement was on the point of breaking out in that district. Nothing could be further from the fact. The country people did all the harm they could to the band, which, after making a brave stand against the local militia, was cut to pieces by the royal troops. Pisacane fell fighting; those who were not killed were taken, and amongst these was Nicotera, who was kept in prison till set free by Garibaldi.

TheCagliariwas captured and detained with its crew. As two of the seamen were British subjects, the English Government joined Sardinia in demanding its restitution, which, after long delays, was conceded.

In 1857, the Emperor of Austria relieved Field-Marshal Radetsky, then in his ninety-third year, of the burden of office. He was given the right of living in any of the royal palaces, even in the Emperor's own residence at Vienna, but he preferred to spend the one remaining year[Pg.211]of his life in Italy. At the same time, the Archduke Maximilian was appointed Viceroy of Lombardy and Venetia. A more naturally amiable and cultivated Prince never had the evil fate forced upon him of attempting impossible tasks. Just married to the lovely Princess Charlotte of Belgium, he came to Italy radiant with happiness, and wishing to make everyone as happy as he was himself. Not even the chilling welcome he received damped his enthusiasm, for he thought the aversion of the population depended on undoubted wrongs, which it was his full intention to redress. He was to learn two things; firstly, that the day of reconciliation was past: there were too many ghosts between the Lombards and Venetians, and the House of Hapsburg. Secondly, that an unseen hand beyond the Brenner would diligently thwart each one of his benevolent designs. The system was, and was to remain, unchanged. It was not carried out quite as it was carried out in the first years after 1849. The exiles were allowed to return and the sequestrations were revoked. It should be said, because it shows the one white spot in Austrian despotism, its civil administration, that on resuming their rights of ownership the proprietors found that their estates had not been badly managed. But the depressing and deadening influence of an anti-national rule continued unabated. Lombardy and Venetia were governed not from Milan, but from Vienna. Very small were the crumbs which the Viceroy obtained, though he went on a journey to Austria expressly to plead for concessions. It is sad to think what an enlightened heir to the great Austrian empire was lost, when Napoleon III. and his own family sent Maximilian of Hapsburg to Queretaro.

While Cavour had come to the conclusion that the aid which he believed[Pg.212]essential for the expulsion of the Austrians could only come from the French Emperor, this sovereign was regarded by a not inconsiderable party of Italians as the greatest, if not the sole, obstacle to their liberation. All those, in particular, who came in contact with the French exiles, were impressed by them with the notion that France, the real France, was only waiting for the disappearance of the Man of December to throw herself into their arms. Among the Italians who held these opinions, there were a few with whom it became a fixed idea that the greatest service they could render their country was the removal of Napoleon from the political scene. They conceived and nourished the thought independently of one another; they belonged to no league, but for that reason they were the more dangerous; somewhere or other there was always someone planning to put an end to the Emperor's life. It is not worth while to pause to discuss the ethics of political assassination; civilisation has decided against it, and history proves its usual failure to promote the desired object. What benefit did the Confederate cause derive from the assassination of the good President Lincoln, or the cause of Russian liberty from that of Alexander II.? What will Anarchy gain by the murder of Carnot? It is certain, however, that never were men more convinced that they were executing a wild kind of justice than were the men who plotted against Napoleon III. They looked upon him as one of themselves who had turned traitor. There is a great probability that, in his early days when he was playing at conspiracy in Italy, he was actually enrolled as a Carbonaro. At all events, he had conspired for Italian freedom, and afterwards, to serve his own selfish interests, he extinguished it in Rome. The temporal power of the Pope was kept alive through him.[Pg.213]

A true account of the attempts on Napoleon's life will never be written, because the only persons who were able and willing to throw light on the subject, ex-police agents and their kind, are authorities whose word is worth a very limited acceptance. It is pretty sure that there were more plots than the public ever knew of, and that in some cases the plotters were disposed of summarily. Most of them were poor, ignorant creatures, but in January 1858 an attempt was made by a man of an entirely different stamp, Felice Orsini.

Born at Meldola in Romagna in 1819, he was of the true Romagnol type in mind and body; daring, resourceful, intolerant of control. From his earliest youth all his actions had but one object, the liberation of his country. His youthful brain was enflamed by Alfieri and Foscolo, who remained his favourite authors. He hated Austria well, and he hated the Papal government as no one but one of its own subjects could hate it. 'When the French landed in Italy' (he told his judges) 'it was hoped that they were come as friends, but they proved the worst of enemies. For a time they were repulsed, then they resumed the cloak of friendship, but only to wait for reinforcements. When these arrived they returned to the assault, a thousand against ten, and we were judicially assassinated.' A succinct and true narrative. During the republic Orsini was sent to Ancona, where anarchy had broken out; by vigorous measures he restored perfect order. In 1854 he was arrested in Hungary and condemned to death, but he escaped from Mantua under romantic circumstances and reached England, where the story of his audacious flight won for him many sympathisers. He was often seen in society. On one occasion he was asked to meet Prince Lucien Buonaparte. Orsini knew Mazzini, but he was impatient of his[Pg.214]mystical leanings, and he disapproved of such enterprises as Pisacane's, by which, as he thought, twenty or thirty men were sacrificed here or there without anything coming of it. He finally repudiated Mazzini's leadership, and in March 1857 he wrote to Cavour, asking him for a passport to return to Italy, and placing at the disposal of the Sardinian government 'the courage and energy which it had pleased God to give him,' provided that government left wavering behind, and showed its unmistakable will to achieve the independence of Italy. Cavour sent no reply, 'because,' he said later, 'the letter was noble and energetic, and I should have had to pay Orsini compliments which I did not deem fitting. 'Unlike Victor Emmanuel, who in after years carried on regular negotiations with Mazzini, Cavour, while ready to make an alliance with the Radicals in the Chamber, was extremely loth to have anything to do with actual revolutionists. His not answering Orsini's letter certainly led up to the attempt of the 14th of January 1858.

Having quarrelled with Mazzini, and receiving no encouragement from Cavour, Orsini evolved the plan which on that day he endeavoured to put into execution. He would have preferred to act alone, but since that was impossible, he sought and found without much difficulty two or three accomplices. One of these, Pieri, a teacher of languages, was arrested by the police, who recognised him as an old conspirator, before he threw the bomb which he was carrying. The other bombs were thrown just as the carriage containing the Imperial party drove up to the opera house. A number of people in the street were killed or injured, but the Emperor and Empress escaped unhurt. When they entered the theatre the Rutli scene of the conspirators inGuillaume Tellwas being performed. Not a breath of applause greeted them, though[Pg.215]everyone knew what had happened. Napoleon III. had a striking proof of how little hold he possessed on the affections of his subjects.

When at his trial Orsini was asked what he expected would happen if he had succeeded in killing the Emperor he answered: 'We were convinced that the surest way of making a revolution in Italy was to excite one in France, and that the surest way of making a revolution in France was to kill the Emperor.' There is a good deal of curious evidence to show that very elaborate preparations had been made for a revolution in Paris. The French police had orders, however, to keep all this aspect of the affair out of sight. It was to be made to appear the isolated act of a misguided Italian patriot. 'The world possesses an Orsini legend,' writes the late Duke of Saxe-Coburg, who was present at the event, having been invited to join the Emperor at the opera, 'which is quite at variance with facts.' The duke clearly thinks that the conviction of the instability of his throne which was brought home to the Emperor on this occasion, was one of the causes which decided him to try the diversion of public opinion into other channels by means of a foreign war.

Everything was done to make Orsini a hero in the eyes of the French public, and to excite sympathy in his cause. Jules Favre by his eloquent defence in which he pleaded not for the life, but for the honour of his client, and still more Orsini's own letter to the Emperor, produced a powerful impression; there was a dramatic interest in the man who, disdaining to crave clemency for himself, tried a last supreme effort in the service of the country he had loved too well. 'Deliver my fatherland, and the blessings of twenty-five million citizens will be with you.' So concluded the letter in which Orsini[Pg.216]told Napoleon, that till Italy was free there would be no peace for Europe—nor for him. It was whispered that the Emperor had a secret interview with the condemned man at the Mazas prison; at any rate, when Orsini mounted the scaffold, he was borne up, not only by his invincible courage, but by the strongest hope, if not the certainty that his last prayer would have only a short time to wait for fulfilment.

Though persons who were able to read the signs of the times no longer doubted that Napoleon had resolved to solve the Italian question by force of arms, it suited his purpose to occupy the public mind for the moment with the furious agitation against England and Piedmont as 'dens of assassins,' which led to the fall of the Palmerston administration on the Conspiracy Bill, and seemed to almost place in jeopardy the throne of Victor Emmanuel. Napoleon sent the King of Sardinia demands so sweeping in language so threatening, that the old Savoy blood was fired, and Victor Emmanuel returned the answer: 'Tell the Emperor in whatever terms you think best that this is not the way to treat a faithful ally; that I have never tolerated violence from anyone; that I follow the path of unstained honour, and for that honour I am only answerable to God and to my people. That we have carried our head high for 850 years, and no one will make me lower it; and that, nevertheless, I desire nothing better than to remain his friend.' This reply was benevolently received; Cavour passed through the Chambers a bill which, though not corresponding to the extravagant pretensions of the French Government, gave reasonable security against the concoction of plots of a criminal nature; Napoleon expressed himself satisfied, and three months after, despatched Dr Conneau to Turin, to mention, quite by the way, to the Piedmontese minister, that[Pg.217]he would be glad to have a conversation with him on Italian affairs. This was the preliminary of the interview of Plombières.

Plombières is a watering-place in the Vosges, which became famous on the 20th of July 1858, the day on which Napoleon III. and Cavour entered into the compact that laid down the conditions of the Italian war. The Emperor was to bring 200,000 men into Italy, and the King of Sardinia undertook to furnish 100,000. The Austrians were to be expelled from Italy. The kingdom of Upper Italy would embrace the Legations and the Marches then under the Pope. Savoy would be ceded to France. The marriage of the Emperor's cousin with the Princess Clotilde was not made a condition of the war, and only in case it had been made a condition, was Cavour empowered to agree to it. He, therefore, left it uncertain; but he came away from Plombières convinced that nearly everything depended upon its happening. Napoleon was beyond measure anxious for a marriage which would ally him with one of the oldest reigning families in Europe. It would be a fatal mistake, Cavour thought, to join the Emperor, and at the same time, to offend him in a way which he would never forget. Directly after the interview, he wrote a long letter to the King to persuade him to yield the point. After all, where would the Princess find a more promising match? Was it easy to provide husbands for princesses? Were not they generally extremely unhappy in marriage? What had happened to the King's four aunts, all charming princesses, who had married the Duke of Modena, the Duke of Lucca, the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, and the King of Naples? Had they been happy? Prince Napoleon could not be so very bad, as he was known to have hurried to Cannes to pay a last visit to a woman whom he had loved, a great actress, then upon her[Pg.218]deathbed. This reminiscence was a singular one to evoke under the circumstances, but Cavour was not an Englishman, and he was not impressed by the propriety of drawing a veil over facts which everyone knew.

The King's instinct told him that his young daughter, pious and simple and destitute even of that seasoning of vanity which is so good and necessary a thing in a woman, but proud at heart like all her race, would derive no compensation from the outward brilliancy of the Imperial Court for the absence of domestic joy which would be her wedded lot unless a surprising change came over the bridegroom. When, however, he was persuaded of the importance, or rather, of the essential character of the concession, he said to Cavour: 'I am making a great sacrifice, but I yield to your arguments. Still my consent is subordinate to the freely given consent of my daughter.' The matter was referred to the Princess, who answered: 'It is the wish of my father; therefore this marriage will be useful to my family and my country, and I accept.' An answer worthy of one who, twelve years later, when the members of the Imperial House were flying, remained quietly in Paris, saying: 'Savoy and fear are not acquainted.'

The marriage was celebrated at Turin in January. The King made a present to Cavour, as a souvenir of the event, of a ring representing two heartseases. In thanking him, the minister said: 'Your Majesty knows that I shall never marry.' 'I know,' replied the King; 'your bride is the country.'

Though warlike rumours circulated off and on, the secret of the understanding arrived at in the Plombières interview was well preserved, and the words spoken by Napoleon to the Austrian Ambassador at the New Year's Day reception fell on Europe with the effect of a[Pg.219]bombshell. Turning to Baron Hubner, he said: 'Je regrette que les relations entre nous soient si mauvaises; dîtes cependant à votre souverain que mes sentiments pour lui ne sont pas changés.'

Even Cavour was startled. Probably till that moment he had never felt sure that Napoleon would not after all throw the Italian cause to the winds. The Emperor's invariable method in dealing with men was to mystify them. He was pleased to pose as a faithful ally, but human intellect was insufficient to fathom what he meant. On this system, skilfully pursued, was reared the whole fabric of Louis Napoleon's reputation for being a profound politician. Bearing the fact in mind, we can easily see why that reputation crumbled away almost entirely when the present became the past. There are few cases in which there is more disagreement between the judgment of contemporaries and that of immediate posterity than the case of the French Emperor.

The least surprised, and, among Italians, the most dissatisfied at the New Year's Day pronouncement was Mazzini, who when he read it in theTimesnext morning felt that the Napoleonic war closed the heroic period of Italian Liberation. To men like Mazzini failure is apt to seem more heroic than success, and the war of 1859 did close the period of failure. The justification for calling in foreign arms could only be in necessity, and Mazzini denied the necessity. Charles Albert denied it in 1848 with no less confident a voice. Then, indeed, there did appear a chance of Italy making herself, but was there the slightest prospect, eleven years later, of that chance being repeated? Each student of history may answer for himself. What is plain is, that France and Sardiniatogetherwere to find it an exceedingly hard task even to drive the Austrians out of Lombardy.

[Pg.220]The unconquerable dislike of men of principle, like Mazzini, to joining hands with the author of thecoup d'étatwas perfectly explicable. There were doubtless some sincere Bulgarian patriots who disliked joining hands with the Autocrat of all the Russias. The gift of freedom from a despot means a long list of evils. Mazzini grasped the maleficent influence which Napoleon III. would be in a position to exercise over the young state; he knew, moreover, when only two or three other persons in Europe knew it, that the bargain of Plombières was on the principle of give-and-take. How Mazzini was for many years better informed than any cabinet in Europe, remains a secret. 'I know positively,' he wrote on the 4th of January 1859, 'that the idea of the war is only to hand over a zone of Lombardy to Piedmont, and the cession of Savoy and Nice to France: the peace, upon the offer of which they count, would abandon the whole of Venetia to Austria.' A month before this he had disclosed what was certainly true, namely, that Napoleon wanted to place a Murat on the throne of Naples, and to substitute Prince Napoleon for the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The point that is doubtful in the above revelation is the statement that the Emperor never meant to emancipate Venetia. The probabilities are against this. He may, however, have questioned all along whether his troops, with those of the King of Sardinia, would display a superiority over the Austrian forces sufficiently incontestable for him to risk taking them into the mouse-trap of the Quadrilateral. In this one thing Napoleon was amply justified—in having no sort of desire to take a beaten army back to Paris.

Mazzini, with the more extreme members of the Party of Action (including Crispi), issued a protest against the Napoleonic war, with[Pg.221]the advice to have nothing to do with it or its authors. But Italy thought otherwise, and Garibaldi, the man who of all others most nearly represented the heart of Italy, rejoiced and was glad. He did not believe a word about the proposed cession of Savoy and Nice; no one did, except Mazzini and his few disciples. What he saw was, that a great step towards independence was about to be taken. In 1856, he not only adhered to Manin's call to all Italians to rally round the house of Savoy, but went further than Manin in accepting unconditionally what he called the 'Savoy Dictatorship,' to which he left full liberty of choice in the matter of ways and means. He did justice then to Cavour's patriotism: it was only after the sacrifice of Nice that a feeling of bitter antagonism grew up in him for the man who he thought had deceived Italy and himself. In December 1858, on a summons from Cavour, he left Caprera (the island which he had bought with a little inheritance falling to him on the death of his brother) and proceeded to Turin, where he was informed of a plan for a rising in Massa and Carrara, which was originally intended to be the signal of the war. The plan was given up, but in March 1859, Garibaldi was told by Victor Emmanuel in person of the imminence of war, and was invited to take part in it as commander of an auxiliary corps of volunteers which took the name of 'Cacciatori delle Alpi.' In this way, all his own followers, not only those in arms, but the great mass of the people which was obedient to his lead, became enrolled in the service of the Sardinian monarchy; a fact of capital importance in the future development of affairs. Without it, the Italian kingdom could not have been formed. And this fact was due to Cavour, who had to fight the arrayed strength of the old, narrow, military caste at Turin, which[Pg.222]had succeeded in getting Garibaldi's sword refused in 1848, and wished for nothing in the world more than to get it refused in 1859. Near the end of his life, Cavour said in the Chamber that the difficulties he encountered in inducing the Sardinian War Office to sanction the appointment were all but insurmountable. Unfortunately, the jealousy of the heads of the regular army for the revolutionary captain never ceased. As for Cavour, even when he opposed Garibaldi politically, he always strove to have the highest personal honour paid to the man of whom he once wrote 'that he had rendered Italy the greatest service it was possible to render her.'

True to hisrôleof mystification, one week after the shot fired on the 1st of January, Napoleon inserted an official statement in theMoniteurto the effect that, although public opinion had been agitated by alarming rumours, there was nothing in the foreign relations of France to justify the fears these rumours tended to create. He continued on this tack, with more or less consistency, to the very verge of the outbreak of hostilities. 'The Empire was peace,' as it was always announced to be in the intervals when it was not war; there was no more harmless dove in Europe than the person enthroned in the Tuileries. These assurances were given more credence than they deserved by the Conservative Cabinet then in power in England, and the British ministers believed to the last that war would be averted, to which end they strained every nerve. Besides the wish felt by every English government to preserve European peace, there was at this juncture, not only in the Cabinet, but in the country, so much fear of Napoleon's ambition and restlessness, that for the time being,[Pg.223]sympathy with Italy was relegated to a second place.

Meanwhile there was no want of plainness in the language employed in Piedmont. In opening the second session of the sixth Sardinian Parliament, Victor Emmanuel pronounced, on 10th January, the historic phrase declaring that he could not remain insensible to the cry of grief,il grido di dolore, that reached him from all parts of Italy. Every corner of the fair country where theSisounds was electrified. The words, as has since become known, were introduced into the speech by the King himself. As Cavour had foreseen, Austria played into his hands. To Lord Malmesbury's appeal to evacuate the Roman Legations, and to use Austrian influence with the Italian princes in procuring the concession of necessary reforms, Count Buol replied in terms that were the reverse of obliging: 'We do not mean to abdicate our right of intervention, and if we are called upon to help the Italian sovereigns with our arms, we shall do so. We shall not recommend their governments to undertake any reforms. France plays the part of protectress of nationalities; we are, and shall be, protectors of dynastic rights.' Finally, England proposed a congress with a view to general disarmament. Piedmont, counting on the madness of her adversary, risked agreement with this plan. Austria gave a peremptory refusal to have anything to do with it.

Cavour now asked Parliament to vote a war loan of £2,000,000, which was passed by a majority of 81 out of 151 votes. No foreign banker would undertake to negotiate the loan, but it was twice covered by Italian buyers, nearly all small capitalists, who put their money into it as a patriotic duty. Amongst the few deputies who opposed the loan was the old apostle of retrogression, Count Solaro della Margherita, who raised his solitary voice against the tide of revolution; and the Savoyard the Marquis Costa de Beauregard whose speech was pathetic[Pg.224]from the melancholy foreboding which pervaded it that the making of Italy meant the unmaking of Savoy. Speaking in the name of his fellow-countrymen, the Marquis reconfirmed the profound love of Savoy for her Royal House and her total lack of solidarity with the aspirations of Italy. With time the Savoyards might have learnt to be Italians as their king had learnt to be an Italian king. Or they might not. Possibly the best solution would have been to join Savoy to the Swiss Confederation, though the martial instincts of the race were not favourable to their Conversion into peaceful Helvetic citizens. From one point of view, that of military defence, the retention of the province was of infinitely more moment to the future Italy than to little Piedmont. Sardinia could keep the peace with France for an indefinite period; Italy cannot. What is true of Savoy is far more true of Nice. To have it in foreign keeping is to have a very partially reformed burglar inside your house.

'Notre roi,' said an old ragged fisherman of the Lac de Bourget to the writer of this book,—'Notre roi nous a vendus.' Not willingly did Victor Emmanuel incur that charge, in which the rebound from love to hate was so clearly heard; not willingly did he give up Maurienne, cradle of his race, Hautecombe, grave of his fathers. It was the greatest sacrifice, he said, that Italy could have asked of him. Nor is there any reason to doubt his word. But it is incorrect to suppose, as many have supposed, that Cavour promised at Plombières to give up Savoy (Nice he did not promise) without the King's knowledge. Before he went there, he had brought Victor Emmanuel over to his own belief, justified or not, that without a bait Napoleon could not be got to[Pg.225]move. Directly after the interview, he wrote a full account of it to the King, in which he said: 'When the future fate of Italy was arranged, the Emperor asked me what France would have, and if your Majesty would cede Savoy and the county of Nice?' To which Cavour answered 'Yes' as to Savoy, but objected that Nice was essentially Italian. The Emperor twirled his moustache several times, and only said that these were secondary questions, about which there would be time to think later.

Austria was always appealing to the right of treaties and the right of nations; not, as it happened, with much reason, for she had ridden or tried to ride rough-shod through as many treaties and through quite as many rights as most European Powers. In 1816 she was so determined to possess herself of Alessandria and the Upper Novarese that Lord Castlereagh advised Piedmont to join the Austrian Confederation, as then and only then the Emperor might withdraw his pretensions to this large slice of territory of a Prince with whom he was at peace. If he did withdraw them, it was not from respect for the treaties which, a year before, had confirmed the King of Sardinia's rights as an independent sovereign, but from respect for the untoward results to himself which he was afraid, on reflection, might arise from enforcing his claims with the bayonet. But people forget; and it was of vital consequence that virtuous Austria should figure in the coming conflict not as the victim of aggression but as the aggressor. On all sides it was said that the Austrian Government would never commit an error of such magnitude; only Cavour thought the contrary. 'I shallforceher to declare war against us,' he told Mr Odo Russell in December 1858. When asked by the incredulous diplomatist at what date he expected to[Pg.226]perform so great a feat, Cavour quietly answered: 'In the first week of May.' War was actually declared a few days sooner.

For months Austria had been pouring troops into Italy, a large portion of which were massed on the frontier line of the Ticino. Who shall count the number of the men brought to fight and die in the Italian plains between 1848 and 1866 to sustain for that short time the weight of a condemned despotism? The supply was inexhaustible; they came from the Hungarian steppes, from the green valleys of Styria, from the mountains of Tyrol, from the woodlands of the Banat and of Bohemia; a blind million battling for a chimera. They came, and how many did not return?

Austria's final refusal to adhere to the Congress scheme meant, of course, war, and Cavour called the Chamber and demanded a vote conferring upon Government the power to take such prompt measures as the situation required. 'We trust,' he said, 'that the Chamber will not hesitate to sanction the proposal to invest the King with plenary powers. Who could be a better guardian of our liberty? Who more worthy of the faith of the nation? He it is whose name a ten years' reign had made synonymous with honour and loyalty; who has always held high the tricolor standard of Italy, who now prepares to unsheath his sword for freedom and independence.'

When Cavour walked out of the Chamber after the vote had been taken, he said: 'I am leaving the last sitting of the Piedmontese Parliament, the next will be that of the Kingdom of Italy.' At that moment, if ever in his career, the great minister who had fought so long a fight against incalculable obstacles learnt what it is to taste the sweetness of triumph.

Baron von Kellersperg reached Turin on the 23rd of April, bringing with him the Austrian ultimatum: 'Disarmament within three days, or war.' Cavour read the document, and then drew his watch out of his pocket. It was half-past five in the afternoon. At the same hour on the 26th, he gave Baron von Kellersperg the answer: 'Sardinia having accepted the principle of a general disarmament, as formulated by England, with the adhesion of France, Prussia and Russia, the Sardinian Government has no other explanation to make.' The retort was justified. Austria, which now required Sardinia to disarm, had refused to disarm herself. She must take the consequences.

The British Government made a last desperate effort to maintain peace, and the Austrians always said that this was their ruin, as it delayed the invasion of Piedmont for a week. On the 29th appeared the Emperor Francis Joseph's Declaration of War, and on the same day the first Austrian columns crossed the Ticino. The Austrian commander-in-chief was Count Gyulai, who was in high favour with the aristocratic party,[Pg.228]by which his appointment was suggested to, if not forced upon, the Emperor. The latter, not altogether easy in his mind about Gyulai's capabilities, commissioned General Hess, in whom he placed full confidence, to keep his eye on him. Hess could not, however, do much more than take notes of one of the most remarkable and providential series of blunders ever committed by the commander of an army.

In spite of the delay which the Austrians ascribed to the English peace negotiations, there was time for them to destroy the Sardinian army before the French came up. Gyulai had 100,000 men in the theatre of war, a number increased up to 200,000 during the campaign. Both Sardinia and her ally mustered much fewer men than were spoken of at Plombières. The Piedmontese could dispose of 56,000 infantry, formed in five divisions, one division of cavalry numbering 4,000, and one brigade of volunteers, to which the name was given of 'Cacciatori delle Alpi.' The enrolment of these was stopped when it had reached the small figure of 4,500 men, a figure that looks out of all proportion with the brilliant part they played. The same influences which cut short the enrolment prevented Cavour from keeping his distinct promise to give Garibaldi, now invested with the official rank of major-general, 10,000 regulars, with a battery and a troop of horse.

The French army consisted of 128,000 men, including about 10,000 cavalry. The Emperor's Government had notified beforehand to Vienna that the passage of the Ticino by the Austrian troops would be considered equivalent to a declaration of war, and accordingly, on the 29th of April, diplomatic relations between the two Powers were broken off. The French forces had been really on the move for more than a week—ever since, in fact, by what the Marquis of Normanby called 'an[Pg.229]unpardonable breach of confidence,' the intention of Austria to invade Sardinia was communicated to Paris. The mobilisation was conducted with rapidity; in spite of the snow, which lay deep on the Mont Cenis, the first corps, under Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers, made a swift march over the Alps, and the foremost division entered Turin on the 30th of April. The troops of Canrobert and Niel, who commanded the third and fourth corps, were sent by Toulon and Marseilles, while the generals themselves went on to Turin in advance. MacMahon's corps, which was the second, was on its way from Algiers. The fifth corps, under the command of Prince Napoleon, was despatched at a later date to Tuscany, where it was kept in a state of inactivity, which suggested rather a political than a military mission. General Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angély commanded the Imperial Guard. Napoleon III assumed the supreme command of the allied armies, with General Vaillant as head of the staff.

The condition of neither French nor Austrian army was satisfactory. The former had more modern arms and a greater proportion of old soldiers, but it was generally thought that the French cavalry, so far superior to the Prussian in the war of 1870, was inferior to the Austrian in 1859. The commissariat and ambulance arrangements of the French were disgraceful, though they had this advantage, that when there was food to be had the soldiers were allowed to eat it, while the Austrians were limited to half-a-pound of beef a day, and were only allowed to cook once in the twenty-four hours, which led to their having constantly to fight fasting. In point of discipline, they were probably superior to the French, who fought, however, and this should always be remembered of them in Italy, with the best will in the[Pg.230]world. They carried about their pet monkeys and dogs, and were always good-humoured and in good spirits, even when wounded. What would have been the effect on them of even a single defeat is a question which it is useless to discuss.

In Napoleon's proclamation to the French people it was stated that the scope of the war was to give Italy to herself, not to make her change masters; the recompense of France would be to have upon her frontiers a friendly people which owed its independence to her. As things stood there were but two alternatives: Austria supreme as far as the Alps, or Italy free to the Adriatic. On the 12th of May, the Imperial yacht, theReine Hortense, steamed into the harbour of Genoa with the Emperor on board. A splendid reception awaited him, and amongst the first to greet him was Cavour. 'You may well rejoice,' said Napoleon, as he embraced the Sardinian statesman, 'for your plans are being realised.'

Gyulai, who had insisted on invading Piedmont, contrary to the opinion of Hess (who counselled waiting for reinforcements on the left bank of the Mincio), wasted his time after crossing the Ticino in making plans and changing them while he could unquestionably have thrown himself on Turin had he possessed more resolution, and this was the only operation that could have justified the initial folly of the invasion. The taking of the capital might not have altered the fortunes of the war, but it would have had all the appearance of a triumph, and would have raised themoralof the Austrian soldiers. The allies had time to concentrate their forces near Tortona, and it was left to them to assume the offensive. The Austrians retired towards the Apennines, but made a forward movement on the 20th of May with the object of seizing[Pg.231]the heights of Casteggio which command the road to Piacenza; they were met by the allies at the village of Montebello where Marshal Lannes obtained a victory in 1800. The allies were completely successful in this first battle, the honours of the day falling to the Sardinian cavalry, which showed great gallantry. The Austrian forces were considerably superior in strength.

Almost at the same time as the engagement of Montebello, Garibaldi with his diminutive army (which through the weeding-out of men unfit for service was reduced to about 3,500 before it took the field), crossed the Lago Maggiore, and advanced boldly into the heart of the enemy's country. The volunteers had no artillery, and by way of cavalry only some forty or fifty were mounted on their own horses and dignified with the name of 'guides.' They were badly armed and worse equipped; the only good thing they had was an excellent ambulance organised by Dr Bertani, Garibaldi's surgeon-general from Roman days downwards. But they formed a picturesque sight as they marched along gaily to the everlasting song, 'Addio, mia bella, addio'; and a physiognomist would have been struck by their intelligent and often distinguished faces: nobles and poets, budding doctors and lawyers, bristled in the ranks, while the officers were the still young veterans of 1848-1849: Cosenz, hero of Venice; Medici, the defender of the Vascello; Bixio, Sirtori, Cairoli—all the Knights of the Legend.

Moving swiftly from place to place, and appearing where and when he was least expected, Garibaldi took the entire country of the Lombard lakes. Gyulai, who at first looked upon the Garibaldian march as a simple diversion intended to draw off his attention, now became[Pg.232]concerned, and dispatched Urban with 10,000 men to destroy the volunteers, and stem the insurrection which everywhere followed in their wake. On the 27th of May Garibaldi drove Urban from his position near San Fermo, and that commander had his mission still unfulfilled when he received the order to retreat after the battle of Magenta. The volunteers were free to pursue their way to Brescia and the Valtellina, where they performed many feats in the latter period of the war, winning the admiration of Hayn, the Austrian general opposed to them, which he was generous enough to express in no measured terms.

The great war was meanwhile approaching its climax. After Montebello the whole French army executed a secret flank movement, changing its position from Voghera, where Gyulai believed it to be, and whence he expected it to move on to Piacenza, to the line of the Sesia, between Cameriano and Casale. To mask the main operations, the Sardinian forces were sent to Palestro, on the other side of the Sesia. On the 30th of May, they drove in the outposts of the enemy, and on the 31st fought the important engagement by which the Austrian attempt to retake Palestro was repelled, and great damage caused to Zobel's corps, which was obliged to leave eight guns sticking in the mud. The French Zouaves of the 3rd regiment fought with the Piedmontese, and made the battle famous by the reckless valour of their bayonet charges. Victor Emmanuel, deaf to all remonstrances, placed himself at their head, in consequence of which they elected him their corporal, an honour once paid to the first Napoleon.

There is reason to think that after Palestro, Gyulai, having at last realised what Napoleon was about, wished to evacuate Lombardy, but was prevented from doing so by strong protests sent by the Emperor Francis[Pg.233]Joseph, who was at Verona. The Austrian army was in full retreat when it was pulled up near Magenta, with the object of checking the advance of the French, who had already begun to cross the Ticino by the bridges of San Martino and Buffalora, which the Austrians had tried to blow up, but had not succeeded from want of proper powder. In the great battle of the 4th of June, Austrians and French numbered respectively about 60,000 men; no Piedmontese were engaged till the evening, when a battalion of Bersaglieri arrived. The Imperial Guard, with which was Napoleon, had to bear the brunt of the fight for four hours, and ran a good chance of being annihilated; not a brilliant proof of French generalship, but happily the Austrians also committed grave mistakes. MacMahon's arrival at five in the afternoon prevented a catastrophe, and the fighting, which continued far into the night, was from this moment attended by results on the whole advantageous to the French. Not much more can be said. Magenta was very like a drawn battle. The Austrians are calculated to have lost 10,000 men, the French between 4,000 and 5,000. It was expected that the Austrians would renew the attack, but on the 5th, Gyulai ordered the retreat, which was the last order he had the opportunity of giving, as he was deprived of his command immediately after.

At mid-day on the 5th, Milan, which was trembling on the verge of revolution, made the pleasurable discovery that there were no Austrians left in the town. The municipality sent out delegates with the keys of the city to Victor Emmanuel. At ten a.m. on the 7th, MacMahon's corps began to file down the streets. Words cannot describe the welcome given to them. How MacMahon lifted to his saddle-bow a child that was in danger of being crushed by the crowd will be[Pg.234]remembered from the pretty incident having passed into English poetry. On the 8th, the King and the Emperor made their entry amidst a new paroxysm of enthusiasm. Napoleon is reported to have exclaimed: 'How this people must have suffered!' In his proclamation 'to the Italian people,' which bears the same date as his entry into Milan, he renewed the assurance of the disinterested motives which had brought him to Italy: 'Your enemies, who are also mine, have endeavoured to diminish the universal sympathy felt in Europe for your cause, by causing it to be believed that I am making war for personal ambition, or to increase French territory. If there are men who fail to comprehend their epoch, I am not one of them. In the enlightened state of public opinion now prevailing, true greatness lies in the moral influence which we exercise rather than in sterile conquests.' The proclamation ended with the words: 'To-morrow you will be the citizens of a great country.' Not the least effusive demonstrations were reserved for Cavour, who joined his Sovereign a few days after the battle of Magenta.

Leaving the Milanese to put their faith in princes while yet there was time, a glance must be taken at what had been going on in the rest of Italy, which was becoming a great nation far more rapidly, and in a much fuller sense than Napoleon III. expected or wished. When Austria sent her ultimatum to Turin, the Sardinian minister at the Court of Tuscany invited the Grand Duke's Government to take part in the war of liberation. This they refused to do. On perceiving, however, that he could not depend on his troops, the Grand Duke promised to co-operate with Piedmont, but his advisers did not now think it possible to save the grand ducal throne, unless Leopold II. abdicated in favour of his[Pg.235]son, who was not burdened with the fatal associations of the reaction of ten years before. Leopold probably thought that even his abdication would not keep out the deluge, and he took the more dignified course of declining to yield to force. On the 27th of April, accompanied by the Corps Diplomatique as far as the frontier, he left Tuscany. A Provisional Government was formed with Peruzzi at its head, which hastily raised 8000 men for immediate service under the command of General Ulloa. Before long Prince Napoleon, with the fifth corps of the French army, landed, for no reason that could be avowed, at Leghorn. The real motive was to prepare the way for the fabrication of a new kingdom of Etruria, which existed already in Napoleon's brain. This masterpiece of folly had but a lukewarm supporter in Prince Napoleon, who was the only Napoleon and about the only Frenchman (if he could be called one) who grasped the idea of the unity of Italy and sincerely applauded it. Had Jérôme Napoleon been born with the least comprehension of self-respect and personal dignity, his strong political intelligence and clear logical discernment must have produced something better than the most ineffectual career of the century.

On the 8th of May, Baron Ricasoli took office under the Provisional Government as Minister of the Interior, and for nearly twelve months he was the real ruler of Tuscany. He had an ally of great strength, though of humble origin, in Giuseppe Dolfi, the baker, of whom it was currently said that any day he could summon 10,000 men to the Piazza della Signoria, who would obey him to the death. To Dolfi it was due that there were no disorders after the Grand Duke left. What Italy owes to the Lord of Brolio, history will never adequately state, because it is well-nigh impossible fully to realise how critical was[Pg.236]her position during all that year, from causes external and internal, and how disastrous would have been the slightest mistake or wavering in the direction of Tuscan affairs, which formed the central hinge of the whole complicated situation. Fortunate, indeed, was it that there was a man like the Iron Baron, who, by simple force of will, outwitted the enemies of Italy more thoroughly than even Cavour could do with all his astuteness. Austere, aristocratic, immovable from his purpose, indifferent to praise or blame, Ricasoli aimed at one point—the unity of the whole country; and neither Cavour's impatience for annexation to Piedmont, nor the scheme of Farini and Minghetti for averting the wrath of the French Emperor by a temporary and preparatory union of the central states, drew him one inch from the straight road, which was the only one he had ever learnt to walk in.

In June, the Duke of Modena and the Duchess-Regent of Parma found it impossible to remain in their states, now that Austrian protection was withdrawn. The latter had done what she could to preserve the duchy for her young son, but the tide was too strong. These revolutions were accomplished quietly; but, some months after, on the incautious return to Parma of a man deeply implicated in the abuses of Charles III.'s government—Colonel Anviti—he was cruelly murdered; an act of vengeance which happily remained alone.

After the battle of Magenta, when the Austrian troops were recalled from the Marches and Romagna, those districts rose and demanded the dictatorship of Piedmont. Napoleon foresaw that this would happen as far back as the Plombières interview, and at that date it did not appear that he meant to oppose it. But now, in Paris, the Clerical party were seized with panic, and the Empress-Regent, then, as always, completely under their control, did all in her power to arouse the[Pg.237]Emperor's opposition. The Pope , on his part, knowing that he was secure in Rome—thanks to the French garrison, which, though it hated its office, as the French writer Ampère and others bore witness, was sure to perform it faithfully—had the idea of sending his Swiss troops to put down the growing revolution. With these, and a few Roman troops of the line, Colonel Schmidt marched against Perugia, where, in restoring the Papal authority, he used a ferocity which, though denied by clerical writers, was attested by all contemporary accounts, and was called 'atrocious' by Sir James Hudson in a despatch to Lord John Russell. The significance of such facts, wrote the English minister at Turin, could only be the coming fall of the Pope's Temporal Power.

L.C. Farini was sent by Victor Emmanuel to administer the provinces of Modena and Parma, and Massimo d'Azeglio was charged with the same mission in Romagna. The Marches of Ancona had been recovered by the Papal troops, which were concentrated in the district called La Cattolica, near Rimini. A volunteer corps, under the Piedmontese General Mezzacapo, was entrusted with the task of preventing them from crossing into the Legations.

In the month of May, when the allies were reaping their first successes, an event occurred at Caserta which precipitated crisis in the South Italy. Ferdinand II. died at forty-eight years of age of a terrible complaint which had attacked him a few months earlier, when he went to meet his son's bride, the Princess Maria Sofia of Bavaria, sister of the Empress of Austria. The news from Upper Italy hastened his end; he is said to have exclaimed not long before he died: 'They have won the cause!'

The accession of a youth, of whom nothing bad was known, to a throne[Pg.238]that had been occupied by a sovereign so out of place in modern civilisation as Ferdinand, would appear at first sight a fortunate circumstance for the chances of the dynasty; but it was not so. In an eastern country it matters little whether the best of the inhabitants loathe and detest their ruler; but it matters much whether he knows how to cajole and frighten the masses, and especially the army, into obedience. Naples, more Oriental than western, possessed in Ferdinand a monarch consummately expert in this side of the art of government. Though without the higher military virtues, his army was his favourite plaything; he always wore uniform, never forgot a face he had once seen, and treated the officers with a rather vulgar familiarity, guessing at their weaknesses and making use of them on occasion. The rank and file regarded him as a sort of supernatural being. Francis II., who succeeded him, could scarcely appear in this light even to the most ignorant. Popular opinion considered him not quite sound in his mind. Probably his timorous, awkward ways and his seeming stupidity were simply the result of an education conducted by bigoted priests in a home that was no home: populated as it was by the offspring of a stepmother who hated him. His own mother, the charming Princess Cristina of Savoy, died while the city was rejoicing at his birth. The story is well known of how, shortly after the marriage, Ferdinand thought it diverting to draw a music-stool from under his wife, causing her to fall heavily. It gives a sample of the sufferings of her brief married life. An inheritance of sorrow descended from her to her child.

If Francis II. was not popular, neither was the new queen. Far more virile in character and in tastes than her husband, her high spirit was not what the Neapolitans admire in women, and those who were[Pg.239]devoted to the late King accused her of having shown impatience during his illness for the moment when the crown would fall to Francis. Malicious gossip of this kind, however false, serves its end. Thus, from one cause or another, the young King exercised a power sensibly weaker than that of his father, while, besides other enemies, he had an inveterate one in his stepmother, who began weaving a conspiracy to oust him from the throne and place on it the eldest of his half-brothers. This plot received, however, very little popular support.

The Sardinian Government sought to persuade Francis to join in the war against Austria; disinterested counsel, as in taking it lay his only hope, but it was opposed by England, Russia and France. In July two of the Swiss regiments at Naples mutinied. The Swiss Government, becoming alive to the discredit cast on the country by mercenary service, had decided that Swiss subjects serving abroad should lose their rights as citizens of the Confederation whilst so employed, and that they should no longer introduce the arms of their respective cantons into their regimental colours. This was the immediate cause of their insubordination. The mutineers, most of whom were unarmed, were ruthlessly shot down in the Campo di Marte to the terror of the population, and the two Swiss regiments which remained quiet were dissolved; by which the monarchy lost the troops that were chiefly to be depended on in emergencies. The Austrians and Bavarians imported in their stead did not form separate regiments, but were incorporated among the native troops, though the regiments that contained them were commonly called 'Bavarian.' They only partially filled the place of the Swiss.

Between the 4th and the 24th of June, no engagement of any magnitude was fought in Lombardy except the attack on Benedek at Melegnano, a battle in which the French lost most men, and gained no strategical advantage. It was supposed to have been fought because Napoleon I. had gained a victory in the same neighbourhood. The Austrians retreated to the Mincio, destroying the bridges over the Adda, Serio, Oglio and Mella as they went; these rivers the allies had to make repassable, which is the excuse given for the dilatory nature of their pursuit of the enemy. The Emperor Francis Joseph had now assumed the command, with Hess as his principle adviser, and Wimpffen and Schlick, famous as the 'One-eyed,' as heads of the two great corps into which the army was divided.

On the 22nd of June, the Austrians were ranged along the left bank of the Mincio from Peschiera to Mantua, and the French were massed near Montechiaro, on the Brescia road, which Napoleon had made his headquarters. In withdrawing all their men from the right bank of the river, the Austrians desired to create the impression that they had finally abandoned it. It was their plan, which did not lack boldness, to throw the whole army back upon the right bank, and to perform a concentric movement on Montechiaro, where they hoped to fall unawares on the French and destroy them. They were confident of success, for they knew what a good stand they had made at Magenta, and now that Gyulai was got rid of, and the young Emperor had taken the field, they did not doubt that fortune would turn her wheel. To these men of many nations, the presence of their Emperor was the one inspiration that could rouse them, for if they were fighting for anything, it was for him in the most personal sense; it was to secure his mastery of the[Pg.241]splendid land over which he looked from the castle of Valleggio, on the 23rd of June, whilst his brilliant staff stood round, waiting for the signal to mount and clatter down the steep road to the Mincio bridge. The army now advanced along all its line.

Even the soberest writers have not resisted making some reference to the magnificent scene of to-morrow's battle. On one side, the mountain bulwarks rising tier on tier, gorgeous with the trancendent beauty of colour and light of the Italian summer; on the other, the vine-clad hillocks which fall gently away from the blue lake of Garda till they are lost in the

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