A Short History of Italy Part 16

In Piedmont the king, loyally welcomed home, put back everything to the position in which it was before the disturbances; the old dispossessed n.o.bles were restored to their places in the civil and military service, and the _carrire ouverte aux talents_ was closed. In Lombardy and Venice Austrian officials held a tight rein, and a watchful secret service (_sbirri_) prowled about ready to pounce on plotting youth like owls upon field mice. In Parma and Modena the eye of the Austrian government was always peering and peeping. In Tuscany Austrian influence also was dominant; but the Grand Duke was a gentle, kindly, paternal person, and his subjects were placidly content, for the old Tuscan fire had died out, and no Tuscan was so crazy as to dream of revolution or of a united Italy. In the Papal States the reaction was complete; the Inquisition was restored, the Jesuits recalled, the civil service limited to priests. But in Naples the reaction was worst. The despicable Ferdinand, who dropped his number IV of Naples to become Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, restored the old rgime, and swept away the autonomy of Sicily, which had had a separate parliament for hundreds of years, and since 1812 a const.i.tution also. Ferdinand humbly followed every hint from Austria. The will of Austria was supreme from Venice to Naples, and behind Austria was the conservative judgment of the ruling cla.s.ses of all Europe, still frightened by the Revolution. European n.o.bles and landowners agreed that the riotous desires of the middle cla.s.s and proletariat for political privileges must be crushed down.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE REAWAKENING (1820-1821)

Outwardly despotism had been triumphantly restablished, and Popes, princes, and privileged persons in general made a gallant attempt to pretend that the French Revolution and the Napoleonic upheaval had never taken place. Nevertheless, the quiet on the surface did not extend underneath. Inwardly the new ideas and aspirations were fermenting from Piedmont to Calabria. The _Carbonari_ (Charcoal-burners), a secret society organized against despotism, plotted for freedom and for const.i.tutions. Their members were thickest in the Kingdom of Naples, but spread throughout Italy. The spark necessary to set ablaze this hidden discontent came from Spain. There a successful rebellion obtained a const.i.tution. The thrill stirred Naples. A company of soldiers under two young lieutenants rebelled (1820), many joined them, a general put himself at their head. The army would not fight them. The insurgents demanded a const.i.tution, with a parliament, a free press, trials according to law, etc. The dastardly king was frightened into promises, but as the insurgents were not content with promises, he granted a const.i.tution, and solemnly swore to maintain it. These revolutionary tumults, however, had alarmed the comfortable, conservative ruling cla.s.ses and their leaders, the Emperors of Austria, Prussia, and Russia.

An Imperial conference was held at Laybach (1821), and Ferdinand attended. The new const.i.tution, indeed, forbade him to leave the kingdom without permission from parliament, but he had obtained leave by promising to argue in favour of the new rgime. Whatever his arguments were the Holy Alliance disregarded them, and charged Austria with the duty of restoring despotism in Naples. Austria obeyed. An overpowering army easily scattered the Neapolitan const.i.tutionalists and put Ferdinand back. The const.i.tution, parliament, free press, and all the other obnoxious revolutionary inst.i.tutions were brushed away, and Ferdinand, having hung up in church a lamp of gold and silver as an offset to his perjury, inflicted punishment on the late rebels as fast as he could.

Meanwhile the North had felt the thrill. In Lombardy the hawk-eyed government pounced down on possible conspirators. Silvio Pellico, the pathetic author of "Le Mie Prigioni" (My Prisons), and his friend Maroncelli, were arrested and put into prison (1820), there to stay for ten years. A little later Confalonieri, head of the Milanese n.o.bility, and a group of gentlemen were seized and sent to prison. They were set free only in 1836, on the accession of a new Emperor. Some of them, Castillia, Foresti, and Albinola, then sought refuge in the United States. I quote from the unpublished diary of an American to show what kind of men these conspirators were: "Castillia is an Italian, of an honourable Milanese family. At the age of twenty-three he, with other n.o.ble and brave Italians, lovers of their country, was thrown into the dungeons of Spielberg (Moravia) by Austrian despots, and there chained and confined, sometimes in total solitude, enduring the sharpest privations and basest ignominies for seventeen years. Then on the accession of a new Emperor they were released and exiled to America--they were men of superior intelligence and education, honourable gentlemen, true-hearted, loving men--Castillia possessed all the virtues that one can name and in their most attractive forms."

What these gentlemen suffered for love of their country may be read in "Le Mie Prigioni." Pellico himself was a Christian saint. After years of solitary confinement he and Maroncelli were put together. Maroncelli had a tumour on his leg, which grew so painful that whenever it was necessary to move Pellico helped him. "Sometimes to make the slightest s.h.i.+ft from one position to another cost a quarter of an hour of agony."

The wound was frightful and disgusting. I quote from Pellico: "In that deplorable condition Maroncelli composed poetry, he sang and talked, and did everything to deceive me and hide from me a part of his pain. He could not digest, or sleep; he grew alarmingly thin, and often went out of his head; and yet, in a few minutes gathered himself together and cheered me up. What he suffered for nine months is indescribable.

Amputation was necessary; but first the surgeon had to get permission from Vienna. Maroncelli uttered no cry at the operation, and when he saw the leg carried off said to the surgeon, 'You have liberated me from an enemy, and I have no way to thank you.' By the window stood a tumbler with a rose in it. 'Please give me that rose,' he said to me. I handed it to him, and he gave it to the old surgeon, saying, 'I have nothing else to give you in testimony of my grat.i.tude.' The surgeon took the rose and burst into tears." Such was the character of the men who plotted for the freedom of Italy.

The Papal States likewise had been quivering. Lord Byron was in Ravenna at the time. He enrolled in the _Carbonari_, and sent a thousand louis to the Neapolitan Const.i.tutional Government with an offer to serve wherever and in whatever capacity they should desire. His letters and diary help us to understand the situation.

BYRON TO MURRAY, HIS PUBLISHER

November 23, 1820.

Of the state of things here it would be difficult and not very prudent to speak at large, the Huns [Austrians] opening all letters. I wonder if they can read them when they have opened them; if so they may see in my most legible hand that I think them d.a.m.ned scoundrels and barbarians, and their Emperor a fool, and themselves more fools than he; all which they may send to Vienna for anything I care. They have got themselves masters of the papal police and are bullying away, but some day or other they will pay for all; it may not be very soon because these unhappy Italians have no consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will get tired of them at last.

SAME TO SAME

December 9.

I open my letter to tell you a fact which will show the state of this country better than I can. The commandant of the troops is now lying dead in my house. He was shot about two hundred paces from my door.... As n.o.body could or would do anything but howl and pray, and as no one would stir a finger to move him for fear of consequences, I had the commandant carried upstairs to my own quarters.... Poor fellow, he was a brave officer but much disliked by the people.

EXTRACTS FROM BYRON'S DIARY

January 6, 1821.

To-night at the theatre, there being a prince on his throne in the last scene of the comedy, the audience laughed and asked him for a const.i.tution. This shows the state of the public mind here as well as the a.s.sa.s.sinations. It won't do.

There must be a universal republic, and there ought to be.

January 7.

The Count Pietro Gamba took me aside to say that the Patriots had had notice from Forl [twenty miles away] that to-night the government and its party mean to strike a stroke, that the Cardinal here has had orders to make several arrests immediately, and that in consequence the Liberals are arriving and have posted patrols in the streets, to sound the alarm and give notice to fight. He asked me "what should be done." I answered, "Fight for it, rather than be taken in detail;" and offered if any of them are in immediate apprehension of arrest to receive them in my house (which is defensible), and to defend them with my servants and themselves (we have arms and ammunition) as long as we can, or to try to get them away under cloud of night. On going home I offered him the pistols which I had about me.

January 8.

Rose and found Count Pietro Gamba in my apartments. Sent away the servant. He told me that according to the best information, the government had not issued orders for the arrests apprehended; and that as yet they are still only in apprehension. He asked me for some arms of a better sort, which I gave him. Settled that in case of a row the Liberals were to a.s.semble here (with me) and that he had given the word to the others for that purpose. Concerted operations. I advised them to attack in detail and in different parties, in different places, though at the same time, so as to divide the attention of the troops, who though few yet being disciplined would beat any body of people (not trained) in a regular fight, unless dispersed in small parties and distracted with different a.s.saults. Offered to let them a.s.semble here if they chose. It is a strongish post--narrow street, commanded from within--and tenable walls....

I wonder what figure these Italians will make in a regular row. I sometimes think that like the Irishman's crooked gun they will do only for shooting round a corner; at least this sort of shooting has been the late tenour of their exploits.

And yet there are materials in this people and a n.o.ble energy if well directed. But who is to direct them? No matter. Out of such times heroes spring. Difficulties are the hotbed of high spirits and Freedom the mother of the few virtues incident to human nature.

January 9.

They say the King of Naples has declared, by couriers from Florence, to the Powers (as they call now those wretches with crowns) that his const.i.tution was compulsive, and that the Austrian barbarians are placed again on war pay and will march. Let them,--"they come like sacrifices in their trim,"--the hounds of h.e.l.l! Let it be a hope to see their bones piled like those of the human dogs at Morat, in Switzerland.

January 29.

Met a company of the sect (a kind of Liberal Club) called the Americani in the forest, and singing with all their might in Romagnuol "Sem tutti soldat' per la libert"--(We are all soldiers for liberty). They cheered me as I pa.s.sed; I returned their salute and rode on. This may show the spirit of Italy at present.

They say that the Piedmontese have at length risen--a ira!

The news from Piedmont was true. Some officers in the army proposed to demand a const.i.tution from the king and then force him into war with Austria. They believed that Prince Carlo Alberto, who stood next but one in succession to the throne, though only a distant cousin of the sonless king, was in sympathy with them and would act with them. How far they were justified in this belief is uncertain. The leading conspirators had an interview with him, and thought they received satisfactory a.s.surances. In subsequent explanations he denied any such a.s.surances.

Thus encouraged, the garrisons of Alexandria and Turin hoisted the tricolour of the _Carbonari_, and made their demands. The old king, Vittorio Emanuele, not knowing what to do, resigned in favour of his younger brother, Carlo Felice, who was then absent, and appointed Carlo Alberto regent during the new king's absence. Carlo Alberto, always infirm of purpose, with doubt and hesitation took the opportunity and proclaimed a const.i.tution (March, 1821). But the new king, apprised of this wild act, at once annulled it, and bade Carlo Alberto leave the country. Poor Carlo Alberto was in a sad dilemma: should he obey his king and abandon his liberal friends, or cleave to them and be disloyal to the king? He obeyed and went to Tuscany. An Austrian army aided the king to suppress the revolt. The liberals escaped as best they could.

Some fled to Spain by way of Genoa, where they were seen by Giuseppe Mazzini, a lad of sixteen, who thereupon resolved "that one could, and therefore one must, struggle for the liberty of Italy."

Thus the revolutionary storms swept by; the _sbirri_ resumed their old methods of prying and spying, and dukes and kings deemed themselves secure of their own again.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

PERTURBED INACTIVITY (1821-1847)

After 1821 followed ten years of outward repose. Times were hard for lovers of independence, but hope and purpose had been let loose, and in dark corners, cloaking themselves as best they could, the friends of freedom groped their way. Openly little was done except by exiles, but indirect aid came from literature, which followed the romantic movement, and loudly a.s.serted the revolutionary ideas. There was Ugo Foscolo, the poet, half Venetian, half Greek, who after the return of the Austrians refused to take the oath of allegiance and fled to England, giving, as was said, "to New Italy a new inst.i.tution, Exile;" Giovanni Berchet, of Milan, poet and man of letters; Gabriele Rossetti, of the Abruzzi, father of Dante Rossetti, a poet himself; and many others. By far the most distinguished was Alessandro Manzoni, a quiet, dignified Milanese gentleman, who wrote patriotic plays, and the famous romance, "I Promessi Sposi" (The Plighted Lovers). He cheered and comforted his compatriots with the thought that in him they possessed a man of letters whom Europe recognized as the peer of Scott, Byron, and Goethe. Scott praised "I Promessi Sposi" most generously, and Goethe said, "It satisfies us like perfectly ripe fruit."

Greater than Manzoni, though at the time less widely known, was the sad poet, Giacomo Leopardi, indisputably the greatest Italian poet since Ta.s.so, and in the judgment of some men to-day, owing perhaps to greater sympathy with his sentiments, superior to Ta.s.so. Leopardi raised Italian self-respect, as Manzoni did, by proof that the genius of the race still lived. He wrote the most patriotic odes since Petrarch. Of these the poem "To Italy" is perhaps most famous. It begins:--

O my country, I see the walls, the arches, The columns, the statues, the defenceless towers Of our forefathers, But the glory I do not see.

Leopardi's wretchedness, in great measure purely personal, was matched by that of his country. Austrian soldiers, ducal _sbirri_, and Jesuits did their best to destroy all vigour, life, and freedom. The press was stifled; no allusion to freedom was allowed. In a chorus of Bellini's opera "I Puritani" the word _liberty_ was stricken out by the censor and _loyalty_ subst.i.tuted; and a singer who forgot the change was sent to prison for three days. Things were best in Tuscany and worst in Naples, where Francis I, a rake, bigot, and coward, practised the utmost cruelty. After an insurrection in a village, twenty-six heads were cut off at his command, and exhibited in cages; and once, when a grandmother besought mercy for her two grandsons who were condemned to death, he bade her choose one. She chose one; the other was shot, and she went mad.

The ten long years of inaction at last pa.s.sed away, and another wave of exasperated independence and patriotism swept over the peninsula. The French Revolution of 1830 was the proximate cause. This time, while Piedmont and Naples remained quiet, for most of their leaders were in exile or in prison, Parma, Modena, and the Romagna burst into insurrection; but the Austrian soldiers marched in, suppressed the revolt, and reseated duke, d.u.c.h.ess, and Pope. The attention of the world, however, had been called to priestly government in the Romagna, and the five great Powers,--England, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia,--not wis.h.i.+ng a hotbed of justifiable revolt on the same Continent with comfortable and privileged ruling cla.s.ses, wrote a collective note to the Pope in which they insisted on certain reforms as indispensable. The papal Curia made promises, but did nothing, and all Italy relapsed outwardly into the condition in which she had been during the ten years of inaction.

Nevertheless, the forces underneath, plotting and conspiring for freedom, were stronger than before, and here and there indications of this growing sentiment cropped out. In 1831, after the ill-fated, melancholy, distrusting, and distrusted Carlo Alberto had succeeded to the Kingdom of Sardinia, an anonymous letter addressed to him was spread broadcast over Italy. This letter bade him choose between two courses,--either to lead the national movement, or to be basely servile to Austria. "Bend your back under the German (Austrian) whip and be a tyrant--But, if as you read these words your mind runs back to that time when you dared look higher than the lords.h.i.+p of a German fief, and if you hear within a voice that cries 'You were born for something great,'

oh, obey that voice; it is the voice of genius, of opportunity, that offers you its hand to mount from century to century as far as immortality; it is the voice of all Italy, who awaits but one word, one single word, to make herself all your own. Give her that word. Put yourself at the head of the nation, and on your banner write Union, Freedom, Independence. Sire, according to your answer, be sure that posterity will p.r.o.nounce you either the first of Italian Men, or the last of Italian Tyrants. Choose."

Carlo Alberto, melancholy as Hamlet, for the burden put upon him was greater than his strength, continued inactive, distrusted, and distrusting. His only answer was to give sharper orders against conspirators. The writer of the letter was a young Genoese of grave countenance, with a sweet mouth and sad, handsome eyes, Giuseppe Mazzini, aged twenty-six, who had already abandoned law for literature, and literature for his country. Suspected of being a _Carbonaro_, he had been arrested and put in prison. His father, having asked the reason, was told that "his son was a young man of talents, very fond of solitary walks at night, and habitually silent as to the subject of his meditations, and that the Sardinian government was not fond of young men of talents the subject of whose meditations it did not know." In prison Mazzini became convinced that the true aim of patriots was the unity of all Italy, and that the means should be the people, not the princes.

After a few months of imprisonment he was banished. It was then that he wrote the letter.

In exile he began the task of rousing the Italian people throughout the peninsula to the need of common effort for a common end. He organized a secret society, and named it Young Italy. Its purpose was to make Italy free, united, and republican. The first article of its const.i.tution read: "This society is inst.i.tuted for the destruction, now become indispensable, of all the governments of the peninsula, and for the union of all Italy in a single state under republican government." The new society spread rapidly, and was, perhaps, the greatest individual cause of final success.

Mazzini was a master conspirator, a very St. Paul of the Risorgimento.

His whole life was a pa.s.sionate renunciation of all the pleasures and comforts for which most men live, and a pa.s.sionate dedication of himself to his ideals. He is a striking ill.u.s.tration of the saying, The man whose heart is lifted up within him shall not find the path smooth before him, but the just shall live by his faith. His ideals soared higher and higher; not content with hope for Italy, he made plans for helping all Europe. He became an object of suspicion all over the Continent, and was driven from country to country, till he finally went to England, but he never ceased to preach and teach, to urge and encourage, to plot and counterplot. He believed in sacrifice, both of himself and of others, and instigated desperate uprisings. One of these, a wild invasion of Piedmont which came to nothing, is memorable because among the list of those who were subsequently proscribed for partic.i.p.ation in it was a young seaman, a native of Nice, then a part of Savoy, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini himself stayed in England, where the cruelest accusations were made against him. He endured slander, malice, poverty, outward failure, still steadfast at his task. He says, "I have not for an instant thought that unhappiness may influence our actions."

He knew Carlyle, who bore witness in his favour: "I have had the honour to know Mr. Mazzini for a series of years, and whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who, in silence, piously in their daily life understand and practise what is meant by that."

While Young Italy and the _Carbonari_ worked in secret, literature continued to carry on the task of arousing enthusiasm for national achievements and national ideals. The patient piety of Silvio Pellico's "Le Mie Prigioni" was a most effective denunciation of Austrian tyranny; the plays of Giovan Battista Niccolini, of Florence, on subjects famous for Italian patriotism, were stirring appeals against despotism, civil and ecclesiastical; the romantic novels of Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio, of Piedmont, the patriot painter and statesman, reminded youth of the great days of old; other novels, pa.s.sionate and patriotic, by Tommaso Grossi, of Belluno, and by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, of Leghorn, did likewise. These romances so pitifully uninteresting to-day did much; but a book of a different character had in its way a still more brilliant career. Vincenzo Gioberti, of Turin, began life by taking orders; he became patriotic, was suspected, imprisoned, exiled; in exile he studied, taught, and thought. In 1843 he published in Brussels "Il primato morale e civile degli Italiani" (The Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians), a book that rehea.r.s.ed the old glory of Italy and pointed out new ways by which that ancient glory might be renewed. Gioberti advocated a confederation of the Italian States (excluding the Austrian provinces) with the Pope at its head. The book had tremendous success; its ideas were accepted and became a party creed; and Gioberti is ent.i.tled to rank as one of the factors in the Risorgimento. Oddly enough, as it seems to us now, his plan was on the verge of execution.