.....harvest shining plainWhere the peasant heaps his grainIn the garner of his foe.The 24th of June was to decide how much longer the Lombard peasant should labour to fill a stranger's treasury.The calculations of the Austrians were founded on the slowness which had hitherto characterised Napoleon's movements. Hess thought that two days might be safely allowed for the Austrian advance, and that the enemy would remain passive on the west bank of the river Chiese, waiting to be attacked on the 25th. If the operation could have been performed in one day, and it is thought that it could, there would have been more prospect of success. But even then, the original plan of attacking the allies west of the Chiese could not have been carried out, as on the 23rd the whole allied army moved forward, the French occupying Castiglione and Lonato, and the Sardinians Rezzato and Desenzano, on the lake of Garda. It is not clear how far the allies believed in the Austrian advance; that they had warning of it from several quarters is certain. For instance, a gentleman living at[Pg.242]Desenzano heard from the country people, who, for marketing or other purposes, constantly go to and fro between that place and Peschiera, that the Austrians had ordered a quantity of country carts and transport waggons to be in readiness on the 23rd, and he hastened with the intelligence to the Piedmontese General Delia Rocca, who, in a fine spirit of red-tapism, pooh-poohed the information. The French encountered several Austrian patrols in the course of the day, but they were inclined to think that the Austrians were only executing a reconnaissance. On the whole, it seems that the conflict came as a surprise to both sides.The Emperor of Austria, after accompanying the advance for a short distance, returned with Hess to Valleggio for the night. Napoleon slept at Montechiaro. The Austrian forces bivouacked on the little hills between Solferino and Cavriana. They rested well, still confident that no fighting would be done next day. At two in the morning, the French began to move in the direction of Solferino, and the Sardinians in that of Peschiera. There is a legend, that in the grey mists of dawn an advance party of French cavalry espied a huge and gaunt hussar standing by the roadside. For a moment the figure was lost sight of, but it reappeared, and after running across the road in front of the French, it turned and dealt the officer who led the party so tremendous a blow that he fell off his horse. Then the adventurous Austrian fled, followed by a volley from the French troopers; the sound vibrating through the dawn stillness gave the call to arms to the contrasted hosts. The battle of Solferino had begun.The news flew to Montechiaro and to Valleggio. Napoleon started for[Pg.243]the scene of action with the Imperial Guard; Francis Joseph's staff was sent forward at six a.m., but the Emperor and Hess did not start till later. At near nine, the staff was looking for the Emperor, and the Emperor was looking for the staff in the open country about Volta; the sixty or seventy staff-officers dashed across ploughed fields and over hedges and ditches, in a style which would have done credit to an English fox-hunt. This remarkable incident was in keeping with the general management of the battle on the part of the Austrians, who had been fighting for many hours before the commander-in-chief arrived. After his arrival, they continued fighting without any visible plan, according to the expedients of the divisional generals. The particular expedient adopted by General Zedwitz was to withdraw 15,000 men, including six regiments of cavalry, from the field. At a critical moment, Count Clam Gallas had the misfortune to lose his artillery reserve, and sent everywhere to ask if anyone had seen it. The Prince of Hesse, acting without orders, or against orders, separated his division from Schwarzenberg's and brought it up at the nick of time to save the Austrians, when they were threatened with actual destruction, at two o'clock in the afternoon.At that hour the French were in possession of the Spia d'Italia, and of all the heights of Solferino. They had been engaged in attacking them since eight in the morning, Napoleon having seen at once that they were the key to the position, and must be taken, cost what it might. The cost was great; if there is any episode in French military history in which soldiers and officers earned all the praise that can be given to brave men, it is the taking of these Solferino hills. Again and again Forey's division and Bazaine's brigade returned to the[Pg.244]charge; the cemetery and streets of Solferino were piled up with their dead, mingled with the dead of the defenders, who contested every inch of ground. The individual valour of the French soldiers in that six hours' struggle made it possible to win the battle.The Austrians, however, after their desperate straits at two o'clock recovered to so great an extent that, had Zedwitz returned with his cavalry, as the Emperor was hoping that he would, the day might still have been theirs. Even as it was, MacMahon's corps swerved under Zobel's repulse of his attack on San Cassiano, and Niel, in the plain, was dangerously hard pressed by Schwarzenberg. But, by degrees, the French recommenced gaining and the Austrians losing ground, and at six p.m., the latter were retreating in good order, defending each step before they yielded it.In the last stage of the battle the French limbered up their guns in the belief that a vast reserve of Austrian cavalry was galloping into action. What made them think so was a dense yellowish wall advancing through the air. Had they been natives, they would have recognised the approach of one of those frightful storms which bring devastation in their train, and which, as they move forward in what appears a solid mass, look to the inexperienced eye exactly like the clouds of dust raised by innumerable horsemen. The bursting of the storm hastened the end of the fight.All the day another fight, separate from this, had been going on between Benedek and the Sardinian army near the knoll of San Martino, overlooking the lake of Garda. The battle, which began in the early morning among the cypresses that crown the hillock, raged till seven[Pg.245]p.m. with a fury which cost the Piedmontese over 4,000 in dead and wounded. It consisted largely in hand-to-hand fighting, which now gave an advantage to the Austrians, now to the Italians; many of the positions were lost and re-taken more than half-a-dozen times; the issue seemed long doubtful, and when Benedek, who commanded his side with unquestionable ability, received orders from the field of Solferino to begin a retreat, each combatant was firmly convinced that he was getting the best of it. Austrian writers allege that this order saved the Sardinians from defeat, while in both Italian and French narratives, the Piedmontese are represented as having been already sure of success. The courage shown alike by Piedmontese and Austrians could not be surpassed. Victor Emmanuel, as usual, set an example to his men.An incident in the battle brings into striking relief what it was this bloody strife was meant to end. An Austrian corporal fell, mortally wounded by a Bersagliere whom he conjured, in Italian, to listen to what he had got to say. It was this: Forced into the Austrian army, he had been obliged to serve through the war, but had never fired his rifle on his fellow-countrymen; now he preferred to die rather than defend himself. So he yielded up his breath with his hand clasped in the hand which had slain him.The Austrians lost, on the 24th of June, 13,000 men in killed and wounded; the French, 10,000. It was said that the frightful scene of carnage on the battlefield after Solferino influenced Napoleon III. in his desire to stop the war. Had that scene vanished from his recollection in June 1870?Even a field of battle, with its unburied dead, speaks only of a small part of the miseries of a great war. Those who were at that time at[Pg.246]Brescia, to which town the greater portion of the French wounded and all the worst cases were brought, still shudder as they recall the dreadful human suffering which no skill or devotion could do more than a very little to assuage. The noble Brescian ladies who had once nursed Bayard, turned, with one accord, into sisters of charity; every house, every church, became a hospital, all that gratitude and pity could do was done; but many were to leave their bones in Italy, and how many more to go home maimed for life, or bearing with them the seeds of death.Other reasons than those of sentiment in reality decided Napoleon's course. Though these can only be guessed at, the guess, at the present date, amounts to certainty. In the first place, the skin-deep rejoicings in Paris at the news of the victories did not hide the fact that French public opinion, never genuinely favourable to the war, was becoming more and more hostile to it. Then there was the military question. It is true that the Fifth Corps, estimated at 30,000 men, had, at last, emerged from its crepuscular doings in Tuscany, and was available for future operations. Moreover, Kossuth paid a visit to the Imperial headquarters, and held out hopes of a revolution in Hungary which would oblige the Austrian Emperor to remove part of his troops from the scene of the war. Nevertheless, Napoleon was by no means convinced that his army was sufficient to take the Quadrilateral. He realised the bad organisation and numerous shortcomings of the forces under him so vividly that it seems incredible that, in the eleven following years, he should have done nothing to remedy them. He attributed his success mainly to chance, though in a less degree to a certain lack of energy in the Austrians, joined with the exaggerated fear of responsibility felt by their leaders. He never could[Pg.247]thoroughly understand why the Austrians had not won Solferino. Naturally, he did not express these opinions to his marshals, but there is ample proof that he held them; and if the fact stood alone, it ought not to be difficult to explain why he was not anxious for a continuance of the war.But it does not stand alone. Napoleon feared being defeated on the Rhine as well as in the Quadrilateral. Prussia had six army corps ready, and she was about to move them. That, after her long hesitations, she resolved to intervene was long doubted, but it cannot be so after the evidence which recent years have produced.At the time things wore a different complexion. Europe was never more amazed than when, on the 6th of July, Napoleon the victor sent General Fleury to Francis Joseph the vanquished with a request for an armistice. One point only was plain; an armistice meant peace without Venetia, and never did profound sorrow so quickly succeed national joy than when this, to contemporaries astonishing intelligence, went forth. But the blow fell on no Italian with such tremendous force as on Cavour.There are natives of Italy who appear to be more cool, more calculating, more completely masters of themselves, than the men of any other nationality. Cavour was one of these. But there comes, sooner or later, the assertion of southern blood, the explosion of feeling the more violent because long contained, and the cool, quiet Italian of yesterday is not to be recognised except by those who know the race intimately well, and who know the volcano that underlies its ice and snow as well as its luxuriant vegetation.On Wednesday, the 6th of June, the French army was spread out in[Pg.248]battle array along the left bank of the Mincio, and everything led to the supposition that a new and immediate battle was in contemplation. The Piedmontese were engaged in making preparations to invest Peschiera. Napoleon's headquarters were at Valleggio, those of the King at Monzambano. By the evening a very few persons had picked up the information that Napoleon had sent a messenger to Verona. Victor Emmanuel knew nothing of it, nor did any of the French generals except Marshal Vaillant, but such things leak out, and two or three individuals were aware of the journey to Verona, and spent that night in racking their brains as to what it might mean. Next day at eleven o'clock General Fleury returned; the Austrian Emperor had accepted the armistice. Further secrecy was impossible, and like lightning the news flashed through the world.Cavour rushed from Turin to Desenzano, where he arrived the day before the final meeting between Napoleon and Francis Joseph. He waited for a carnage in the littlecaféin the piazza; no one guessed who it was, and conversation went on undisturbed: it was full of curses on the French Emperor. Mazzini, someone said, was right; this is the way the war was sure to end. When a shabby conveyance had at length been found, the great statesman drove to Monzambano. There, of course, his arrival did not escape notice, and all who saw him were horrified by the change that had come over his face. Instead of the jovial, witty smile, there was a look of frantic rage and desperation. What passed between him and his Sovereign is partly a matter of conjecture; the exact sense of the violent words into which his grief betrayed him is lost, in spite of the categorical versions of the interview which have been printed. Even in a fit of madness he can hardly have spoken some of the words attributed to him. That he advised the King to withdraw[Pg.249]his army or to abdicate rather than agree to the peace which was being plotted behind his back, seems past doubting. It is said that after attempting in vain to calm him, Victor Emmanuel brought the interview to a sudden close. Cavour came out of the house flushed and exhausted, and drove back to Desenzano. He had resigned office.The King showed extraordinary self-control. Bitter as the draught was, he saw that it must be drunk, and he was determined to drink it with dignity. Probably no other Italian grasped as clearly as he did the real reason which actuated Napoleon; at any rate his chivalrous appreciation of the benefits already received, closed his lips to reproaches. 'Whatever may be the decision of your Majesty,' he said to the Emperor on the eve of Villafranca, 'I shall feel an eternal gratitude for what you have done for the independence of Italy, and I beg you to believe that under all circumstances you may reckon on my complete fidelity.'If there was sadness in the Sardinian camp, so there was in that of Austria. The Austrians by no means thought that the game was up for them. It would be interesting to know by what arguments Napoleon persuaded the young Emperor to renounce the hope of retrieving his disasters, whilst he slowly pulled to pieces some flowers which were on the table before which he and Francis Joseph sat. When they left the house, the heir to all the Hapsburgs looked pale and sad. Did he remember the dying counsels of 'Father' Radetsky—not to yield if he was beaten on the Mincio, on the Tagliamento, on the Isonzo, before the gates of Vienna.When, on the evening of the same day, the Emperor of Austria signed the preliminaries of peace, he said to Prince Napoleon, who took the[Pg.250]document to Verona for his signature: 'I pray God that if you are ever a sovereign He may spare you the hour of grief I have just passed.' Yet the defeat of Solferino and the loss of Lombardy were the first steps in the transformation of Radetsky's pupil from a despot, who hourly feared revolution in every land under his sceptre, to a wise and constitutional monarch ruling over a contented Empire. To some individuals and to some states, misfortune is fortune.[Pg.251]CHAPTER XIIIWHAT UNITY COST1859-1860Napoleon III. and Cavour—The Cession of Savoy and Nice—Annexations in Central Italy.Napoleon's hurried journey to Turin on his way back to France was almost a flight. Everywhere his reception was cold in the extreme. He was surprised, he said, at the ingratitude of the Italians. It was still possible to ask for gratitude, as the services rendered had not been paid for; no one spoke yet of the barter of Savoy and Nice. But Napoleon, when he said these words to the Governor of Milan, forgot how the Lombards, in June 1848, absolutely refused to take their freedom at the cost of resigning Venice to Austria. And if Venice was dear to them and to Italy then, how much dearer had she not become since the heroic struggle in which she was the last to yield. The bones of Manin cried aloud for Venetian liberty from his grave of exile.Venice was the one absorbing thought of the moment; yet there were clauses in the brief preliminaries of peace more fraught with insidious danger than the abandonment of Venice. If the rest of Italy became one and free, it needed no prophet to tell that not the might of twenty Austrias could keep Venetia permanently outside the fold.[Pg.252]But if Italy was to remain divided and enslaved, then, indeed, the indignant question went up to heaven, To what end had so much blood been shed?When he resolved to cut short the war, Napoleon still had it in his power to go down to history as the supreme benefactor of Italy. He chose instead to become her worst and by far her most dangerous enemy. The preliminaries of peace opened with the words: 'The Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of the French will favour the creation of an Italian Confederation under the honorary presidency of the Holy Father.' Further, it was stated that the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena would return to their states. Though Napoleon proposed at first to add, 'without foreign armed intervention,' he waived the point (Rome was in his mind) and no such guarantee was inserted. Here, then, was the federative programme which all the personal influence and ingenuity of the French Emperor, all the arts of French diplomacy, were concentrated on maintaining, and which was only defeated by the true patriotism and strong good sense of the Italian populations, and of the men who led them through this, the most critical period in their history.In England Lord Derby's administration had fallen and the Liberals were again in power. Napoleon was so strangely deluded as to expect to find support in that quarter for his anti-unionist conspiracy. His earliest scheme was that the federative plan should be presented to Europe by Great Britain. Lord John Russell answered: 'We are asked to propose a partition (morcellement) of the peoples of Italy, as if we had the right to dispose of them.' It was a happy circumstance for Italy that her unity had no better friends than in the English Government during those difficult years. Cavour's words soon after Villafranca, 'It is England's turn now,' were not belied.[Pg.253]One thing should have made Napoleon uneasy; a man like Cavour, when his blood is roused, when his nature is fired by the strongest passions that move the human heart, is an awkward adversary. If there was an instant in which the great statesman thought that all was lost, it was but an instant. With the quick rebound of virile characters he recovered his balance and understood his part. It was to fight and conquer.'Your Emperor has dishonoured me,' he said to M. Pietri in the presence of Kossuth (the interview taking place at Turin on the 15th of July). 'Yes, sir, he has dishonoured me,' and he set forth how, after promising to hunt the last Austrian out of Italy, after secretly exacting the price of his assistance to which Cavour had induced his good and honest King to consent, he now left them solemnly in the lurch; Lombardy might suffice! And, for nothing to be wanting, the King was to be forced into a confederation with Austria and the Italian princes under the presidency of the Pope. After painting the situation with all the irony and scorn of which he was master, he gave his note of warning: 'If needs be, I will become a conspirator, I will become a revolutionist, but this treaty shall never be executed; a thousand times no—never!'The routine business of the Prime Minister still fell to Cavour, as Rattazzi, who succeeded him, had not yet formed his cabinet. He was obliged, therefore, to write officially to the Royal Commissioners at Modena, Bologna and Florence to abandon their posts. But in the character of Cavour, the private citizen, he telegraphed to them at the same time to remain and do their duty. And they remained.On one point there was a temporary lull of anxiety. Almost the last words spoken by Napoleon to Victor Emmanuel before he left Turin were:[Pg.254]'We shall think no more about Nice and Savoy.' The mention of Nice shows that though it had not been promised, Napoleon was all along set upon its acquisition. It is impossible to say how far, at the moment, he was sincere in the renunciation. That, very soon after his return to Paris, he was diligently weaving plans for getting both provinces into his net, is evident from the tenor of the articles and notes published in the 'inspired' French newspapers.Two chief motives can be divined for Napoleon's determined opposition to Italian unity which never ceased till Sedan. The first was his wish, shared by all French politicians, that Italy should be weak. The second was his regard for the Temporal Power which proceeded from his still being convinced that he could not reign without the Clerical vote. The French prelates were perpetually giving him reminders that this vote depended on his keeping the Pope on his throne. For instance, Cardinal Donnet told him at Bordeaux in October 1859, that he could not choose a better way of showing his appreciation of the Blessed Virgin than 'en ménageant un triomphe à son Fils dans la personne de son Vicaire.' It would be a triumph which the Catholic world would salute with transport. Hints of this sort, the sense of which was not hard to read, in spite of their recondite phraseology, reached him from every quarter. He feared to set them aside. The origins of his power were too much tainted for him to advance boldly on an independent policy. Thus it was that bit by bit he deliberately forfeited all title to the help of Italy when the same whirlwind that dashed him to earth, cleared the way for the final accomplishment of her national destinies.Whilst Victor Emmanuel was more alive than Cavour to the military arguments in favour of stopping hostilities when the tide of success[Pg.255]was at its height, he was not one whit more disposed to stultify his past by becoming the vassal at once of Paris and Vienna. In a letter written to the Emperor of the French in October, in answer to a very long one in which Napoleon sought to convert him to the plan of an Austro-Italian Confederation, he wound up by saying: 'For the considerations above stated, and for many others, I cannot, Sire, second your Majesty's policy in Italy. If your Majesty is bound by treaties and cannot revoke your engagements in the (proposed) congress, I, Sire, am bound on my side, by honour in the face of Europe, by right and duty, by the interests of my house, of my people and of Italy. My fate is joined to that of the Italian people. We can succumb, but never betray. Solferino and San Martino may sometimes redeem Novara and Waterloo, but the apostasies of princes are always irreparable. I am moved to the bottom of my soul by the faith and love which this noble and unfortunate people has reposed in me, and rather than be unworthy of it, I will break my sword and throw the crown away as did my august father. Personal interest does not guide me in defending the annexations; the Sword and Time have borne my house from the summit of the Alps to the banks of the Mincio, and those two guardian angels of the Savoy race will bear it further still, when it pleases God.'The events in Central Italy to which the King alludes were of the highest importance. L.C. Farini, the Sardinian Royal Commissioner at Modena, when relieved of his office, assumed the dictatorship by the will of the people. L. Cipriani became Governor of Romagna, and at Florence Ricasoli continued at the head of affairs, undismayed and unshaken in his resolve to defeat the combined machinations of France and Austria. In August the populations of Modena, Reggio, Parma and[Pg.256]Piacenza declared their union with Piedmont by an all but unanimous popular vote, the two last provinces placing themselves for temporary convenience under the Dictator Farini. A few days later, Tuscany and Romagna voted a like act of union through their Constituent Assemblies. The representatives of the four States, Modena, Parma, Romagna and Tuscany, formally announced to the great Powers their choice of Victor Emmanuel, in whose rule they recognised the sole hope of preserving their liberties and avoiding disorder. Delegates were sent to Turin with the offer of the crown.Peace, of which the preliminaries only were signed at Villafranca, was not yet definitely concluded, and a large French army was still in Italy. The King's government feared therefore to adopt the bold course of accepting the annexations outright, and facing the responsibilities which might arise. Victor Emmanuel thanked the delegates, expressing his confidence that Europe would not undo the great work that had been done in Central Italy. The state of things, however, in these provinces, whose elected King could not yet govern them, was anomalous, most of all in what related to defence; they being menaced on the Austrian side by the Duke of Modena, and on the South by the Papal troops in the Cattolica. An armed force of 25,000 men was organised, of which the Tuscan contingent was under the command of Garibaldi, and the rest under that of the Sardinian General Fanti, 'lent' for the purpose. Garibaldi hoped not merely to defend the provinces already emancipated, but to carry war into the enemy's camp and make revolution possible throughout the States of the Church. To the Party of Action the chance seemed an unique one of hastening the progress of events. Unaccustomed as they were to weigh diplomatic[Pg.257]difficulties, they saw the advantages but not the perils of a daring course. Meanwhile Napoleon threatened to occupy Piacenza with 30,000 men on the first forward step of Garibaldi, who, on his side, seemed by no means inclined to yield either to the orders of the Dictator Farini, or to the somewhat violent measures taken to stop him by General Fanti, who instructed the officers under his command to disobey him. It was then that Victor Emmanuel tried his personal influence, rarely tried without success, over the revolutionary chief, who reposed absolute faith in the King's patriotism, and who was therefore amenable to his arguments when all others failed. The general was summoned to Turin, and in an audience given on the 16th of November, Victor Emmanuel persuaded him that the proposed enterprise would retard rather than advance the cause of Italian freedom. Garibaldi left for Caprera, only insisting that his 'weak services' should be called into requisition whenever there was an opportunity to act.Before quitting the Adriatic coast the hero of Rome went one evening with his two children, Menotti and Teresita, to the Chapel in the Pine Forest, where their mother was buried. Within a mile was the farmhouse where he had embraced her lifeless form before undertaking his perilous flight from sea to sea. In 1850, at Staten Island, when he was earning his bread as a factory hand, he wrote the prophetic words: 'Anita, a land of slavery holds your precious dust; Italy will make your grave free, but what can restore to your children their incomparable mother?' Garibaldi's visit to Anita's grave closes the story of the brave and tender woman who sacrificed all to the love she bore him.After sitting for three months, the Conference which met at Zurich to[Pg.258]establish the definite treaty of peace finished its labours on the 10th of November. The compact was substantially the same as that arranged at Villafranca. Victor Emmanuel, who had signed the Preliminaries with the reservation implied in the note: 'In so far as I am concerned,' preserved the same liberty of action in the Treaty of Zurich. He still hesitated, however, in assuming the government of the central provinces, and even the plan of sending the Prince of Carignano as governor fell through in consequence of Napoleon's opposition. His hesitations sprang from the general apprehension that a hint from Paris might any day be followed by a new eruption of Austrians in Modena and Tuscany for the purpose of replacing the former rulers of those states on their thrones. Such a fear existed at the time, and Rattazzi's timid policy was the result; it is impossible not to ask now whether it was not exaggerated? 'What statesman,' wrote the Prince Consort in June 1859, 'could adopt measures to force Austrian rule again upon delighted, free Italy?' If this was true in June was it less true in November? For the rest, would not the supreme ridicule that would have fallen on the French Emperor if he encouraged the Austrians to return to Central Italy after driving them out of Lombardy, have obliged him to support the principle of non-intervention, whether he wished it or not? England was prepared to back up the government of Piedmont, in which lay a great moral force. It is plain that the long wavering about what ought to be done with the central provinces is what cost the country Savoy and Nice, or at any rate, Nice. Napoleon did all in his power to prevent and to retard the annexations, especially that of Tuscany, which, as he said, 'would make Italian unity a mere question of time,' but when he found that neither threats nor blandishments could move the population from their[Pg.259]resolve to have Victor Emmanuel for their king, he decided to sell his adhesion for a good price. Compelled for the sake of appearances to withdraw his claim after the abrupt termination of the war, he now saw an excellent excuse for reviving it, and he was not likely to let the opportunity slip.At this period there was continual talk, which may or may not have been intended to end in talk, of a Congress to which the affairs of Italy were to be referred. It gave an opening to Napoleon for publishing one of the anonymous pamphlets by means of which he was in the habit of throwing out tentative ideas, and watching their effect. The chief idea broached inLe Pape et le Congrèswas the voluntary renunciation by the Pope of all but a small zone of territory round Rome; it being pointed out that his position as an independent sovereign would remain unaffected by such an act, which would smooth the way to his assuming the hegemony of the Italian Confederation. The Pope, however, let it be clearly known that he had no intention of ceding a rood of his possessions, or of recognising the separation of the part which had already escaped from him. Anyone acquainted with the long strife and millennial manoeuvres by which the Church had acquired the States called by her name, will understand the unwillingness there was to yield them. To do Pius IX. justice, an objection which merits more respect weighed then and always upon his mind. He thought that he was personally debarred by the oath taken on assuming the tiara from giving up the smallest part of the territory he received from his predecessor. The Ultramontane party knew that they had only to remind him of this oath to provoke a fresh assertion ofNon possumus.The attitude of the Pope was one reason why the Congress was abandoned; but there was a deeper reason. A European[Pg.260]Congress would certainly not have approved the cession of Nice and Savoy, and to that object the French Emperor was now turning all his attention.At Turin there was an ignoble cabal, supported not so much, perhaps, by Rattazzi himself as by followers, the design of which was to prevent Cavour from returning to power. Abroad, the Empress Eugénie, who looked on Cavour as the Pope's worst foe, did what she could to further the scheme, and its promoters counted much on the soreness left in Victor Emmanuel's mind by the scene after Villafranca. That soreness did, in fact, still exist; but when in January the Rattazzi ministry fell, the King saw that it was his duty to recall Cavour to his counsels, and he at once charged him to form a cabinet.That Cavour accepted the task is the highest proof of his abnegation as a statesman. He was on the point of getting into his carriage to catch the train for Leri when the messenger reached the Palazzo Cavour with the royal command to go to the castle. If he had refused office and returned to the congenial activity of his life as a country gentleman, his name would not be attached to the melancholy sacrifice which Napoleon was now determined to exact from Italy. The French envoy, Baron de Talleyrand, whose business it was to communicate the unwelcome intelligence, arrived at Turin before the collapse of Rattazzi; but, on finding that a ministerial crisis was imminent, he deferred carrying out his mission till a more opportune moment.On the 18th of January 1860, the Emperor admitted to Lord Cowley that, though there was as yet no arrangement between himself and Victor Emmanuel on the subject, he intended to have Savoy. After the long series of denials of any such design, the admission caused the most indignant feeling in the English ministers and in the Queen, who[Pg.261]wrote to Lord John Russell: 'We have been made regular dupes.' She went on to say that the revival of the English Alliance, and the hymns of universal peace chanted in Paris on the occasion of the Commercial Treaty, had been simply so many blinds, 'to hide from Europe a policy of spoliation.' Cavour came in for a part of the blame, as, during the war, he denied cognisance of the proposal to give up Savoy. The best that can be said of that denial is, that it was diplomatically impracticable for one party in the understanding of Plombières to make a clean breast of the truth, whilst the other party was assuring the whole universe that he was fighting for an idea.When the war was broken off, Cavour fully expected that Napoleon, of whom he had the worst opinion, would then and there demand whole pay for his half service; and this had much to do with his furious anger at Villafranca; but later, in common with the best-informed persons, he believed that the claim was finally withdrawn. When, however, Napoleon asked again for the provinces—not as the price of the war, but of the annexations in Central Italy—Cavour instantly came to the conclusion that, cost what it might (and he thought that, amongst other things, it would cost his own reputation and popularity), the demand must be granted. Otherwise Italian unity would never be accomplished.In considering whether he was mistaken, it must not be forgotten that the French troops were still in Italy. Not to speak of those in Rome, Marshal Vaillant had five divisions of infantry and two brigades of cavalry in Lombardy up to the 20th of March 1860. The engagement had been to send this army home as soon as the definite peace was concluded; why, then, was it still south of the Alps four months after?[Pg.262]In spite of this, however, and in spite of the difficulty of judging an act, all the reasons for which may not, even now, be in possession of the world, it is very hard indeed to pardon Cavour for having yielded Nice as well as Savoy to France. The Nizzards were Italians as the lower class of the population is Italian still; they had always shown warm sympathy with the hopes of Italy, which could not be said of the Savoyards; and Nice was the birthplace of Garibaldi!England would have supported and applauded resistance to the claim for Nice on general grounds, though her particular interest was in Savoy, or rather in that part of the Savoy Alps which was neutralised by treaty in 1814. It was the refusal of Napoleon to adopt the compromise of ceding this district to Switzerland which caused the breach between him and the British ministry. From that moment, also, Prussia began to increase her army, and resolved, when she was ready, to check the imperial ambition by force of arms. 'The loss of Alsace and Lorraine,' writes an able publicist, M.E. Tallichet, 'was the direct consequence of the annexation of Nice and Savoy.'If anything could have rendered more galling to Italy the deprivation of these two provinces, it was the tone adopted in France when speaking of the transaction. What were Savoy and Nice? A barren rock and an insignificant strip of coast! The French of thirty-four years ago travelled so little that they may have believed in the description. The vast military importance of the ceded districts has been already referred to. Some scraps on the Nice frontier were saved in a curious way: They were spots which formed part of the favourite playground of the Royal Hunter of the Alps, and it was pointed out to[Pg.263]Napoleon that it would be a graceful act to leave these particular 'barren rocks' to his Sardinian Majesty. The zig-zags in the line of demarcation which were thus introduced are said to be of great strategic advantage to Italy. So far, so good; but it remains true that France isinsidethe Italian front-door.At the elections for the new Chamber in March 1860, the Nizzards chose Garibaldi; and this was their real plebiscite—not that which followed at a short interval, and presented the phenomenon of a population which appeared to change its mind as to its nationality in the course of a few weeks. In voting for Garibaldi, they voted for Italy.The Nizzard hero made some desperate efforts on behalf of his fellow-citizens in the Chamber, not his natural sphere, and was on the brink of making other efforts in a sphere in which he might have succeeded better. He had the idea of going to Nice with about 200 followers, and exciting just enough of a revolution to let the real will of the people be known, and to frustrate the wiles of French emissaries and the pressure of government in the official plebiscite of the 15th of April. The story of the conspiracy, which is unknown in Italy, has been told by one of the conspirators, the late Lawrence Oliphant. The English writer, who reached Turin full of wrath at the proposed cession, was introduced to Garibaldi, from whom he received the news of the proposed enterprise. Oliphant offered his services, which were accepted, and he accompanied the general to Genoa, where he engaged a diligence which was to carry the vanguard to Nice. But, on going to Garibaldi for the last orders, he found him supping with twenty or thirty young men; 'All Sicilians!' said the chief. 'We must give up the Nice programme; the general opinion is that we shall lose[Pg.264]all if we try for too much.' He added that he had hoped to carry out the Nice plan first, but now everything must be sacrificed to freeing Sicily. And he asked Oliphant to join the Thousand, an offer which the adventurous Englishman never ceased to regret that he did not accept. As it was, he elected to go all the same to Nice, where he was the spectator and became the historian of the arts which brought about the semblance of an unanimous vote in favour of annexation to France.The ratification of the treaty—which, by straining the constitution, was concluded without consulting Parliament—was reluctantly given by the Piedmontese Chambers, the majority of members fearing the responsibility of upsetting an accomplished fact. Cavour, when he laid down the pen after signing the deed of cession, turned to Baron de Talleyrand with the remark: 'Now we are accomplices!' His face, which had been depressed, resumed its cheerful air. In fact, though Napoleon's dislike of the central annexations was unabated, he could no longer oppose them. Victor Emmanuel accepted the four crowns of Central Italy, the people of which, during the long months of waiting, and under circumstances that applied the most crucial test to their resolution, had never swerved from the desire to form part of the Italian monarchy under the sceptre of theRe Galantuomo. The King of Sardinia, as he was still called, had eleven million subjects, and on his head rested one excommunication the more. The Bull fulminated against all who had, directly or indirectly, participated in the events which caused Romagna to change hands, was published a day or two before the opening of the new Parliament at Turin.Addressing for the first time the representatives of his widened realm, Victor Emmanuel said: 'True to the creed of my fathers, and,[Pg.265]like them, constant in my homage to the Supreme Head of the Church, whenever it happens that the ecclesiastical authority employs spiritual arms in support of temporal interests, I shall find in my steadfast conscience and in the very traditions of my ancestors, the power to maintain civil liberty in its integrity, and my own authority, for which I hold myself accountable to God alone and to my people.'The words: 'Della quale debbo ragione a Dio solo ed ai miei popoli,' were added by the King to the speech prepared by his ministers; it was noticed that he pronounced them with remarkable energy. The speech concluded: 'Our country is no more the Italy of the Romans, nor the Italy of the Middle Ages; no longer the field for every foreign ambition, it becomes, henceforth, the Italy of the Italians.'[Pg.266]CHAPTER XIVTHE MARCH OF THE THOUSAND1860Origin of the Expedition—Garibaldi at Marsala—Calatafimi—The Taking of Palermo—Milazzo—The Bourbons evacuate Sicily.During the journey from Turin to Genoa, Garibaldi was occupied in opening, reading and tearing up into small pieces an enormous mass of letters, while his English companion spent the time in vainly speculating as to what this vast correspondence was about. When they approached Genoa, the floor of the railway carriage resembled a gigantic wastepaper basket. It was only afterwards that Lawrence Oliphant guessed the letters to be responses to a call for volunteers for Sicily.The origin of the Sicilian expedition has been related in various ways; there is the version which attributes it entirely to Cavour, and the version which attributes it to not irresponsible personages in England. The former was the French and Clerical official account; the latter has always obtained credence in Germany and Russia. For instance, the late Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg said that 'the mystery of how 150,000 men were vanquished by a thousand Red-shirts was wrapped in English bank-notes!' Of this theory, it need only be said that the notion of Lord Palmerston (for it comes to that) supporting a foreign revolution out of the British exchequer is not one that commends itself to the belief of the average Englishman. With regard[Pg.267]to the other theory—namely, that Cavour 'got up' the Sicilian expedition, it has been favoured to a certain degree, both by his friends and foes; but it will not bear careful examination. As far as Sicily goes (Naples is another thing), the most that can be brought home to Cavour is a complicity of toleration; and even this statement should be qualified by the addition, 'after the act.' It is true that, in the early days after Villafranca, he had exclaimed: 'They have cut me off from making Italy from the north, by diplomacy; very well, I will make her from the south, by revolution!' True, also, that earlier still, in 1856, he expressed the opinion, shared by every man of common sense, that while the Bourbons ruled over the Two Sicilies there would be no real peace for Italy. Nevertheless, in April 1860, he neither thought the time ripe for the venture nor the means employed adequate for its accomplishment. He was afraid that Garibaldi would meet with the death of the Bandieras and Pisacane. No one was more convinced than Cavour of the importance of Garibaldi's life to Italy; and it is a sign of his true superiority of mind that this conviction was never entertained more strongly than at the moment when the general was passionately inveighing against him for the cession of Nice. To Cavour such invectives seemed natural, and even justified from one point of view; they excited in him no bitterness, and he was only too happy that they fell upon himself and not upon the King, since it was his fixed idea that, without the maintenance of a good understanding between Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, Italy would not be made. Few men under the sting of personal attacks have shown such complete self-control.[Pg.268]As has been stated, when Francis II. ascended the Neapolitan throne, he was invited to join in the war with Austria, and he refused. Since then, the same negative result had attended the reiterated counsels of reform which the Piedmontese Government sent to that of Naples—the young King showing, by repeated acts, that not Sardinia but Rome was his monitress and chosen ally in Italy. The Pope had lately induced the French General Lamoricière to take the command of the Pontifical troops, and he and the King of Naples were organising their armies, with a view to co-operating at an early date against the common enemy at Turin. In January 1860, Lord Russell wrote to Mr Elliot, the English Minister at Naples: 'You will tell the King and his Ministers that the Government of her Majesty the Queen does not intend to accept any part in the responsibility nor to guarantee the certain consequences of a misgovernment which has scarcely a parallel in Europe.' Mr Elliot replied, early in March: 'I have used all imaginable arguments to convince this Government of the necessity of stopping short on the fatal path which it has entered. I finished by saying that I was persuaded of the inevitable fall of his Majesty and the dynasty if wiser counsels did not obtain a hearing, and requested an audience with the King; since, when the catastrophe occurs, I do not wish my conscience to reproach me with not having tried all means of saving an inexperienced Sovereign from the ruin which threatens him. The Ministers of France and Spain have spoken to the same effect.' Even Russia advised Francis to make common cause with Piedmont. In April, Victor Emmanuel wrote to his cousin, 'as a near relative and an Italian Prince,' urging him to listen while there was yet time to save something, if not everything. 'If you will not hear[Pg.269]me,' he said, 'the day may come when I shall be obliged to be the instrument of your ruin!' It has been said that the Sardinian Government, in tendering similar advice, hoped for its refusal and contemplated the eventuality hinted at with the reverse of apprehension. Of course this is true. Yet the responsibility of declining to take the only course which might by any possibility have saved him must rest with the King of Naples and not with Victor Emmanuel and his Ministers. The attempt to make Francis appear the innocent victim of a diabolical conspiracy will never succeed, however ingenious are the writers who devote their abilities to so unfruitful a task.To trace the real beginning of the expedition we must go back to the summer of 1859. When the war ended in the manner which he alone had foreseen, Mazzini projected a revolutionary enterprise in the south which should restore to the Italian movement its purely national character and defeat in advance Napoleon's plans for gathering the Bourbon succession for his cousin, Prince Murat. He sent agents to Sicily, and notably Francesco Crispi, who, as a native of the island and a man of resource and quick intelligence, was well qualified to execute the work of propaganda and to elude the Bourbon police. Crispi travelled in all parts of Sicily for several months, and in September he was able to report to Mazzini that the insurrection might be expected in a few weeks—which proved incorrect, but only as to date. Mazzini forbade his agents to agitate in favour of a republic; unity was the sole object to be aimed at; unity in whatever form and at whatever cost.In March 1860 he had an interview in London with the man who was to become the actual initiator of the revolutionary movement in South[Pg.270]Italy. This was Rosalino Pilo, son of the Count di Capaci, and descended through his mother from the royal house of Anjou, whose name, Italianised into Gioeni, is still borne by several noble families in Sicily. Rosalino Pilo, who was now in his fortieth year, had devoted all his life to his country's liberties. After 1849, when he was obliged to leave Sicily, he sold his ancestral acres to supply the wants of his fellow exiles, and help the work of revolutionary propaganda. Handsome in person, cultivated in mind, ready to give his life, as he had already given most of what makes life tolerable, to the Italian cause, he won the affection of all with whom he was brought in contact, and especially of Mazzini, from whom he parted after that last interview radiant with hope, and yet with a touch of sadness in his smile, as if in prevision that the place allotted to him in the ranks of men was among the sowers, not among the reapers.Rosalino Pilo believed, as Mazzini believed, that Sicily was ripe for revolution, but he realised the fact that under existing circumstances there was an exceeding probability of a Sicilian revolution being rapidly crushed. It was the tendency of Mazzini's mind to think the contrary; to put more faith in the people themselves than in any leader or leaders; to imagine that the blast of the trumpet of an angered population was sufficient to bring down the walls of all the citadels of despotism, however well furnished with heavy artillery. Pilo saw that there was only one man who could give a real chance of success to a rising in his native island, and that man was Garibaldi. As early as February he began to write to Caprera, urging the general to give his co-operation to the projected movement. It is notorious that the scheme, until almost the last moment, did not find favour with Garibaldi. In spite of his perilous enterprises, the chief had never been a courtier of failure, and he understood more clearly than[Pg.271]his correspondent what failure at that particular juncture would have meant. The ventures of the Bandieras and of Pisacane, similar in their general plan to the one now in view (though on a smaller scale). ended in disasters, but disasters that were useful to Italy. A disaster now would have been ruinous to Italy. Garibaldi's hesitations do not, as some writers of the extreme party have foolishly assumed, detract from his merit as victorious leader of the expedition; they only show him to have been more amenable to political prudence than most people have supposed.Rosalino Pilo wrote, finally, that in any case he was determined to go to Sicily himself to complete the preparations, and he added: 'The insurrection in Sicily, consider it well, will carry with it that of the whole south of the peninsula,' by which means not only would the Muratist plots be frustrated, but also a new army and fleet would become available for the conquest of independence and the liberation of Venetia. The writer concluded by wishing the general 'new glories in Sicily in the accomplishment of our country's redemption.'True to his word Rosalino Pilo embarked at Genoa on the 24th of March, on a crazy old coasting vessel, manned by five friendly sailors. He had with him a single companion, and carried such arms and ammunition as he had been able to get together. Terrible weather and the deplorable condition of their craft kept them at sea for fifteen days, during which time something of great importance happened at Palermo. On the 4th of April the authorities became aware that arms and conspirators were concealed in the convent of La Gancia, which was to have been the focus of the revolution. Troops were sent to besiege the[Pg.272]convent, which they only succeeded in taking after four hours' resistance; its fall was the signal for a general slaughter of the inmates, both monks and laymen. The insurrection was thus stifled in its birth in the capital, but from this time it began to spread in the country, and when, at last, Rosalino Pilo landed near Messina on the 10th of April, he found that several armed bands were already roving the mountains, as yet almost unperceived by the Government, which had gone to sleep again after its exhibition of energy on the 4th. Events were, however, to awake it from its slumbers, and to cause it to renew its vigilance. It required all Rosalino Pilo's skill and courage to sustain the revolution of which he became henceforth the responsible head, till the fated deliverer arrived.Pilo's letters, brought back to Genoa by the pilot who guided him to Sicilian waters, were what decided Garibaldi to go to the rescue. Some, like Bixio and Bertani, warmly and persistently urged him to accept the charge; others, like Sirtori, were convinced that the undertaking was foredoomed, and that its only result would be the death of their beloved captain: but this conviction did not lessen their eagerness to share his perils when once he was resolved to go.Like all born men of action, Garibaldi did not know what doubt was after he came to a decision. From that moment his mental atmosphere cleared; he saw the goal and went straight for it. In a surprisingly short time the expedition was organised and ready to leave. 'Few and good,' had been the rule laid down by Garibaldi for the enrolments; if he had chosen he could have taken with him a much more numerous host. When it was the day to start few they were (according to the most recent computation the exact number was 1072 men), and they were[Pg.273]certainly good. The force was divided into seven companies, the first entrusted to the ardent Nino Bixio, who acted in a general way as second-in-command through both the Sicilian and Neapolitan campaigns, and the seventh to Benedetto Cairoli, whose mother contributed a large sum of money as well as three of her sons to the freeing of Southern Italy. Sirtori, about whom there always clung something of the priestly vocation for which he had been designed, was the head of the staff; Türr (the Hungarian) was adjutant-general. The organisation was identical with that of the Italian army 'to which we belong,' said Garibaldi in his first order of the day.One name is missing, that of Medici, who was left behind to take the command of a projected movement in the Papal States. By whom this plan was invented is not clear, but simultaneous operations in different parts of the peninsula had been always a favourite design of the more extreme members of the Party of Action, and Garibaldi probably yielded to their advice. All that came of it was the entry into Umbria of Zambianchi's small band of volunteers, which was promptly repulsed over the frontier. Medici, therefore, remained inactive till after the fall of Palermo; he headed the second expedition of 4,000 volunteers which arrived in time to take part in the final Sicilian battles.Garibaldi's political programme was the cry of the Hunters of the Alps in 1859:Italy and Victor Emmanuel.Those who were strict republicans at heart, while abstaining from preaching the republic till the struggle was over, would have stopped short at the first wordItaly. But Garibaldi told Rosalino Pilo, who was of this way of thinking, that either he marched in the King's name or he did not march at all. This was the condition of his acceptance, because he[Pg.274]esteemed it the condition on which hung the success of the enterprise, nay more, the existence of an united Italy.The Thousand embarked at Quarto, near Genoa, during the night of the 5th of May on the two merchant vessels, thePiemonteandLombardo, which, with the complicity of their patriotic owner, R. Rubattino, had been sequestered for the use of the expedition. On hearing of Garibaldi's departure, Cavour ordered Admiral Persano, whose squadron lay in the gulf of Cagliari, to arrest the expedition if the steamers entered any Sardinian port, but to let it go free if they were encountered on the high seas. Persano asked Cavour what he was to do if by stress of storms Garibaldi were forced to come into port? The answer was that 'the Ministry' decided for his arrest, which Persano rightly interpreted to mean that Cavour had decided the contrary. He resolved, therefore, not to stop him under any circumstances, but the case did not occur, for the fairest of May weather favoured the voyage, and six days after the start the men were quietly landed at Marsala without let or hindrance from the two Neapolitan warships which arrived almost at the same time as thePiemonteandLombardo, an inconceivable stroke of good fortune which, like the eventful march that was to follow, seems to belong far more to romance than to history.On the day before, the British gunboatIntrepid(Captain Marryat), and the steam vesselArgus, had cast anchor in the harbour of Marsala. Their presence was again and again spoken of by Garibaldi as the key to the mystery of why he was not attacked. No matter how it was done—it may have been a mere accident—but it can hardly be doubted that the English men-of-war did practically cover the landing of the Thousand. Lord John Russell denied emphatically to the House of Commons that they were sent there for the purpose, as to this day is[Pg.275]believed by some grateful Italians, and by every Clerical writer who handles the subject. The British Government had early information of Italian revolutionary doings, just then, through Sir James Hudson, who was in communication with men of all shades of opinion, and it is credible that orders which must necessarily have been secret, were given to afford a refuge on board English ships to the flying patriots in the anticipated catastrophe. More than this is not credible, but the energy shown by Captain Marryat in safeguarding the interests of the British residents at Marsala caused the Neapolitan ships to delay opening fire till the very last Red-shirt was out of harm's way on dry land. Then and then only did they direct their guns on thePiemonteandLombardo, and fire a few shots into the city, which caused no other damage than the destruction of two casks of wine.On the 12th, Garibaldi left Marsala for Salemi, a mountain city approached by a steep, winding ascent, where he was sure of a warm reception, as it had already taken arms against the Bourbon king. Hence he promulgated the decree by which he assumed the dictatorship of Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel.The Neapolitan army numbered from 120,000 to 130,000 men; of these 30,000 were actually in Sicily at the time the Thousand landed at Marsala, 18,000 being in and about Palermo, and the rest distributed over the island. At Salemi, Garibaldi reviewed his united forces: he had been joined by 200 fresh volunteers, and by a fluctuating mass of Sicilian irregulars, which might be estimated to consist of 2,000 men, but it increased or decreased along the road, because it was formed of peasants of the districts traversed, who did not go far from their homes. These undisciplined bands were not useless, as they gave the[Pg.276]Bourbon generals the idea that Garibaldi had more men than he could ever really count upon, and also the peasants knew the country well. When they came under fire they behaved better than anyone would have expected. The first batch joined the Thousand half-way between Marsala and Salemi. There might have been fifty of them, dressed in goat-skins, and armed with the old flint muskets and rusty pistols dear to the Sicilian heart, which he would not for the world leave behind were he going no farther than to buy a lamb at the fair. The feudal lord marched at the head of his uncouth retainers—a company of bandits in an opera—yet, to Garibaldi, they seemed the blessed assurance that this people whom he was come to save was ready and willing to be saved. He received the poor little band with as much rapture as if it had been a powerful army, and, in their turn, the impressionable islanders were enraptured by the affability of the man whom the population of Sicily soon came seriously to consider as a new Messiah. It is a fact that the people of Southern Italy did believe that Garibaldi had in him something superhuman, only the Bourbon troops looked rather below than above for the source of it. The picturesque incidents of the historic march were many; one other may be mentioned. While the chief watered his horse at a spring a Franciscan friar threw himself on his knees, and implored to be allowed to follow him. Some of the volunteers thought the friar a traitor in disguise, but larger in faith, Garibaldi said: 'Come with us, you will be our Ugo Bassi.' Fra Pantaleo proved of no small use to the expedition.A glance at the map makes clear the military situation. Garibaldi's objective was Palermo, and if anything shows his genius as a Condottiere it is this immediate determination to make straight for the capital where the largest number of the enemy's troops was massed,[Pg.277]instead of seeking an illusionary safety for his weak army in the open country. As the crow flies the distance from Marsala to Palermo is not more than sixty or seventy miles, but the routes being mountainous, the actual ground to be covered is much longer. About midway lies Calatafimi, where all the roads leading from the eastern coast to Palermo converge, and above it towers the immensely strong position called Pianto dei Romani, from a battle in which the Romans were defeated. These heights command a vast prospect, and here General Landi, with 3,000 men and four pieces of artillery, prepared to intercept the Garibaldians with every probability of driving them back into the sea.The royal troops took the offensive towards ten o'clock on the 15th of May. They met the Red-shirts half way down the mountain, but were driven up it again, inch by inch, till, at about three o'clock, they were back at Pianto dei Romani. A final vigorous assault dislodged them from this position, and they retreated in disorder to Calatafimi. Not wishing to tempt fortune further for that day, Garibaldi bivouacqued on the field of battle. In a letter written to Bertani, on the spur of the moment, he bore witness with a sort of fatherly pride to the courage displayed by the Neapolitans: 'It was the old misfortune,' he said, 'a fight between Italians; but it proved to me what can be done with this family when united. The Neapolitan soldiers, when their cartridges were exhausted, threw stones at us in desperation.' How then, with much superior numbers and a seemingly impregnable position, did they end in ignominious flight? The answer may be found in the reply given to Bixio, bravest of the brave, who[Pg.278]yet feared, at one hotly-contested point, that retreat was inevitable. 'Here,' retorted the chief,'wedie.' Men who really mean to conquer or die can do miracles.The moral effect of the victory was tremendous. The world at large had made absolutely sure of the destruction of the expedition. 'Garibaldi has chosen to go his own way,' said Victor Emmanuel; 'but if you only knew the fright I was in about him and the brave lads with him!' In Sicily, where the insurrectionary activity of April was almost totally spent, the news sent an electric shock of revolution through the whole island. In the mountains Rosalino Pilo still resisted, weary of waiting for the help that came not, discouraged or hopeless, but unyielding. Food and ammunition were almost gone; his ragged band, held together only by the magnetism of his personal influence, began to feel the pangs of hunger. A price was set on his head, and he was harassed on all sides by the Neapolitan troops, whose attacks became more frequent now that the Government realised that there was danger. He knew nothing of Garibaldi's movements; but he was resolved to keep his promise as long as he could: to hold out till the chief came. At the hour when everything looked most desperate, a messenger arrived in his camp with a letter in Garibaldi's handwriting, which bore the date of the 16th of May. 'Yesterday,' it ran, we fought and conquered.' Never was unexpected news more welcome. Filled with a joy such as few men have tasted, Rosalino read the glad tidings to his men. 'The cause is won,' he said. 'In a few days, if the enemy's balls respect me, we shall be in Palermo.'Meanwhile Garibaldi had occupied Calatafimi, and was proceeding towards Monreale, from which side he contemplated a descent on the capital. On the high tableland of Renda he met Rosalino Pilo with his[Pg.279]reanimated band. That day the Garibaldian army, all told, amounted to 5,000 men. On the 21st of May, Rosalino was ordered to make a reconnaissance in the direction of Monreale; while carrying out this order a Neapolitan bullet struck his forehead, causing almost instantaneous death. 'I am happy to be able to give my blood to Italy, but may heaven be propitious once for all,' he had written when he first landed, words realised to the letter.The Neapolitans were put in high spirits by Rosalino Pilo's death; the discomfiture of Calatafimi was forgotten; they represented Garibaldi as a mouse that was obligingly walking into a well-laid trap. In fact, his position could not have been more critical, but he had recourse to a stratagem which saved him. He succeeded in placing the enemy upon a completely false scent. Abandoning the idea of reaching Palermo from the east (Monreale), he decided to attempt the assault from the south (Piana de' Greci and Misilimeri), but, all the while, he continued to throw the SicilianPicciottion the Monreale route, and gave them orders to fire stray shots in every direction and to light innumerable camp-fires. These troops frequently came in contact with the Neapolitans in trifling skirmishes, and kept their attention so well occupied that General Colonna, in command of the force sent in search of the 'Filibuster,' did not doubt that the whole Garibaldian army was concentrated over Monreale. Garibaldi rapidly moved his own column by night to its new base of operations. The ground was steep and difficult, and a storm raged all the night; fifteen years later he declared that none of his marches in the virgin forests of America was so arduous as this. While the Neapolitans remained in ignorance of these changes, three English naval officers, guided by a sort of sporting dog's instinct, happened to be driving through the village of[Pg.280]Misilmeri just after Garibaldi established his headquarters in that neighbourhood. Of course it was by chance; still, Misilmeri is an odd place to go for an afternoon drive, and the escapade ended in the issue of a severe warning to Her Majesty's officers and marines to keep in future 'within the bounds of the sentinels of the royal troops.' Luckily record exists of the experiences of Lieutenant Wilmot and his two companions at Misilmeri. Garibaldi, on hearing that three English naval officers were in the village, sent to invite them to the vineyard where he was taking his dinner. They found him standing in a large enclosure in the midst of a group of followers who all, like himself, wore the legendary red flannel shirt and grey trousers. Fra Pantaleo's brown habit formed the only exception. Several Hungarian officers were present, and by his father stood Menotti, then a stout youth of nineteen, with his arm in a sling from the severe wound he received at Calatafimi. Around were soldiers who looked like mere boys. They gazed with delight on the English uniforms. Garibaldi requested his guests to be seated and to partake of some freshly-gathered strawberries. He spoke of his affection and respect for England, and said it was his hope soon to make the acquaintance of the British admiral. He mentioned how he had seen and admired from the heights the beautiful effect of the salutes fired in honour of the Queen's birthday, two days before. He then retired into his tent, made of an old blanket stretched over pikes; a child, under the name of a sentry, paced before it to keep off the crowd.To complete the deception of the enemy the Garibaldian artillery, under Colonel Orsini, was ordered to make a retrograde march on Corleone previous to joining the main force at Misilmeri. Orsini narrowly escaped getting caught while executing this movement, and for[Pg.281]the sake of celerity was obliged to throw his five cannon (including one taken at Calatafimi) down deep water courses. He returned to pull them out again when the immediate danger was past. General Colonna, who followed him closely, was convinced that the whole of the Garibaldians were in disorderly retreat as witnessed by the mules and waggons purposely abandoned by Orsini along the route. For four days Colonna believed that he had Garibaldi flying before him, and sent intelligence to that effect to Naples, whence it was published through the world. On the fifth day he was immeasurably surprised by hearing that Garibaldi had entered Palermo!It was at early dawn on Whitsunday, the 27th of May, that Garibaldi reached the threshold of the capital, and after overcoming the guard at Ponte dell' Ammiraglio, pushed on to Porta Termini, the strategic key to the city. The royalists, though taken by surprise in the first instance, had time to dispose a strong force behind walls and barricades before Garibaldi could reach the gate, and it required two hours of severe fighting to take the position. Many Red-shirts were killed, and Benedetto Cairoli received the severe wound from which he never wholly recovered. Success, however, was complete, and the Palermitans got up to find, to their frantic joy, the Liberator within their gates. According to the old usage their first impulse was to run to the belfries in order to sound the tocsin, but they found that the royalists had removed the clappers of the bells. Nothing daunted, they beat the bells all day with hammers and other implements, and so produced an indescribable noise which had a material influence on the nerves of the terrified Neapolitan troops. Being disarmed, the only other help which the inhabitants could render to their deliverers was the erection of barricades.[Pg.282]Even after Garibaldi's entry, it is thought that General Lanza could have crushed him in the streets by sheer force of superiority in numbers and artillery had he made proper use of his means. However, at about three p.m., he chose the less heroic plan of ordering the castle and the Neapolitan fleet to bombard the city. Most of his staff opposed the decision, and one officer broke his sword, but Lanza was inexorable. The measure so exasperated the Palermitans that even had it achieved its end for the moment, never after would they have proved governable from Naples. Thirteen hundred shells were thrown into the city. Lord Palmerston denounced the bombardment and its attendant horrors as 'unworthy of our time and of our civilisation.' The soldiers helped the work by setting fire to some quarters of the city. Among the spots where the shells fell in most abundance was the convent of the Sette Angeli. The Garibaldians escorted the nuns to a place of safety and carried their more valuable possessions after them. The good sisters were charmed by the courtesy with which the young Italians performed these duties.Fighting in the streets went on more or less continuously, and the liberators kept their ground, but every hour brought fresh perils. A Bavarian regiment arrived to reinforce General Lanza, and the return of the Neapolitan column from Corleone was momentarily expected. The Garibaldians, and this was the gravest fact of all, had used almost their last cartridge. The issue of the struggle was awaited with varying sentiments on board the English, French, Austrian, Spanish and Sardinian warships at anchor in the bay. Admiral Mundy had placed his squadron so close to the land that the ships were in danger of suffering from the bombardment, a course attributed to the humane[Pg.283]desire to afford a refuge for non-combatants, and in fact, the officers were soon engaged in entertaining a frightened crowd of ladies and children. TheIntrepidin particular, was so near the Marina that a fair swimmer could have reached it in a few minutes; nobody guessed, least of all Garibaldi, that her mission in the mind of the British admiral was to save the chiefs own life in what seemed the likely case of its being placed in peril.Admiral Mundy begged the authorities to stop the bombardment before the city was destroyed, but Lanza appeared to have no intention of yielding to his counsels, and it is still uncertain what at last induced him on the 30th of May to sue the Filibuster, hastily transformed into his Excellency, for an armistice of twenty-four hours. 'God knows,' writes Garibaldi, 'if we had want of it!' The royalists had lost nearly the whole city except the palace and its surroundings, and, cut off from the sea, they began to feel a scarcity of food, but not to a severe extent. It seems most probable that with his men panic-stricken and constantly driven back in spite of the bombardment, Lanza looked upon the game as lost, when had he known the straits to which the Garibaldians were reduced for ammunition, he might have considered it as won.An unforeseen incident now occurred; the royalist column, recalled from Corleone, which was largely composed of Bavarians, reached Porta Termini and opened a furious fire on the weak Garibaldian detachment stationed there. Was it ignorance or bad faith? Lieutenant Wilmot, who happened to be passing by, energetically waved his handkerchief and shouted that a truce was concluded; the assailants continued the attack till an officer of the Neapolitan staff who was in conference with Garibaldi at the time hurried to the spot, at his indignant[Pg.284]request, and ordered them to desist. A few minutes later, Garibaldi himself rode up in a wrathful mood, and while he was renewing his protests, a shell fell close by him, thrown from a ship which re-opened the bombardment on its own account. Lieutenant Wilmot, who witnessed the whole affair, was convinced that there was a deliberate plan to surprise and capture the Italian chief after he had granted the armistice.At a quarter past two on this eventful day, the 30th of May 1860, Garibaldi and the Neapolitan generals, Letizia and Chretien, stepped on board the flag-shipHannibalwhich Admiral Mundy offered as neutral ground for their meeting. Curiously enough, both parties, reaching the mole simultaneously, were rowed out in the same ship's boat, which was waiting in readiness. The Neapolitans insisted that Garibaldi should go on board first, either from courtesy or, as the admiral suspected, out of desire to find out whether he would be received with military honours. With instinctive tact he had donned his old and rather shabby uniform of a major-general in the Sardinian army; the admiral's course was, therefore, marked out, and Garibaldi received the same salute as the two generals who followed him. After a foolish attempt on the part of the Neapolitan officers to make themselves disagreeable, which was repressed with dignified decision by Admiral Mundy, business began, and things went smoothly till the fifth article of the proposed convention came under discussion: 'That the municipality should direct a humble petition to his Majesty the King expressing the real wants of the city.' 'No,' cried Garibaldi, starting to his feet, 'the time for humble petitions to the King, or to anyone else, is past; I am the municipality, and I refuse.' General Letizia grew excited at this declaration, but afterwards he agreed to[Pg.285]submit the question of quashing the fifth article to his chief, General Lanza. The armistice was prolonged till nine the next morning.
.....harvest shining plainWhere the peasant heaps his grainIn the garner of his foe.
The 24th of June was to decide how much longer the Lombard peasant should labour to fill a stranger's treasury.
The calculations of the Austrians were founded on the slowness which had hitherto characterised Napoleon's movements. Hess thought that two days might be safely allowed for the Austrian advance, and that the enemy would remain passive on the west bank of the river Chiese, waiting to be attacked on the 25th. If the operation could have been performed in one day, and it is thought that it could, there would have been more prospect of success. But even then, the original plan of attacking the allies west of the Chiese could not have been carried out, as on the 23rd the whole allied army moved forward, the French occupying Castiglione and Lonato, and the Sardinians Rezzato and Desenzano, on the lake of Garda. It is not clear how far the allies believed in the Austrian advance; that they had warning of it from several quarters is certain. For instance, a gentleman living at[Pg.242]Desenzano heard from the country people, who, for marketing or other purposes, constantly go to and fro between that place and Peschiera, that the Austrians had ordered a quantity of country carts and transport waggons to be in readiness on the 23rd, and he hastened with the intelligence to the Piedmontese General Delia Rocca, who, in a fine spirit of red-tapism, pooh-poohed the information. The French encountered several Austrian patrols in the course of the day, but they were inclined to think that the Austrians were only executing a reconnaissance. On the whole, it seems that the conflict came as a surprise to both sides.
The Emperor of Austria, after accompanying the advance for a short distance, returned with Hess to Valleggio for the night. Napoleon slept at Montechiaro. The Austrian forces bivouacked on the little hills between Solferino and Cavriana. They rested well, still confident that no fighting would be done next day. At two in the morning, the French began to move in the direction of Solferino, and the Sardinians in that of Peschiera. There is a legend, that in the grey mists of dawn an advance party of French cavalry espied a huge and gaunt hussar standing by the roadside. For a moment the figure was lost sight of, but it reappeared, and after running across the road in front of the French, it turned and dealt the officer who led the party so tremendous a blow that he fell off his horse. Then the adventurous Austrian fled, followed by a volley from the French troopers; the sound vibrating through the dawn stillness gave the call to arms to the contrasted hosts. The battle of Solferino had begun.
The news flew to Montechiaro and to Valleggio. Napoleon started for[Pg.243]the scene of action with the Imperial Guard; Francis Joseph's staff was sent forward at six a.m., but the Emperor and Hess did not start till later. At near nine, the staff was looking for the Emperor, and the Emperor was looking for the staff in the open country about Volta; the sixty or seventy staff-officers dashed across ploughed fields and over hedges and ditches, in a style which would have done credit to an English fox-hunt. This remarkable incident was in keeping with the general management of the battle on the part of the Austrians, who had been fighting for many hours before the commander-in-chief arrived. After his arrival, they continued fighting without any visible plan, according to the expedients of the divisional generals. The particular expedient adopted by General Zedwitz was to withdraw 15,000 men, including six regiments of cavalry, from the field. At a critical moment, Count Clam Gallas had the misfortune to lose his artillery reserve, and sent everywhere to ask if anyone had seen it. The Prince of Hesse, acting without orders, or against orders, separated his division from Schwarzenberg's and brought it up at the nick of time to save the Austrians, when they were threatened with actual destruction, at two o'clock in the afternoon.
At that hour the French were in possession of the Spia d'Italia, and of all the heights of Solferino. They had been engaged in attacking them since eight in the morning, Napoleon having seen at once that they were the key to the position, and must be taken, cost what it might. The cost was great; if there is any episode in French military history in which soldiers and officers earned all the praise that can be given to brave men, it is the taking of these Solferino hills. Again and again Forey's division and Bazaine's brigade returned to the[Pg.244]charge; the cemetery and streets of Solferino were piled up with their dead, mingled with the dead of the defenders, who contested every inch of ground. The individual valour of the French soldiers in that six hours' struggle made it possible to win the battle.
The Austrians, however, after their desperate straits at two o'clock recovered to so great an extent that, had Zedwitz returned with his cavalry, as the Emperor was hoping that he would, the day might still have been theirs. Even as it was, MacMahon's corps swerved under Zobel's repulse of his attack on San Cassiano, and Niel, in the plain, was dangerously hard pressed by Schwarzenberg. But, by degrees, the French recommenced gaining and the Austrians losing ground, and at six p.m., the latter were retreating in good order, defending each step before they yielded it.
In the last stage of the battle the French limbered up their guns in the belief that a vast reserve of Austrian cavalry was galloping into action. What made them think so was a dense yellowish wall advancing through the air. Had they been natives, they would have recognised the approach of one of those frightful storms which bring devastation in their train, and which, as they move forward in what appears a solid mass, look to the inexperienced eye exactly like the clouds of dust raised by innumerable horsemen. The bursting of the storm hastened the end of the fight.
All the day another fight, separate from this, had been going on between Benedek and the Sardinian army near the knoll of San Martino, overlooking the lake of Garda. The battle, which began in the early morning among the cypresses that crown the hillock, raged till seven[Pg.245]p.m. with a fury which cost the Piedmontese over 4,000 in dead and wounded. It consisted largely in hand-to-hand fighting, which now gave an advantage to the Austrians, now to the Italians; many of the positions were lost and re-taken more than half-a-dozen times; the issue seemed long doubtful, and when Benedek, who commanded his side with unquestionable ability, received orders from the field of Solferino to begin a retreat, each combatant was firmly convinced that he was getting the best of it. Austrian writers allege that this order saved the Sardinians from defeat, while in both Italian and French narratives, the Piedmontese are represented as having been already sure of success. The courage shown alike by Piedmontese and Austrians could not be surpassed. Victor Emmanuel, as usual, set an example to his men.
An incident in the battle brings into striking relief what it was this bloody strife was meant to end. An Austrian corporal fell, mortally wounded by a Bersagliere whom he conjured, in Italian, to listen to what he had got to say. It was this: Forced into the Austrian army, he had been obliged to serve through the war, but had never fired his rifle on his fellow-countrymen; now he preferred to die rather than defend himself. So he yielded up his breath with his hand clasped in the hand which had slain him.
The Austrians lost, on the 24th of June, 13,000 men in killed and wounded; the French, 10,000. It was said that the frightful scene of carnage on the battlefield after Solferino influenced Napoleon III. in his desire to stop the war. Had that scene vanished from his recollection in June 1870?
Even a field of battle, with its unburied dead, speaks only of a small part of the miseries of a great war. Those who were at that time at[Pg.246]Brescia, to which town the greater portion of the French wounded and all the worst cases were brought, still shudder as they recall the dreadful human suffering which no skill or devotion could do more than a very little to assuage. The noble Brescian ladies who had once nursed Bayard, turned, with one accord, into sisters of charity; every house, every church, became a hospital, all that gratitude and pity could do was done; but many were to leave their bones in Italy, and how many more to go home maimed for life, or bearing with them the seeds of death.
Other reasons than those of sentiment in reality decided Napoleon's course. Though these can only be guessed at, the guess, at the present date, amounts to certainty. In the first place, the skin-deep rejoicings in Paris at the news of the victories did not hide the fact that French public opinion, never genuinely favourable to the war, was becoming more and more hostile to it. Then there was the military question. It is true that the Fifth Corps, estimated at 30,000 men, had, at last, emerged from its crepuscular doings in Tuscany, and was available for future operations. Moreover, Kossuth paid a visit to the Imperial headquarters, and held out hopes of a revolution in Hungary which would oblige the Austrian Emperor to remove part of his troops from the scene of the war. Nevertheless, Napoleon was by no means convinced that his army was sufficient to take the Quadrilateral. He realised the bad organisation and numerous shortcomings of the forces under him so vividly that it seems incredible that, in the eleven following years, he should have done nothing to remedy them. He attributed his success mainly to chance, though in a less degree to a certain lack of energy in the Austrians, joined with the exaggerated fear of responsibility felt by their leaders. He never could[Pg.247]thoroughly understand why the Austrians had not won Solferino. Naturally, he did not express these opinions to his marshals, but there is ample proof that he held them; and if the fact stood alone, it ought not to be difficult to explain why he was not anxious for a continuance of the war.
But it does not stand alone. Napoleon feared being defeated on the Rhine as well as in the Quadrilateral. Prussia had six army corps ready, and she was about to move them. That, after her long hesitations, she resolved to intervene was long doubted, but it cannot be so after the evidence which recent years have produced.
At the time things wore a different complexion. Europe was never more amazed than when, on the 6th of July, Napoleon the victor sent General Fleury to Francis Joseph the vanquished with a request for an armistice. One point only was plain; an armistice meant peace without Venetia, and never did profound sorrow so quickly succeed national joy than when this, to contemporaries astonishing intelligence, went forth. But the blow fell on no Italian with such tremendous force as on Cavour.
There are natives of Italy who appear to be more cool, more calculating, more completely masters of themselves, than the men of any other nationality. Cavour was one of these. But there comes, sooner or later, the assertion of southern blood, the explosion of feeling the more violent because long contained, and the cool, quiet Italian of yesterday is not to be recognised except by those who know the race intimately well, and who know the volcano that underlies its ice and snow as well as its luxuriant vegetation.
On Wednesday, the 6th of June, the French army was spread out in[Pg.248]battle array along the left bank of the Mincio, and everything led to the supposition that a new and immediate battle was in contemplation. The Piedmontese were engaged in making preparations to invest Peschiera. Napoleon's headquarters were at Valleggio, those of the King at Monzambano. By the evening a very few persons had picked up the information that Napoleon had sent a messenger to Verona. Victor Emmanuel knew nothing of it, nor did any of the French generals except Marshal Vaillant, but such things leak out, and two or three individuals were aware of the journey to Verona, and spent that night in racking their brains as to what it might mean. Next day at eleven o'clock General Fleury returned; the Austrian Emperor had accepted the armistice. Further secrecy was impossible, and like lightning the news flashed through the world.
Cavour rushed from Turin to Desenzano, where he arrived the day before the final meeting between Napoleon and Francis Joseph. He waited for a carnage in the littlecaféin the piazza; no one guessed who it was, and conversation went on undisturbed: it was full of curses on the French Emperor. Mazzini, someone said, was right; this is the way the war was sure to end. When a shabby conveyance had at length been found, the great statesman drove to Monzambano. There, of course, his arrival did not escape notice, and all who saw him were horrified by the change that had come over his face. Instead of the jovial, witty smile, there was a look of frantic rage and desperation. What passed between him and his Sovereign is partly a matter of conjecture; the exact sense of the violent words into which his grief betrayed him is lost, in spite of the categorical versions of the interview which have been printed. Even in a fit of madness he can hardly have spoken some of the words attributed to him. That he advised the King to withdraw[Pg.249]his army or to abdicate rather than agree to the peace which was being plotted behind his back, seems past doubting. It is said that after attempting in vain to calm him, Victor Emmanuel brought the interview to a sudden close. Cavour came out of the house flushed and exhausted, and drove back to Desenzano. He had resigned office.
The King showed extraordinary self-control. Bitter as the draught was, he saw that it must be drunk, and he was determined to drink it with dignity. Probably no other Italian grasped as clearly as he did the real reason which actuated Napoleon; at any rate his chivalrous appreciation of the benefits already received, closed his lips to reproaches. 'Whatever may be the decision of your Majesty,' he said to the Emperor on the eve of Villafranca, 'I shall feel an eternal gratitude for what you have done for the independence of Italy, and I beg you to believe that under all circumstances you may reckon on my complete fidelity.'
If there was sadness in the Sardinian camp, so there was in that of Austria. The Austrians by no means thought that the game was up for them. It would be interesting to know by what arguments Napoleon persuaded the young Emperor to renounce the hope of retrieving his disasters, whilst he slowly pulled to pieces some flowers which were on the table before which he and Francis Joseph sat. When they left the house, the heir to all the Hapsburgs looked pale and sad. Did he remember the dying counsels of 'Father' Radetsky—not to yield if he was beaten on the Mincio, on the Tagliamento, on the Isonzo, before the gates of Vienna.
When, on the evening of the same day, the Emperor of Austria signed the preliminaries of peace, he said to Prince Napoleon, who took the[Pg.250]document to Verona for his signature: 'I pray God that if you are ever a sovereign He may spare you the hour of grief I have just passed.' Yet the defeat of Solferino and the loss of Lombardy were the first steps in the transformation of Radetsky's pupil from a despot, who hourly feared revolution in every land under his sceptre, to a wise and constitutional monarch ruling over a contented Empire. To some individuals and to some states, misfortune is fortune.
Napoleon's hurried journey to Turin on his way back to France was almost a flight. Everywhere his reception was cold in the extreme. He was surprised, he said, at the ingratitude of the Italians. It was still possible to ask for gratitude, as the services rendered had not been paid for; no one spoke yet of the barter of Savoy and Nice. But Napoleon, when he said these words to the Governor of Milan, forgot how the Lombards, in June 1848, absolutely refused to take their freedom at the cost of resigning Venice to Austria. And if Venice was dear to them and to Italy then, how much dearer had she not become since the heroic struggle in which she was the last to yield. The bones of Manin cried aloud for Venetian liberty from his grave of exile.
Venice was the one absorbing thought of the moment; yet there were clauses in the brief preliminaries of peace more fraught with insidious danger than the abandonment of Venice. If the rest of Italy became one and free, it needed no prophet to tell that not the might of twenty Austrias could keep Venetia permanently outside the fold.[Pg.252]But if Italy was to remain divided and enslaved, then, indeed, the indignant question went up to heaven, To what end had so much blood been shed?
When he resolved to cut short the war, Napoleon still had it in his power to go down to history as the supreme benefactor of Italy. He chose instead to become her worst and by far her most dangerous enemy. The preliminaries of peace opened with the words: 'The Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of the French will favour the creation of an Italian Confederation under the honorary presidency of the Holy Father.' Further, it was stated that the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena would return to their states. Though Napoleon proposed at first to add, 'without foreign armed intervention,' he waived the point (Rome was in his mind) and no such guarantee was inserted. Here, then, was the federative programme which all the personal influence and ingenuity of the French Emperor, all the arts of French diplomacy, were concentrated on maintaining, and which was only defeated by the true patriotism and strong good sense of the Italian populations, and of the men who led them through this, the most critical period in their history.
In England Lord Derby's administration had fallen and the Liberals were again in power. Napoleon was so strangely deluded as to expect to find support in that quarter for his anti-unionist conspiracy. His earliest scheme was that the federative plan should be presented to Europe by Great Britain. Lord John Russell answered: 'We are asked to propose a partition (morcellement) of the peoples of Italy, as if we had the right to dispose of them.' It was a happy circumstance for Italy that her unity had no better friends than in the English Government during those difficult years. Cavour's words soon after Villafranca, 'It is England's turn now,' were not belied.
[Pg.253]One thing should have made Napoleon uneasy; a man like Cavour, when his blood is roused, when his nature is fired by the strongest passions that move the human heart, is an awkward adversary. If there was an instant in which the great statesman thought that all was lost, it was but an instant. With the quick rebound of virile characters he recovered his balance and understood his part. It was to fight and conquer.
'Your Emperor has dishonoured me,' he said to M. Pietri in the presence of Kossuth (the interview taking place at Turin on the 15th of July). 'Yes, sir, he has dishonoured me,' and he set forth how, after promising to hunt the last Austrian out of Italy, after secretly exacting the price of his assistance to which Cavour had induced his good and honest King to consent, he now left them solemnly in the lurch; Lombardy might suffice! And, for nothing to be wanting, the King was to be forced into a confederation with Austria and the Italian princes under the presidency of the Pope. After painting the situation with all the irony and scorn of which he was master, he gave his note of warning: 'If needs be, I will become a conspirator, I will become a revolutionist, but this treaty shall never be executed; a thousand times no—never!'
The routine business of the Prime Minister still fell to Cavour, as Rattazzi, who succeeded him, had not yet formed his cabinet. He was obliged, therefore, to write officially to the Royal Commissioners at Modena, Bologna and Florence to abandon their posts. But in the character of Cavour, the private citizen, he telegraphed to them at the same time to remain and do their duty. And they remained.
On one point there was a temporary lull of anxiety. Almost the last words spoken by Napoleon to Victor Emmanuel before he left Turin were:[Pg.254]'We shall think no more about Nice and Savoy.' The mention of Nice shows that though it had not been promised, Napoleon was all along set upon its acquisition. It is impossible to say how far, at the moment, he was sincere in the renunciation. That, very soon after his return to Paris, he was diligently weaving plans for getting both provinces into his net, is evident from the tenor of the articles and notes published in the 'inspired' French newspapers.
Two chief motives can be divined for Napoleon's determined opposition to Italian unity which never ceased till Sedan. The first was his wish, shared by all French politicians, that Italy should be weak. The second was his regard for the Temporal Power which proceeded from his still being convinced that he could not reign without the Clerical vote. The French prelates were perpetually giving him reminders that this vote depended on his keeping the Pope on his throne. For instance, Cardinal Donnet told him at Bordeaux in October 1859, that he could not choose a better way of showing his appreciation of the Blessed Virgin than 'en ménageant un triomphe à son Fils dans la personne de son Vicaire.' It would be a triumph which the Catholic world would salute with transport. Hints of this sort, the sense of which was not hard to read, in spite of their recondite phraseology, reached him from every quarter. He feared to set them aside. The origins of his power were too much tainted for him to advance boldly on an independent policy. Thus it was that bit by bit he deliberately forfeited all title to the help of Italy when the same whirlwind that dashed him to earth, cleared the way for the final accomplishment of her national destinies.
Whilst Victor Emmanuel was more alive than Cavour to the military arguments in favour of stopping hostilities when the tide of success[Pg.255]was at its height, he was not one whit more disposed to stultify his past by becoming the vassal at once of Paris and Vienna. In a letter written to the Emperor of the French in October, in answer to a very long one in which Napoleon sought to convert him to the plan of an Austro-Italian Confederation, he wound up by saying: 'For the considerations above stated, and for many others, I cannot, Sire, second your Majesty's policy in Italy. If your Majesty is bound by treaties and cannot revoke your engagements in the (proposed) congress, I, Sire, am bound on my side, by honour in the face of Europe, by right and duty, by the interests of my house, of my people and of Italy. My fate is joined to that of the Italian people. We can succumb, but never betray. Solferino and San Martino may sometimes redeem Novara and Waterloo, but the apostasies of princes are always irreparable. I am moved to the bottom of my soul by the faith and love which this noble and unfortunate people has reposed in me, and rather than be unworthy of it, I will break my sword and throw the crown away as did my august father. Personal interest does not guide me in defending the annexations; the Sword and Time have borne my house from the summit of the Alps to the banks of the Mincio, and those two guardian angels of the Savoy race will bear it further still, when it pleases God.'
The events in Central Italy to which the King alludes were of the highest importance. L.C. Farini, the Sardinian Royal Commissioner at Modena, when relieved of his office, assumed the dictatorship by the will of the people. L. Cipriani became Governor of Romagna, and at Florence Ricasoli continued at the head of affairs, undismayed and unshaken in his resolve to defeat the combined machinations of France and Austria. In August the populations of Modena, Reggio, Parma and[Pg.256]Piacenza declared their union with Piedmont by an all but unanimous popular vote, the two last provinces placing themselves for temporary convenience under the Dictator Farini. A few days later, Tuscany and Romagna voted a like act of union through their Constituent Assemblies. The representatives of the four States, Modena, Parma, Romagna and Tuscany, formally announced to the great Powers their choice of Victor Emmanuel, in whose rule they recognised the sole hope of preserving their liberties and avoiding disorder. Delegates were sent to Turin with the offer of the crown.
Peace, of which the preliminaries only were signed at Villafranca, was not yet definitely concluded, and a large French army was still in Italy. The King's government feared therefore to adopt the bold course of accepting the annexations outright, and facing the responsibilities which might arise. Victor Emmanuel thanked the delegates, expressing his confidence that Europe would not undo the great work that had been done in Central Italy. The state of things, however, in these provinces, whose elected King could not yet govern them, was anomalous, most of all in what related to defence; they being menaced on the Austrian side by the Duke of Modena, and on the South by the Papal troops in the Cattolica. An armed force of 25,000 men was organised, of which the Tuscan contingent was under the command of Garibaldi, and the rest under that of the Sardinian General Fanti, 'lent' for the purpose. Garibaldi hoped not merely to defend the provinces already emancipated, but to carry war into the enemy's camp and make revolution possible throughout the States of the Church. To the Party of Action the chance seemed an unique one of hastening the progress of events. Unaccustomed as they were to weigh diplomatic[Pg.257]difficulties, they saw the advantages but not the perils of a daring course. Meanwhile Napoleon threatened to occupy Piacenza with 30,000 men on the first forward step of Garibaldi, who, on his side, seemed by no means inclined to yield either to the orders of the Dictator Farini, or to the somewhat violent measures taken to stop him by General Fanti, who instructed the officers under his command to disobey him. It was then that Victor Emmanuel tried his personal influence, rarely tried without success, over the revolutionary chief, who reposed absolute faith in the King's patriotism, and who was therefore amenable to his arguments when all others failed. The general was summoned to Turin, and in an audience given on the 16th of November, Victor Emmanuel persuaded him that the proposed enterprise would retard rather than advance the cause of Italian freedom. Garibaldi left for Caprera, only insisting that his 'weak services' should be called into requisition whenever there was an opportunity to act.
Before quitting the Adriatic coast the hero of Rome went one evening with his two children, Menotti and Teresita, to the Chapel in the Pine Forest, where their mother was buried. Within a mile was the farmhouse where he had embraced her lifeless form before undertaking his perilous flight from sea to sea. In 1850, at Staten Island, when he was earning his bread as a factory hand, he wrote the prophetic words: 'Anita, a land of slavery holds your precious dust; Italy will make your grave free, but what can restore to your children their incomparable mother?' Garibaldi's visit to Anita's grave closes the story of the brave and tender woman who sacrificed all to the love she bore him.
After sitting for three months, the Conference which met at Zurich to[Pg.258]establish the definite treaty of peace finished its labours on the 10th of November. The compact was substantially the same as that arranged at Villafranca. Victor Emmanuel, who had signed the Preliminaries with the reservation implied in the note: 'In so far as I am concerned,' preserved the same liberty of action in the Treaty of Zurich. He still hesitated, however, in assuming the government of the central provinces, and even the plan of sending the Prince of Carignano as governor fell through in consequence of Napoleon's opposition. His hesitations sprang from the general apprehension that a hint from Paris might any day be followed by a new eruption of Austrians in Modena and Tuscany for the purpose of replacing the former rulers of those states on their thrones. Such a fear existed at the time, and Rattazzi's timid policy was the result; it is impossible not to ask now whether it was not exaggerated? 'What statesman,' wrote the Prince Consort in June 1859, 'could adopt measures to force Austrian rule again upon delighted, free Italy?' If this was true in June was it less true in November? For the rest, would not the supreme ridicule that would have fallen on the French Emperor if he encouraged the Austrians to return to Central Italy after driving them out of Lombardy, have obliged him to support the principle of non-intervention, whether he wished it or not? England was prepared to back up the government of Piedmont, in which lay a great moral force. It is plain that the long wavering about what ought to be done with the central provinces is what cost the country Savoy and Nice, or at any rate, Nice. Napoleon did all in his power to prevent and to retard the annexations, especially that of Tuscany, which, as he said, 'would make Italian unity a mere question of time,' but when he found that neither threats nor blandishments could move the population from their[Pg.259]resolve to have Victor Emmanuel for their king, he decided to sell his adhesion for a good price. Compelled for the sake of appearances to withdraw his claim after the abrupt termination of the war, he now saw an excellent excuse for reviving it, and he was not likely to let the opportunity slip.
At this period there was continual talk, which may or may not have been intended to end in talk, of a Congress to which the affairs of Italy were to be referred. It gave an opening to Napoleon for publishing one of the anonymous pamphlets by means of which he was in the habit of throwing out tentative ideas, and watching their effect. The chief idea broached inLe Pape et le Congrèswas the voluntary renunciation by the Pope of all but a small zone of territory round Rome; it being pointed out that his position as an independent sovereign would remain unaffected by such an act, which would smooth the way to his assuming the hegemony of the Italian Confederation. The Pope, however, let it be clearly known that he had no intention of ceding a rood of his possessions, or of recognising the separation of the part which had already escaped from him. Anyone acquainted with the long strife and millennial manoeuvres by which the Church had acquired the States called by her name, will understand the unwillingness there was to yield them. To do Pius IX. justice, an objection which merits more respect weighed then and always upon his mind. He thought that he was personally debarred by the oath taken on assuming the tiara from giving up the smallest part of the territory he received from his predecessor. The Ultramontane party knew that they had only to remind him of this oath to provoke a fresh assertion ofNon possumus.The attitude of the Pope was one reason why the Congress was abandoned; but there was a deeper reason. A European[Pg.260]Congress would certainly not have approved the cession of Nice and Savoy, and to that object the French Emperor was now turning all his attention.
At Turin there was an ignoble cabal, supported not so much, perhaps, by Rattazzi himself as by followers, the design of which was to prevent Cavour from returning to power. Abroad, the Empress Eugénie, who looked on Cavour as the Pope's worst foe, did what she could to further the scheme, and its promoters counted much on the soreness left in Victor Emmanuel's mind by the scene after Villafranca. That soreness did, in fact, still exist; but when in January the Rattazzi ministry fell, the King saw that it was his duty to recall Cavour to his counsels, and he at once charged him to form a cabinet.
That Cavour accepted the task is the highest proof of his abnegation as a statesman. He was on the point of getting into his carriage to catch the train for Leri when the messenger reached the Palazzo Cavour with the royal command to go to the castle. If he had refused office and returned to the congenial activity of his life as a country gentleman, his name would not be attached to the melancholy sacrifice which Napoleon was now determined to exact from Italy. The French envoy, Baron de Talleyrand, whose business it was to communicate the unwelcome intelligence, arrived at Turin before the collapse of Rattazzi; but, on finding that a ministerial crisis was imminent, he deferred carrying out his mission till a more opportune moment.
On the 18th of January 1860, the Emperor admitted to Lord Cowley that, though there was as yet no arrangement between himself and Victor Emmanuel on the subject, he intended to have Savoy. After the long series of denials of any such design, the admission caused the most indignant feeling in the English ministers and in the Queen, who[Pg.261]wrote to Lord John Russell: 'We have been made regular dupes.' She went on to say that the revival of the English Alliance, and the hymns of universal peace chanted in Paris on the occasion of the Commercial Treaty, had been simply so many blinds, 'to hide from Europe a policy of spoliation.' Cavour came in for a part of the blame, as, during the war, he denied cognisance of the proposal to give up Savoy. The best that can be said of that denial is, that it was diplomatically impracticable for one party in the understanding of Plombières to make a clean breast of the truth, whilst the other party was assuring the whole universe that he was fighting for an idea.
When the war was broken off, Cavour fully expected that Napoleon, of whom he had the worst opinion, would then and there demand whole pay for his half service; and this had much to do with his furious anger at Villafranca; but later, in common with the best-informed persons, he believed that the claim was finally withdrawn. When, however, Napoleon asked again for the provinces—not as the price of the war, but of the annexations in Central Italy—Cavour instantly came to the conclusion that, cost what it might (and he thought that, amongst other things, it would cost his own reputation and popularity), the demand must be granted. Otherwise Italian unity would never be accomplished.
In considering whether he was mistaken, it must not be forgotten that the French troops were still in Italy. Not to speak of those in Rome, Marshal Vaillant had five divisions of infantry and two brigades of cavalry in Lombardy up to the 20th of March 1860. The engagement had been to send this army home as soon as the definite peace was concluded; why, then, was it still south of the Alps four months after?
[Pg.262]In spite of this, however, and in spite of the difficulty of judging an act, all the reasons for which may not, even now, be in possession of the world, it is very hard indeed to pardon Cavour for having yielded Nice as well as Savoy to France. The Nizzards were Italians as the lower class of the population is Italian still; they had always shown warm sympathy with the hopes of Italy, which could not be said of the Savoyards; and Nice was the birthplace of Garibaldi!
England would have supported and applauded resistance to the claim for Nice on general grounds, though her particular interest was in Savoy, or rather in that part of the Savoy Alps which was neutralised by treaty in 1814. It was the refusal of Napoleon to adopt the compromise of ceding this district to Switzerland which caused the breach between him and the British ministry. From that moment, also, Prussia began to increase her army, and resolved, when she was ready, to check the imperial ambition by force of arms. 'The loss of Alsace and Lorraine,' writes an able publicist, M.E. Tallichet, 'was the direct consequence of the annexation of Nice and Savoy.'
If anything could have rendered more galling to Italy the deprivation of these two provinces, it was the tone adopted in France when speaking of the transaction. What were Savoy and Nice? A barren rock and an insignificant strip of coast! The French of thirty-four years ago travelled so little that they may have believed in the description. The vast military importance of the ceded districts has been already referred to. Some scraps on the Nice frontier were saved in a curious way: They were spots which formed part of the favourite playground of the Royal Hunter of the Alps, and it was pointed out to[Pg.263]Napoleon that it would be a graceful act to leave these particular 'barren rocks' to his Sardinian Majesty. The zig-zags in the line of demarcation which were thus introduced are said to be of great strategic advantage to Italy. So far, so good; but it remains true that France isinsidethe Italian front-door.
At the elections for the new Chamber in March 1860, the Nizzards chose Garibaldi; and this was their real plebiscite—not that which followed at a short interval, and presented the phenomenon of a population which appeared to change its mind as to its nationality in the course of a few weeks. In voting for Garibaldi, they voted for Italy.
The Nizzard hero made some desperate efforts on behalf of his fellow-citizens in the Chamber, not his natural sphere, and was on the brink of making other efforts in a sphere in which he might have succeeded better. He had the idea of going to Nice with about 200 followers, and exciting just enough of a revolution to let the real will of the people be known, and to frustrate the wiles of French emissaries and the pressure of government in the official plebiscite of the 15th of April. The story of the conspiracy, which is unknown in Italy, has been told by one of the conspirators, the late Lawrence Oliphant. The English writer, who reached Turin full of wrath at the proposed cession, was introduced to Garibaldi, from whom he received the news of the proposed enterprise. Oliphant offered his services, which were accepted, and he accompanied the general to Genoa, where he engaged a diligence which was to carry the vanguard to Nice. But, on going to Garibaldi for the last orders, he found him supping with twenty or thirty young men; 'All Sicilians!' said the chief. 'We must give up the Nice programme; the general opinion is that we shall lose[Pg.264]all if we try for too much.' He added that he had hoped to carry out the Nice plan first, but now everything must be sacrificed to freeing Sicily. And he asked Oliphant to join the Thousand, an offer which the adventurous Englishman never ceased to regret that he did not accept. As it was, he elected to go all the same to Nice, where he was the spectator and became the historian of the arts which brought about the semblance of an unanimous vote in favour of annexation to France.
The ratification of the treaty—which, by straining the constitution, was concluded without consulting Parliament—was reluctantly given by the Piedmontese Chambers, the majority of members fearing the responsibility of upsetting an accomplished fact. Cavour, when he laid down the pen after signing the deed of cession, turned to Baron de Talleyrand with the remark: 'Now we are accomplices!' His face, which had been depressed, resumed its cheerful air. In fact, though Napoleon's dislike of the central annexations was unabated, he could no longer oppose them. Victor Emmanuel accepted the four crowns of Central Italy, the people of which, during the long months of waiting, and under circumstances that applied the most crucial test to their resolution, had never swerved from the desire to form part of the Italian monarchy under the sceptre of theRe Galantuomo. The King of Sardinia, as he was still called, had eleven million subjects, and on his head rested one excommunication the more. The Bull fulminated against all who had, directly or indirectly, participated in the events which caused Romagna to change hands, was published a day or two before the opening of the new Parliament at Turin.
Addressing for the first time the representatives of his widened realm, Victor Emmanuel said: 'True to the creed of my fathers, and,[Pg.265]like them, constant in my homage to the Supreme Head of the Church, whenever it happens that the ecclesiastical authority employs spiritual arms in support of temporal interests, I shall find in my steadfast conscience and in the very traditions of my ancestors, the power to maintain civil liberty in its integrity, and my own authority, for which I hold myself accountable to God alone and to my people.'
The words: 'Della quale debbo ragione a Dio solo ed ai miei popoli,' were added by the King to the speech prepared by his ministers; it was noticed that he pronounced them with remarkable energy. The speech concluded: 'Our country is no more the Italy of the Romans, nor the Italy of the Middle Ages; no longer the field for every foreign ambition, it becomes, henceforth, the Italy of the Italians.'
During the journey from Turin to Genoa, Garibaldi was occupied in opening, reading and tearing up into small pieces an enormous mass of letters, while his English companion spent the time in vainly speculating as to what this vast correspondence was about. When they approached Genoa, the floor of the railway carriage resembled a gigantic wastepaper basket. It was only afterwards that Lawrence Oliphant guessed the letters to be responses to a call for volunteers for Sicily.
The origin of the Sicilian expedition has been related in various ways; there is the version which attributes it entirely to Cavour, and the version which attributes it to not irresponsible personages in England. The former was the French and Clerical official account; the latter has always obtained credence in Germany and Russia. For instance, the late Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg said that 'the mystery of how 150,000 men were vanquished by a thousand Red-shirts was wrapped in English bank-notes!' Of this theory, it need only be said that the notion of Lord Palmerston (for it comes to that) supporting a foreign revolution out of the British exchequer is not one that commends itself to the belief of the average Englishman. With regard[Pg.267]to the other theory—namely, that Cavour 'got up' the Sicilian expedition, it has been favoured to a certain degree, both by his friends and foes; but it will not bear careful examination. As far as Sicily goes (Naples is another thing), the most that can be brought home to Cavour is a complicity of toleration; and even this statement should be qualified by the addition, 'after the act.' It is true that, in the early days after Villafranca, he had exclaimed: 'They have cut me off from making Italy from the north, by diplomacy; very well, I will make her from the south, by revolution!' True, also, that earlier still, in 1856, he expressed the opinion, shared by every man of common sense, that while the Bourbons ruled over the Two Sicilies there would be no real peace for Italy. Nevertheless, in April 1860, he neither thought the time ripe for the venture nor the means employed adequate for its accomplishment. He was afraid that Garibaldi would meet with the death of the Bandieras and Pisacane. No one was more convinced than Cavour of the importance of Garibaldi's life to Italy; and it is a sign of his true superiority of mind that this conviction was never entertained more strongly than at the moment when the general was passionately inveighing against him for the cession of Nice. To Cavour such invectives seemed natural, and even justified from one point of view; they excited in him no bitterness, and he was only too happy that they fell upon himself and not upon the King, since it was his fixed idea that, without the maintenance of a good understanding between Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, Italy would not be made. Few men under the sting of personal attacks have shown such complete self-control.
[Pg.268]As has been stated, when Francis II. ascended the Neapolitan throne, he was invited to join in the war with Austria, and he refused. Since then, the same negative result had attended the reiterated counsels of reform which the Piedmontese Government sent to that of Naples—the young King showing, by repeated acts, that not Sardinia but Rome was his monitress and chosen ally in Italy. The Pope had lately induced the French General Lamoricière to take the command of the Pontifical troops, and he and the King of Naples were organising their armies, with a view to co-operating at an early date against the common enemy at Turin. In January 1860, Lord Russell wrote to Mr Elliot, the English Minister at Naples: 'You will tell the King and his Ministers that the Government of her Majesty the Queen does not intend to accept any part in the responsibility nor to guarantee the certain consequences of a misgovernment which has scarcely a parallel in Europe.' Mr Elliot replied, early in March: 'I have used all imaginable arguments to convince this Government of the necessity of stopping short on the fatal path which it has entered. I finished by saying that I was persuaded of the inevitable fall of his Majesty and the dynasty if wiser counsels did not obtain a hearing, and requested an audience with the King; since, when the catastrophe occurs, I do not wish my conscience to reproach me with not having tried all means of saving an inexperienced Sovereign from the ruin which threatens him. The Ministers of France and Spain have spoken to the same effect.' Even Russia advised Francis to make common cause with Piedmont. In April, Victor Emmanuel wrote to his cousin, 'as a near relative and an Italian Prince,' urging him to listen while there was yet time to save something, if not everything. 'If you will not hear[Pg.269]me,' he said, 'the day may come when I shall be obliged to be the instrument of your ruin!' It has been said that the Sardinian Government, in tendering similar advice, hoped for its refusal and contemplated the eventuality hinted at with the reverse of apprehension. Of course this is true. Yet the responsibility of declining to take the only course which might by any possibility have saved him must rest with the King of Naples and not with Victor Emmanuel and his Ministers. The attempt to make Francis appear the innocent victim of a diabolical conspiracy will never succeed, however ingenious are the writers who devote their abilities to so unfruitful a task.
To trace the real beginning of the expedition we must go back to the summer of 1859. When the war ended in the manner which he alone had foreseen, Mazzini projected a revolutionary enterprise in the south which should restore to the Italian movement its purely national character and defeat in advance Napoleon's plans for gathering the Bourbon succession for his cousin, Prince Murat. He sent agents to Sicily, and notably Francesco Crispi, who, as a native of the island and a man of resource and quick intelligence, was well qualified to execute the work of propaganda and to elude the Bourbon police. Crispi travelled in all parts of Sicily for several months, and in September he was able to report to Mazzini that the insurrection might be expected in a few weeks—which proved incorrect, but only as to date. Mazzini forbade his agents to agitate in favour of a republic; unity was the sole object to be aimed at; unity in whatever form and at whatever cost.
In March 1860 he had an interview in London with the man who was to become the actual initiator of the revolutionary movement in South[Pg.270]Italy. This was Rosalino Pilo, son of the Count di Capaci, and descended through his mother from the royal house of Anjou, whose name, Italianised into Gioeni, is still borne by several noble families in Sicily. Rosalino Pilo, who was now in his fortieth year, had devoted all his life to his country's liberties. After 1849, when he was obliged to leave Sicily, he sold his ancestral acres to supply the wants of his fellow exiles, and help the work of revolutionary propaganda. Handsome in person, cultivated in mind, ready to give his life, as he had already given most of what makes life tolerable, to the Italian cause, he won the affection of all with whom he was brought in contact, and especially of Mazzini, from whom he parted after that last interview radiant with hope, and yet with a touch of sadness in his smile, as if in prevision that the place allotted to him in the ranks of men was among the sowers, not among the reapers.
Rosalino Pilo believed, as Mazzini believed, that Sicily was ripe for revolution, but he realised the fact that under existing circumstances there was an exceeding probability of a Sicilian revolution being rapidly crushed. It was the tendency of Mazzini's mind to think the contrary; to put more faith in the people themselves than in any leader or leaders; to imagine that the blast of the trumpet of an angered population was sufficient to bring down the walls of all the citadels of despotism, however well furnished with heavy artillery. Pilo saw that there was only one man who could give a real chance of success to a rising in his native island, and that man was Garibaldi. As early as February he began to write to Caprera, urging the general to give his co-operation to the projected movement. It is notorious that the scheme, until almost the last moment, did not find favour with Garibaldi. In spite of his perilous enterprises, the chief had never been a courtier of failure, and he understood more clearly than[Pg.271]his correspondent what failure at that particular juncture would have meant. The ventures of the Bandieras and of Pisacane, similar in their general plan to the one now in view (though on a smaller scale). ended in disasters, but disasters that were useful to Italy. A disaster now would have been ruinous to Italy. Garibaldi's hesitations do not, as some writers of the extreme party have foolishly assumed, detract from his merit as victorious leader of the expedition; they only show him to have been more amenable to political prudence than most people have supposed.
Rosalino Pilo wrote, finally, that in any case he was determined to go to Sicily himself to complete the preparations, and he added: 'The insurrection in Sicily, consider it well, will carry with it that of the whole south of the peninsula,' by which means not only would the Muratist plots be frustrated, but also a new army and fleet would become available for the conquest of independence and the liberation of Venetia. The writer concluded by wishing the general 'new glories in Sicily in the accomplishment of our country's redemption.'
True to his word Rosalino Pilo embarked at Genoa on the 24th of March, on a crazy old coasting vessel, manned by five friendly sailors. He had with him a single companion, and carried such arms and ammunition as he had been able to get together. Terrible weather and the deplorable condition of their craft kept them at sea for fifteen days, during which time something of great importance happened at Palermo. On the 4th of April the authorities became aware that arms and conspirators were concealed in the convent of La Gancia, which was to have been the focus of the revolution. Troops were sent to besiege the[Pg.272]convent, which they only succeeded in taking after four hours' resistance; its fall was the signal for a general slaughter of the inmates, both monks and laymen. The insurrection was thus stifled in its birth in the capital, but from this time it began to spread in the country, and when, at last, Rosalino Pilo landed near Messina on the 10th of April, he found that several armed bands were already roving the mountains, as yet almost unperceived by the Government, which had gone to sleep again after its exhibition of energy on the 4th. Events were, however, to awake it from its slumbers, and to cause it to renew its vigilance. It required all Rosalino Pilo's skill and courage to sustain the revolution of which he became henceforth the responsible head, till the fated deliverer arrived.
Pilo's letters, brought back to Genoa by the pilot who guided him to Sicilian waters, were what decided Garibaldi to go to the rescue. Some, like Bixio and Bertani, warmly and persistently urged him to accept the charge; others, like Sirtori, were convinced that the undertaking was foredoomed, and that its only result would be the death of their beloved captain: but this conviction did not lessen their eagerness to share his perils when once he was resolved to go.
Like all born men of action, Garibaldi did not know what doubt was after he came to a decision. From that moment his mental atmosphere cleared; he saw the goal and went straight for it. In a surprisingly short time the expedition was organised and ready to leave. 'Few and good,' had been the rule laid down by Garibaldi for the enrolments; if he had chosen he could have taken with him a much more numerous host. When it was the day to start few they were (according to the most recent computation the exact number was 1072 men), and they were[Pg.273]certainly good. The force was divided into seven companies, the first entrusted to the ardent Nino Bixio, who acted in a general way as second-in-command through both the Sicilian and Neapolitan campaigns, and the seventh to Benedetto Cairoli, whose mother contributed a large sum of money as well as three of her sons to the freeing of Southern Italy. Sirtori, about whom there always clung something of the priestly vocation for which he had been designed, was the head of the staff; Türr (the Hungarian) was adjutant-general. The organisation was identical with that of the Italian army 'to which we belong,' said Garibaldi in his first order of the day.
One name is missing, that of Medici, who was left behind to take the command of a projected movement in the Papal States. By whom this plan was invented is not clear, but simultaneous operations in different parts of the peninsula had been always a favourite design of the more extreme members of the Party of Action, and Garibaldi probably yielded to their advice. All that came of it was the entry into Umbria of Zambianchi's small band of volunteers, which was promptly repulsed over the frontier. Medici, therefore, remained inactive till after the fall of Palermo; he headed the second expedition of 4,000 volunteers which arrived in time to take part in the final Sicilian battles.
Garibaldi's political programme was the cry of the Hunters of the Alps in 1859:Italy and Victor Emmanuel.Those who were strict republicans at heart, while abstaining from preaching the republic till the struggle was over, would have stopped short at the first wordItaly. But Garibaldi told Rosalino Pilo, who was of this way of thinking, that either he marched in the King's name or he did not march at all. This was the condition of his acceptance, because he[Pg.274]esteemed it the condition on which hung the success of the enterprise, nay more, the existence of an united Italy.
The Thousand embarked at Quarto, near Genoa, during the night of the 5th of May on the two merchant vessels, thePiemonteandLombardo, which, with the complicity of their patriotic owner, R. Rubattino, had been sequestered for the use of the expedition. On hearing of Garibaldi's departure, Cavour ordered Admiral Persano, whose squadron lay in the gulf of Cagliari, to arrest the expedition if the steamers entered any Sardinian port, but to let it go free if they were encountered on the high seas. Persano asked Cavour what he was to do if by stress of storms Garibaldi were forced to come into port? The answer was that 'the Ministry' decided for his arrest, which Persano rightly interpreted to mean that Cavour had decided the contrary. He resolved, therefore, not to stop him under any circumstances, but the case did not occur, for the fairest of May weather favoured the voyage, and six days after the start the men were quietly landed at Marsala without let or hindrance from the two Neapolitan warships which arrived almost at the same time as thePiemonteandLombardo, an inconceivable stroke of good fortune which, like the eventful march that was to follow, seems to belong far more to romance than to history.
On the day before, the British gunboatIntrepid(Captain Marryat), and the steam vesselArgus, had cast anchor in the harbour of Marsala. Their presence was again and again spoken of by Garibaldi as the key to the mystery of why he was not attacked. No matter how it was done—it may have been a mere accident—but it can hardly be doubted that the English men-of-war did practically cover the landing of the Thousand. Lord John Russell denied emphatically to the House of Commons that they were sent there for the purpose, as to this day is[Pg.275]believed by some grateful Italians, and by every Clerical writer who handles the subject. The British Government had early information of Italian revolutionary doings, just then, through Sir James Hudson, who was in communication with men of all shades of opinion, and it is credible that orders which must necessarily have been secret, were given to afford a refuge on board English ships to the flying patriots in the anticipated catastrophe. More than this is not credible, but the energy shown by Captain Marryat in safeguarding the interests of the British residents at Marsala caused the Neapolitan ships to delay opening fire till the very last Red-shirt was out of harm's way on dry land. Then and then only did they direct their guns on thePiemonteandLombardo, and fire a few shots into the city, which caused no other damage than the destruction of two casks of wine.
On the 12th, Garibaldi left Marsala for Salemi, a mountain city approached by a steep, winding ascent, where he was sure of a warm reception, as it had already taken arms against the Bourbon king. Hence he promulgated the decree by which he assumed the dictatorship of Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel.
The Neapolitan army numbered from 120,000 to 130,000 men; of these 30,000 were actually in Sicily at the time the Thousand landed at Marsala, 18,000 being in and about Palermo, and the rest distributed over the island. At Salemi, Garibaldi reviewed his united forces: he had been joined by 200 fresh volunteers, and by a fluctuating mass of Sicilian irregulars, which might be estimated to consist of 2,000 men, but it increased or decreased along the road, because it was formed of peasants of the districts traversed, who did not go far from their homes. These undisciplined bands were not useless, as they gave the[Pg.276]Bourbon generals the idea that Garibaldi had more men than he could ever really count upon, and also the peasants knew the country well. When they came under fire they behaved better than anyone would have expected. The first batch joined the Thousand half-way between Marsala and Salemi. There might have been fifty of them, dressed in goat-skins, and armed with the old flint muskets and rusty pistols dear to the Sicilian heart, which he would not for the world leave behind were he going no farther than to buy a lamb at the fair. The feudal lord marched at the head of his uncouth retainers—a company of bandits in an opera—yet, to Garibaldi, they seemed the blessed assurance that this people whom he was come to save was ready and willing to be saved. He received the poor little band with as much rapture as if it had been a powerful army, and, in their turn, the impressionable islanders were enraptured by the affability of the man whom the population of Sicily soon came seriously to consider as a new Messiah. It is a fact that the people of Southern Italy did believe that Garibaldi had in him something superhuman, only the Bourbon troops looked rather below than above for the source of it. The picturesque incidents of the historic march were many; one other may be mentioned. While the chief watered his horse at a spring a Franciscan friar threw himself on his knees, and implored to be allowed to follow him. Some of the volunteers thought the friar a traitor in disguise, but larger in faith, Garibaldi said: 'Come with us, you will be our Ugo Bassi.' Fra Pantaleo proved of no small use to the expedition.
A glance at the map makes clear the military situation. Garibaldi's objective was Palermo, and if anything shows his genius as a Condottiere it is this immediate determination to make straight for the capital where the largest number of the enemy's troops was massed,[Pg.277]instead of seeking an illusionary safety for his weak army in the open country. As the crow flies the distance from Marsala to Palermo is not more than sixty or seventy miles, but the routes being mountainous, the actual ground to be covered is much longer. About midway lies Calatafimi, where all the roads leading from the eastern coast to Palermo converge, and above it towers the immensely strong position called Pianto dei Romani, from a battle in which the Romans were defeated. These heights command a vast prospect, and here General Landi, with 3,000 men and four pieces of artillery, prepared to intercept the Garibaldians with every probability of driving them back into the sea.
The royal troops took the offensive towards ten o'clock on the 15th of May. They met the Red-shirts half way down the mountain, but were driven up it again, inch by inch, till, at about three o'clock, they were back at Pianto dei Romani. A final vigorous assault dislodged them from this position, and they retreated in disorder to Calatafimi. Not wishing to tempt fortune further for that day, Garibaldi bivouacqued on the field of battle. In a letter written to Bertani, on the spur of the moment, he bore witness with a sort of fatherly pride to the courage displayed by the Neapolitans: 'It was the old misfortune,' he said, 'a fight between Italians; but it proved to me what can be done with this family when united. The Neapolitan soldiers, when their cartridges were exhausted, threw stones at us in desperation.' How then, with much superior numbers and a seemingly impregnable position, did they end in ignominious flight? The answer may be found in the reply given to Bixio, bravest of the brave, who[Pg.278]yet feared, at one hotly-contested point, that retreat was inevitable. 'Here,' retorted the chief,'wedie.' Men who really mean to conquer or die can do miracles.
The moral effect of the victory was tremendous. The world at large had made absolutely sure of the destruction of the expedition. 'Garibaldi has chosen to go his own way,' said Victor Emmanuel; 'but if you only knew the fright I was in about him and the brave lads with him!' In Sicily, where the insurrectionary activity of April was almost totally spent, the news sent an electric shock of revolution through the whole island. In the mountains Rosalino Pilo still resisted, weary of waiting for the help that came not, discouraged or hopeless, but unyielding. Food and ammunition were almost gone; his ragged band, held together only by the magnetism of his personal influence, began to feel the pangs of hunger. A price was set on his head, and he was harassed on all sides by the Neapolitan troops, whose attacks became more frequent now that the Government realised that there was danger. He knew nothing of Garibaldi's movements; but he was resolved to keep his promise as long as he could: to hold out till the chief came. At the hour when everything looked most desperate, a messenger arrived in his camp with a letter in Garibaldi's handwriting, which bore the date of the 16th of May. 'Yesterday,' it ran, we fought and conquered.' Never was unexpected news more welcome. Filled with a joy such as few men have tasted, Rosalino read the glad tidings to his men. 'The cause is won,' he said. 'In a few days, if the enemy's balls respect me, we shall be in Palermo.'
Meanwhile Garibaldi had occupied Calatafimi, and was proceeding towards Monreale, from which side he contemplated a descent on the capital. On the high tableland of Renda he met Rosalino Pilo with his[Pg.279]reanimated band. That day the Garibaldian army, all told, amounted to 5,000 men. On the 21st of May, Rosalino was ordered to make a reconnaissance in the direction of Monreale; while carrying out this order a Neapolitan bullet struck his forehead, causing almost instantaneous death. 'I am happy to be able to give my blood to Italy, but may heaven be propitious once for all,' he had written when he first landed, words realised to the letter.
The Neapolitans were put in high spirits by Rosalino Pilo's death; the discomfiture of Calatafimi was forgotten; they represented Garibaldi as a mouse that was obligingly walking into a well-laid trap. In fact, his position could not have been more critical, but he had recourse to a stratagem which saved him. He succeeded in placing the enemy upon a completely false scent. Abandoning the idea of reaching Palermo from the east (Monreale), he decided to attempt the assault from the south (Piana de' Greci and Misilimeri), but, all the while, he continued to throw the SicilianPicciottion the Monreale route, and gave them orders to fire stray shots in every direction and to light innumerable camp-fires. These troops frequently came in contact with the Neapolitans in trifling skirmishes, and kept their attention so well occupied that General Colonna, in command of the force sent in search of the 'Filibuster,' did not doubt that the whole Garibaldian army was concentrated over Monreale. Garibaldi rapidly moved his own column by night to its new base of operations. The ground was steep and difficult, and a storm raged all the night; fifteen years later he declared that none of his marches in the virgin forests of America was so arduous as this. While the Neapolitans remained in ignorance of these changes, three English naval officers, guided by a sort of sporting dog's instinct, happened to be driving through the village of[Pg.280]Misilmeri just after Garibaldi established his headquarters in that neighbourhood. Of course it was by chance; still, Misilmeri is an odd place to go for an afternoon drive, and the escapade ended in the issue of a severe warning to Her Majesty's officers and marines to keep in future 'within the bounds of the sentinels of the royal troops.' Luckily record exists of the experiences of Lieutenant Wilmot and his two companions at Misilmeri. Garibaldi, on hearing that three English naval officers were in the village, sent to invite them to the vineyard where he was taking his dinner. They found him standing in a large enclosure in the midst of a group of followers who all, like himself, wore the legendary red flannel shirt and grey trousers. Fra Pantaleo's brown habit formed the only exception. Several Hungarian officers were present, and by his father stood Menotti, then a stout youth of nineteen, with his arm in a sling from the severe wound he received at Calatafimi. Around were soldiers who looked like mere boys. They gazed with delight on the English uniforms. Garibaldi requested his guests to be seated and to partake of some freshly-gathered strawberries. He spoke of his affection and respect for England, and said it was his hope soon to make the acquaintance of the British admiral. He mentioned how he had seen and admired from the heights the beautiful effect of the salutes fired in honour of the Queen's birthday, two days before. He then retired into his tent, made of an old blanket stretched over pikes; a child, under the name of a sentry, paced before it to keep off the crowd.
To complete the deception of the enemy the Garibaldian artillery, under Colonel Orsini, was ordered to make a retrograde march on Corleone previous to joining the main force at Misilmeri. Orsini narrowly escaped getting caught while executing this movement, and for[Pg.281]the sake of celerity was obliged to throw his five cannon (including one taken at Calatafimi) down deep water courses. He returned to pull them out again when the immediate danger was past. General Colonna, who followed him closely, was convinced that the whole of the Garibaldians were in disorderly retreat as witnessed by the mules and waggons purposely abandoned by Orsini along the route. For four days Colonna believed that he had Garibaldi flying before him, and sent intelligence to that effect to Naples, whence it was published through the world. On the fifth day he was immeasurably surprised by hearing that Garibaldi had entered Palermo!
It was at early dawn on Whitsunday, the 27th of May, that Garibaldi reached the threshold of the capital, and after overcoming the guard at Ponte dell' Ammiraglio, pushed on to Porta Termini, the strategic key to the city. The royalists, though taken by surprise in the first instance, had time to dispose a strong force behind walls and barricades before Garibaldi could reach the gate, and it required two hours of severe fighting to take the position. Many Red-shirts were killed, and Benedetto Cairoli received the severe wound from which he never wholly recovered. Success, however, was complete, and the Palermitans got up to find, to their frantic joy, the Liberator within their gates. According to the old usage their first impulse was to run to the belfries in order to sound the tocsin, but they found that the royalists had removed the clappers of the bells. Nothing daunted, they beat the bells all day with hammers and other implements, and so produced an indescribable noise which had a material influence on the nerves of the terrified Neapolitan troops. Being disarmed, the only other help which the inhabitants could render to their deliverers was the erection of barricades.
[Pg.282]Even after Garibaldi's entry, it is thought that General Lanza could have crushed him in the streets by sheer force of superiority in numbers and artillery had he made proper use of his means. However, at about three p.m., he chose the less heroic plan of ordering the castle and the Neapolitan fleet to bombard the city. Most of his staff opposed the decision, and one officer broke his sword, but Lanza was inexorable. The measure so exasperated the Palermitans that even had it achieved its end for the moment, never after would they have proved governable from Naples. Thirteen hundred shells were thrown into the city. Lord Palmerston denounced the bombardment and its attendant horrors as 'unworthy of our time and of our civilisation.' The soldiers helped the work by setting fire to some quarters of the city. Among the spots where the shells fell in most abundance was the convent of the Sette Angeli. The Garibaldians escorted the nuns to a place of safety and carried their more valuable possessions after them. The good sisters were charmed by the courtesy with which the young Italians performed these duties.
Fighting in the streets went on more or less continuously, and the liberators kept their ground, but every hour brought fresh perils. A Bavarian regiment arrived to reinforce General Lanza, and the return of the Neapolitan column from Corleone was momentarily expected. The Garibaldians, and this was the gravest fact of all, had used almost their last cartridge. The issue of the struggle was awaited with varying sentiments on board the English, French, Austrian, Spanish and Sardinian warships at anchor in the bay. Admiral Mundy had placed his squadron so close to the land that the ships were in danger of suffering from the bombardment, a course attributed to the humane[Pg.283]desire to afford a refuge for non-combatants, and in fact, the officers were soon engaged in entertaining a frightened crowd of ladies and children. TheIntrepidin particular, was so near the Marina that a fair swimmer could have reached it in a few minutes; nobody guessed, least of all Garibaldi, that her mission in the mind of the British admiral was to save the chiefs own life in what seemed the likely case of its being placed in peril.
Admiral Mundy begged the authorities to stop the bombardment before the city was destroyed, but Lanza appeared to have no intention of yielding to his counsels, and it is still uncertain what at last induced him on the 30th of May to sue the Filibuster, hastily transformed into his Excellency, for an armistice of twenty-four hours. 'God knows,' writes Garibaldi, 'if we had want of it!' The royalists had lost nearly the whole city except the palace and its surroundings, and, cut off from the sea, they began to feel a scarcity of food, but not to a severe extent. It seems most probable that with his men panic-stricken and constantly driven back in spite of the bombardment, Lanza looked upon the game as lost, when had he known the straits to which the Garibaldians were reduced for ammunition, he might have considered it as won.
An unforeseen incident now occurred; the royalist column, recalled from Corleone, which was largely composed of Bavarians, reached Porta Termini and opened a furious fire on the weak Garibaldian detachment stationed there. Was it ignorance or bad faith? Lieutenant Wilmot, who happened to be passing by, energetically waved his handkerchief and shouted that a truce was concluded; the assailants continued the attack till an officer of the Neapolitan staff who was in conference with Garibaldi at the time hurried to the spot, at his indignant[Pg.284]request, and ordered them to desist. A few minutes later, Garibaldi himself rode up in a wrathful mood, and while he was renewing his protests, a shell fell close by him, thrown from a ship which re-opened the bombardment on its own account. Lieutenant Wilmot, who witnessed the whole affair, was convinced that there was a deliberate plan to surprise and capture the Italian chief after he had granted the armistice.
At a quarter past two on this eventful day, the 30th of May 1860, Garibaldi and the Neapolitan generals, Letizia and Chretien, stepped on board the flag-shipHannibalwhich Admiral Mundy offered as neutral ground for their meeting. Curiously enough, both parties, reaching the mole simultaneously, were rowed out in the same ship's boat, which was waiting in readiness. The Neapolitans insisted that Garibaldi should go on board first, either from courtesy or, as the admiral suspected, out of desire to find out whether he would be received with military honours. With instinctive tact he had donned his old and rather shabby uniform of a major-general in the Sardinian army; the admiral's course was, therefore, marked out, and Garibaldi received the same salute as the two generals who followed him. After a foolish attempt on the part of the Neapolitan officers to make themselves disagreeable, which was repressed with dignified decision by Admiral Mundy, business began, and things went smoothly till the fifth article of the proposed convention came under discussion: 'That the municipality should direct a humble petition to his Majesty the King expressing the real wants of the city.' 'No,' cried Garibaldi, starting to his feet, 'the time for humble petitions to the King, or to anyone else, is past; I am the municipality, and I refuse.' General Letizia grew excited at this declaration, but afterwards he agreed to[Pg.285]submit the question of quashing the fifth article to his chief, General Lanza. The armistice was prolonged till nine the next morning.