Cavour Part 6

CHAPTER XI

THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION

In March 1860 Cavour did not foresee what would be the next step--he only felt that it would not be long delayed. Italy, he told the Chamber, was not sound or safe; Italy had still great wounds in her body. "Look beyond the Mincio, look beyond Tuscany, and say if Italy is out of danger!" He interpreted the transaction with Napoleon in the sense that, whatever happened henceforward, he was to have a free hand. Napoleon seemed to think, at the first, that the cession of Nice and Savoy showed a yielding mood; he was mistaken; it shut the door on yielding. Cavour found all sorts of excuses for protracting the date of the official handing over of those provinces, and this helped him in his dealings with the Emperor, whom he compelled to shelve a particularly obnoxious project of introducing Neapolitan troops into the Roman States. Napoleon was induced to promise to withdraw the French in July without calling in others, on condition, however, that all remained quiet. All was not going to remain quiet.

There were no illusions on this point at the Vatican, where no one believed that the _status quo_ would last. It seemed to many of the Pope's advisers that, instead of waiting for the blow, it were better to strike one, and declare a holy war for thrones and altars. Cardinal Antonelli, in concert with the dominant party at Naples (which was that of the king's Austrian stepmother), evolved a scheme for recovering Romagna, in which it was hoped that Austria would join, Austrian aid being at all times far more desired than French. But the more ardent spirits were not averse from action even without Austria.

The Orleanist general Lamoriciere was invited to Rome, and a call was issued which brought an influx of Irish and French volunteers. The French Emperor let Lamoriciere go, as he was glad to get him out of the way. The Duke de Persigny told his master that the gallant general would make trouble for him in Italy, and, as Napoleon turned a deaf ear, he suggested that Lamoriciere should be ordered to garrison Rome while the French regular troops were sent to protect the frontier.

This simple arrangement would have commended itself to any one who was in earnest in wishing to preserve the integrity of what remained of the Papal States; Napoleon seemed to a.s.sent, but he allowed the matter to drop.

It began to be clear that the Neapolitan Government would soon have too much on its hands at home for it to indulge in crusades. But the crisis was not hastened by Cavour, and he was one of the last to believe it imminent. Towards the end of March he learnt with surprise from Sir James Hudson that the reason the British Fleet had been sent to Naples was that a catastrophe was expected. He then asked the Sardinian Minister at the Neapolitan Court whether a Muratist restoration was still possible, and what chances there were at Naples for Italian unity? The Marquis Villamarina replied that the French, who once had many partisans, had lost most of them. As to unity he held out few hopes; it was popular in Sicily but not on the mainland, where the king had a strong following. If the Marquis had said "large" for "strong" his a.s.sertion would have been accurate. The misgovernment, which Lord John Russell had lately described as almost without a parallel in Europe, was not of a nature to be wholly unpopular; it was national after a fashion; bribery and espionage and the persecution of the best citizens may leave the ma.s.ses content, and, in fact, at least in the capital, the _ba.s.so popolo_ was royalist, as was the scarcely less ignorant n.o.bility. The bulk of the clergy and the army was also loyal. All this support made the Bourbon _regime_ look not insecure to those on the spot, who failed to understand the complete rottenness of its foundations.

When a revolutionary movement broke out in Sicily, Cavour thought of sending secretly a Piedmontese officer, who fought in the Sicilian insurrection of 1848, to a.s.sume the direction, but he did not do so, perhaps because he had very little faith in the success of the attempt. Save for the undoubted fact that Sicily was already separated in spirit not only from the Bourbon crown but from any rule which had its seat at Naples, the insurrection did not begin under promising circ.u.mstances. There were no signs of a concerted rising on a large scale, such as had overthrown the Government in 1848, and the authorities disposed of overwhelming means, if they knew how to use them, of crushing a few guerrilla bands. Cavour was slow to believe the catastrophe at hand, but he thought that the time was come to send the King of Naples a warning, which was practically an ultimatum. On April 15 Victor Emmanuel addressed a letter to Francis II, in which he told his cousin that there was possibly still time to save his dynasty, but that time was short. Two things must be done--the first was to restore the Const.i.tution (this even Russia was advising), the second, that the kings of Sardinia and Naples should divide Italy between them, drive out the last Austrian, and constrain the Pope, in whatever strip of territory was left to him, to govern on the same liberal basis as themselves. If these things were not done, and at once, Francis would have the fate of his relative Charles X, and the King of Sardinia might be forced to become the chief instrument of his ruin. It cannot be said that the warning was not sufficiently explicit.

As the insurrection dragged on, the idea gained ground in North Italy of sending out reinforcements to the hard pressed insurgents. Landings on the southern coast had an unfortunate history from that of Murat downwards, but those who play at desperate hazards cannot be ruled by past experience. Cavour seems to have lent some material aid to a Sicilian named La Masa, who was preparing to take a handful of men to his native island, but it is not true that he either desired or abetted the expedition of Garibaldi. A Garibaldian venture could not be kept quiet, it would raise complications with the Powers, and, besides, what if it failed and cost Garibaldi his life? Some people have supposed that Cavour sent Garibaldi to Sicily to get rid of him at an awkward moment, for the General was planning a revolutionary stroke at Nice to resist the annexation. Though this theory sounds plausible, doc.u.mentary evidence is all against it. Cavour had an interview with the Garibaldian general, Sirtori, to whom he expressed the conviction that if they went they would be all taken. Why, it may be asked, did he not stop the whole affair by placing Garibaldi under lock and key? It seems certain that only the king's absolute refusal prevented this effectual measure from being resorted to. The king, accompanied by Cavour, was paying a first visit to Tuscany; there were rumours of stormy scenes between them on the subject of the arrest, and Victor Emmanuel had his way. Whatever was their disagreement, it ceased when the die was cast. It was one of Cavour's chief merits that he instantly grasped a new situation. To let the expedition go and then place obstacles in its way would have been an irreparable mistake. Admiral Persano inquired whether he was to stop the steamers carrying the Thousand to Sicily, should stress of weather drive them into a Sardinian port? The answer by telegraph ran, "The Ministry decides for the arrest." Persano rightly judged this to mean that Cavour decided against it, and he telegraphed back, "I have understood."

Garibaldi sailed from Quarto late on May 5. Not Cavour himself had thought worse of the plan than he when it was first proposed to him, but, with the decision to go, doubt vanished. "At last," he wrote, "I shall be back in my element--action placed at the service of a great idea." No one seems to have pointed out the extraordinary boldness of choosing a fortified town of 18,000 inhabitants as the place of landing. The leaders of similar expeditions have always selected some quiet spot where they could land undisturbed, and the coast of Sicily presents many such spots. If Garibaldi had done the same he would have failed, for the success of the Thousand was a success of _prestige_.

Italian patriots at home had some uneasy days. Victor Emmanuel, as he afterwards admitted, was in "a terrible fright"; Cavour went about silent and gloomy. A week pa.s.sed, and no news came. On May 13, at eleven o'clock at night, a pa.s.ser-by in the Via Carlo Alberto, not far from the Palazzo Cavour, heard some one gaily whistling the air

"Di quella pira ..."

Of a sudden the individual, who was walking very quickly, vigorously rubbed his hands. The trait revealed the man--it was Cavour; he had just heard that Garibaldi, eluding the Neapolitan fleet, had disembarked with all his men at Marsala. Things were entering a new and critical phase, and it was not difficult to foretell that, while the hero would have all the laurels, the statesman would have all the thorns. This was a small matter to Cavour: they were again on the high seas, he said cheerfully, but what was the good of thinking of peace and quiet till Italy was made?

The Sardinian Government adopted the policy of a.s.sisting the expedition now as far as they could without being compromised with the Powers of Europe--but no farther. This _via media_ had the merit of succeeding; it was, however, severely criticised by friends and foes at the time. On May 24 Prince Napoleon said in the presence of Marshal MacMahon, Prosper Merimee, N.W. Senior, and others, that Cavour had done too much or too little; he should have kept Garibaldi back, or given him 5000 men; he had thrown on himself and on "my father-in-law"

all the discredit of favouring the enterprise, and he would have been no more blamed and hated if he had given it real support. On higher grounds Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio was horrified at the lack of straightforwardness in mining the Bourbon edifice from below instead of declaring war. "Garibaldi has no minister at Naples, and he has gone to risk his skin, and long life to him, but we!!" Taking this view, the immaculate Ma.s.simo, as governor of Milan, impounded a number of rifles intended for the Thousand, and so nearly wrecked the affair. The King of Naples naturally applied the same criticism. "Don Peppino," he said, "had clean hands, but he was only a blind, behind which was ranged Piedmont with the Western Powers, which had vowed the end of his dynasty." Whether international law was violated or not, there was no real deception, if the essence of deception is to deceive, for the Neapolitan Government saw Cavour's hand everywhere, even where it was not.

Cavour was deterred from declaring war by the fear of foreign intervention. England was the only Power which applauded the drama enacting in Sicily. The cover afforded by English ships to the landing of Garibaldi was no doubt a happy accident, but, as Signor Crispi often repeats to this day, the landing could hardly have taken place without it. "C'est infame et de la part des Anglais aussi," the Czar wrote on the telegram which announced the safe arrival of the "brigands" at Marsala. Cavour was afraid lest Russian sympathy with the court of Naples should take a more inconvenient form than angry words. Russia, however, remained quiescent, though "geography" was stated to be the only reason. Prussia also discovered that Naples was some way off. Yet there was nothing which the Prince Regent so disliked as to see kings overthrown, until he began to do it himself.

But the two Northern Powers (and this was the meaning of the talk about geography) did not want to act without Austria. The Austrian Queen Dowager did all she could to obtain help to save the crown, which she expected would pa.s.s from the weakly Francis to her own son, but public opinion in Austria had long been irritated by the supineness and corruption of the Neapolitan _regime_, and though the Government protested, it did not go to the rescue. It is a question whether it would not have been forced to go, if, at the outset, Cavour had declared war. France joined in the protests of the other Powers, and Cavour's enemies spread a monstrous rumour that he was going to give up Genoa to win Napoleon's complaisance. In reply to an anxious inquiry from the British Government, he declared that under no circ.u.mstances would he yield another foot of ground.

When Garibaldi visited Admiral Persano's flag-ship at Palermo, he was received with a salute of nineteen guns, which practically recognised his position as dictator, and Medici's contingent of 3000 men was equipped and armed by Cavour; all secrecy as to the relations between the minister and the Sicilian revolution was, therefore, at an end.

He wished that Sicily should be annexed at once. Though Garibaldi had performed every act since he landed in Sicily in Victor Emmanuel's name, Cavour was more and more afraid of the republicans in his camp.

He exaggerated their influence over their leader, who, in vital matters, was not easy to move, and he did not believe that, in accordance with Mazzini's instructions, they were working for unity regardless of the form of government which might follow. Victor Emmanuel could sound the depths of Mazzini's patriotism; Cavour never could. The two men were made to misunderstand each other. There are differences too fundamental for even imagination to bridge over. Had they lived till now, when both are raised on pedestals in the Italian House of Fame, from which time shall not remove them, Mazzini would still have been for Cavour, and Cavour for Mazzini, the evil genius of his country.

The nightmare of Red Republicanism taking the bit between its teeth and bolting was not the only terror that disturbed Cavour's rest. He shuddered at the establishment of a dictatorial democracy which placed unlimited power in the hands of men of no experience, with only the lantern of advanced Liberalism to guide them. He, who had tried to make the Italian cause look respectable, as well as meritorious, asked himself what these improvised statesmen would do next? The Garibaldian dictatorship has not lacked defenders, and two of its administrators lived to be prime ministers of Italy, but it was inevitable that Cavour should judge it as he did.

A dualism began between Palermo and Turin, which would not have reached the point that it did reach, if La Farina, who was commissioned by Cavour to promote annexation, had not launched into a furious personal warfare with his fellow-Sicilian Crispi, a far stronger combatant than he. Garibaldi ended by putting La Farina on board a Sardinian man-of-war, and begging the admiral to convey him home. The dictator bombarded the king's Government with advice, to which Cavour alludes without irritation: "He writes and rewrites, and telegraphs night and day, urging us with counsels, warnings, reproaches--I might almost say menaces." Garibaldi, he goes on to say, has a generous character, poetic instincts, but his is an untamed nature, on which certain impressions leave ineffaceable traces; he feels the cession of Nice as a personal injury, and he will never forgive it. The king has a certain influence over him, but it would be madness to seek to employ it in favour of the Ministry; he would lose it, which would be a great misfortune. How few ministers who, like Cavour, were accustomed to be all-powerful, would have met unrelenting opposition in this spirit!

The influence of the king was sought by Napoleon to induce Garibaldi to stop short at Messina, but he can hardly have been surprised when the General showed no disposition to serve his sovereign so ill as to obey him. He then proposed that the French and British admirals should be instructed to inform Garibaldi that they had orders to prevent him from crossing the straits. Lord John Russell replied that, in the opinion of Government, the Neapolitans should be left to receive or repel Garibaldi as they pleased; nevertheless, if France interfered alone, they would limit themselves to disapproving and protesting. But Napoleon did not wish to interfere alone; the effect would be to make British influence paramount in Italy, and possibly even to cause Sicily to crave a British protectorate. In great haste he a.s.sured the Foreign Secretary that his chief desire was to act about Southern Italy in whatever way was approved by England. Italy was saved from a great peril in 1860, firstly, by English goodwill, and, secondly, by the absence of any real agreement between the Continental Powers. Had there been a concert of Europe, the pa.s.sage of Garibaldi to Calabria would have been barred.

By this time no one was more determined than Cavour himself that not a palm of ground should be left to the Bourbon dynasty, but he still thought it necessary to save appearances. Thus he met the too late advances of the Neapolitan Government, not by a refusal to treat, but by proposing a condition with which Francis, as an obedient son of the Church, could not comply: the formal recognition of the union of Romagna with Piedmont. Strict moralists, like Lanza, would have wished him to send the amba.s.sadors of the King of Naples about their business, and to declare war on any pretext, and so escape from "a hybrid and perilous game." Cavour looked upon the Neapolitan Government as doomed, and that by its own fault, its own obstinacy, its own rejection of the plank of safety, which, almost at the risk of doing a wrong to Italy, he had advised his king to offer it three months before. He felt no scruples in accelerating its fall. The means he took may not have been the best means, but he thought them good enough in dealing with a system which was a by-word for bad faith and corruption. He wished that the end might come before Garibaldi crossed the straits, or, at least, when he was still far from Naples. Thus a repet.i.tion of the Sicilian dictatorship would be impossible. To what measures he resorted is not known with any accuracy; he was carrying on a policy without the knowledge of the king or the cabinet, and no trustworthy account exists of it. What is known is that Cavour, as a conspirator, failed.

Till the Captain of the Thousand appeared, the people would not move.

They knew nothing of the merits of a limited monarchy, but they could vibrate to the electric thrill of a great emotion, such as that which made their hearts rise and swell when the organ in the village church pealed forth the airs of Bellini or Donizetti on a feast day.

Garibaldi was the Mahdi of a new dispensation, which was to end earthquakes, the cholera, poverty, to heal all wounds, dry all tears.

Yes, it was worth while to rise now! King Francis seems to have understood the situation; he sat down to wait for Destiny in a red shirt. When the liberator was sufficiently near, he is reported to have called the commanders of the National Guard, and to have addressed them in these words: "As your--that is, our common friend, Don Peppe, approaches, my work ends and yours begins. Keep the peace.

I have ordered the troops that remain to capitulate."

The British Government had all along recommended Cavour to leave Garibaldi alone to finish the task he had so well begun; he did not take the advice, but in the end he must have recognised its wisdom.

At the very last moment it might have been possible to get Victor Emmanuel's authority proclaimed at Naples before Garibaldi entered the city, or, at any rate, Cavour thought so; but the attempt would have worn a graceless look at that late hour, and it was not made. Cavour never forgot the services which Garibaldi had rendered to Italy; "the greatest," he said, "that a man could render her." When the dissension between them began, he might have convoked Parliament and fought out the battle before the Chamber, but, though he would have saved his _prestige_, he would have lost Italy. He preferred to risk his reputation and to save Italy. In order to make Italy, he believed it to be of vital importance to keep the hero on good terms with the king. Garibaldi was a great moral power, not only in Italy, but in Europe. If Cavour entered into a struggle with him, he would have the majority of old diplomatists on his side, but European public opinion would be against him, and it would be right. He argued thus with those who mistook his forbearance for weakness, when it was really strength.

Cavour seriously thought that among the inconvenient consequences of Garibaldi's ascendency might be a war with Austria, forced on the Government by the victorious _condottiere_ in the intoxication of success. He was resolved as a statesman to do what he could to prevent so great an imprudence. He had a.s.sured the British Government in writing that he had no present intention of attacking Austria, and in this he was perfectly sincere. Still he did not shrink from the possibility. He wrote to Ricasoli: "If we were beaten by overwhelming force, the cause of Italy would not be lost; she would arise from her ruins, as Piedmont arose from the field of Novara." To another friend he made what was, perhaps, the only boast he ever uttered: "I would answer for the result if I possessed the art of war as I possess the art of politics." For the rest, he added characteristically, When a course became the only one, what was the good of counting up its dangers? You ought to find out the way of overcoming them.

CHAPTER XII

THE KINGDOM OF ITALY

When Garibaldi entered Naples, Cavour had already decided on the momentous step of sending the king's forces into Umbria and the Marches of Ancona. At the end of August he wrote: "We are touching the supreme moment; with G.o.d's help, Italy will be made in three months."

If const.i.tutional monarchy was to triumph it could no longer stand still; neither Austrian arms nor republican propaganda could so jeopardise the scheme of an Italian kingdom under a prince of the House of Savoy as the demonstration of facts that the Government of Victor Emmanuel had lost the lead. Moreover, it became daily more probable that, if the king did not invade the Roman States from the north, Garibaldi would invade them from the south, and this Cavour was determined to prevent. If a Garibaldian invasion succeeded, France would come into the field; if it failed, all the great results. .h.i.therto accomplished would be compromised. Garibaldi at most could only have disposed of half his little army of volunteers, and in Lamoriciere, the conqueror of Abd-el-Kader, he would have met a stouter antagonist than the Bourbon generals. But the party of action urged him towards Rome, cost what it might, with the impracticability of men who expect the walls of cities to fall at the blast of the trumpet. Every reason, patriotic, political, geographical, justified Cavour's resolution. It was only by force that Umbria and the Marches had been retained under the papal sway in 1859; there was not an Italian who did not look on their liberation as a patriotic duty. The nominal pretext for the war, as has happened in most of the wars of this century, only partially touched the point at issue; Cavour professed to see a menace in the increase of the Pope's army, and demanded its disbandment. In a literal sense, fifteen or twenty thousand men could not be a menace to Italy. Still it must be doubted if any state could have tolerated, in what was now its midst, even this small force, commanded by a foreign general, composed largely of foreign recruits, and proclaiming itself the advance guard of reactionary Europe. Lamoriciere said that wherever the revolution appeared, it must be knocked on the head as if it were a mad dog. By "the revolution" he meant Italian unity.

Cavour, the cabinet, and the king were already labouring under the penalties of excommunication by the Bull issued in the spring against all who had taken part in the annexation of Romagna. When Prince Charles of Lorraine in 1690 advised the Emperor to withdraw his claims to Spain and concentrate his energies on uniting Italy, he observed that in order to join the kingdom of Naples with Lombardy, it would be necessary to reduce the Pope to the sole city of Rome. This most able statesman of the House of Hapsburg continued: "The services of very learned doctors should be obtained to instruct the people, both by word of mouth and by writing, on the inutility and illusion of excommunications when it is a question of temporalities, which Jesus Christ never destined to His Church, and which she cannot possess without outraging His example and compromising His Gospel." Cavour did not seek the learned doctors, because he knew that the religious side of the matter, however vital it seemed to the young Breton n.o.blemen who enlisted under Lamoriciere, left unmoved the Pope's subjects, who had a mixture of scorn and hatred for the rule of priests, such as was not felt for any government in Italy. For the rest, familiarity lessens the effect of spiritual fulminations, and even of those not spiritual. For three months Cavour had sustained the running fire of all except one of the foreign representatives at Turin; as he wrote to the Marquis E. d'Azeglio: "I have the whole _corps diplomatique_ on my back, Hudson excepted; I let them have their say and I go on."

He deplored the sad fate of diplomacy, which always took the most interest in bad causes, and was the more favourable to a government the worse it was.[1] If _ces messieurs_ protested or departed, they must; he could not arrest the current. If he tried, it would carry him away with it, "which would not be a great evil," but it would carry away the dynasty also. The Peace of Villafranca had caused the Italians to conceive an irresistible desire for unity--events were stronger than men, and he should only stop before fleets and armies.

[Footnote 1: We are reminded of a remark of Prince Bismarck: "Personne, pas meme le plus malveillant democrate, ne se fait une idee de ce qu'il y a de nullite et de charlatanisme dans cette diplomatie."]

It appears that this time Cavour would have acted even without the a.s.sent of Napoleon; it was, however, evidently of great moment to secure it if possible. The Emperor was making a tour in the newly acquired province of Savoy when General Cialdini and L.C. Farini were despatched by Cavour to endeavour to win him over. The interview, which was held at Chambery, was kept so secret that its precise date is not now known. Cavour tried, not for the first time, the effect of entire frankness. He counted on persuading Napoleon that their interests were identical: the White Reaction and the Red Republic were the enemies of both. He did not neglect the item that Lamoriciere was disliked at the Tuileries. With regard to Garibaldi, he represented that since the cession of Nice no one could manage him. The end of it was that, if Napoleon did not say the words "Faites, mais faites vite," which rumour attributed to him, he certainly expressed their substance.

On September 11 the Sardinian army, more than double as strong as Lamoriciere's, crossed the papal frontier. With the exception of England and Sweden, all the Powers recalled their representatives from Turin. The French Ministry telegraphed to Napoleon, who was at Ma.r.s.eilles, to ask what they were to do. They got no answer, and, left to their own inspiration, they informed the Duke de Grammont, the French Amba.s.sador at Rome, that the Emperor's Government "would not tolerate" the culpable aggression of Sardinia, and that orders were given to embark troops for Ancona. These misleading a.s.surances encouraged Lamoriciere, but in any case he would probably have thought it inc.u.mbent on him to make what stand he could. He was defeated by Cialdini on the heights of Castelfidardo--"yesterday unknown, to-day immortal," as Mgr. Dupanloup eloquently exclaimed. Ancona fell to a combined attack from land and sea. Meanwhile Fanti advanced on Perugia, and was on the point of entering Viterbo when a detachment from the French garrison in Rome suddenly occupied the town: one of Napoleon's facing-both-ways evolutions by which he thought to save the goat and cabbages of the Italian riddle, but the final result was to lose both one and the other. Lamoriciere went home, declaring that he took his defeat less to heart than the cruel disillusions he had undergone in Rome. Some one proposed that he should go to the rescue of King Francis, but he answered that his wish had been to serve the Pope, not the Neapolitan Bourbons.

On the 20th the King of Sardinia, at the head of his army, marched into the kingdom of Naples. For the Continental Powers it was a new act of aggression; for Lord Palmerston, a measure of the highest expediency, to which he had been urging Cavour with an impatience hardly exceeded by that of the most ardent Italian patriot. The goal of Italian unity was now more than in sight--it was touched. The Rubicon was crossed in more senses than one. But at this last stage there arose a danger which Cavour had not seriously apprehended. He thought that Austria would not attack, unless directly provoked by some imprudence of the extreme party. She had allowed the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the King of Naples to fall; why should she be more concerned for the Pope? Austria's concern for the Pope was, in fact, not very deep, but there were Austrian politicians who argued that, if Venetia was to be saved for the empire, the right of Austria to hold it must rest on something more solid than a treaty, every other clause of which had been torn to shreds. Never could a time return so favourable as the present for striking a blow at the nascent Italian kingdom. With the king and the best part of the army in the south, who was there to oppose them? It is true that there was a feeling, growing and expanding silently, which tended all the other way: a feeling that enough of German and Hungarian and Bohemian and Polish blood had been poured out upon Italian plains; that there was a fate in the thing, and the fate was contrary to Austria. This feeling grew and grew till the day when Venice too was lost, and not a man in Austria could find it in his heart to cast one sincere look of regret behind at all that fabric of splendid but ill-fortune-bringing dominion. A few years were still to pa.s.s, however, before that day came, and all the forces of the old order combined to press the Emperor to oppose the invading flood while there was time. Some say that he had actually signed the order to cross the frontier, but that on second thoughts he decided first to seek the co-operation of Russia, probably with a view to keeping France quiet. When he went to Warsaw in October, he left everything prepared for war on his return. But Alexander II., having thrown overboard his old friends at Naples, did not want to help the Pope. The Emperor of Austria was badly received by the people of Warsaw, and this tended against the alliance. The Prince Regent of Prussia, who travelled to Warsaw to meet him, definitely refused to guarantee his Venetian possessions. Lord John Russell had lately met the Prussian ruler and his minister, Schleinitz, at Coblentz, and had used all his influence to persuade them to keep Germany out of Italian concerns. Though the Berlin Government loudly protested against the Sardinian attack on papal territory, there is no doubt that the voice of Prussia at Warsaw was raised in favour of peace.

At this juncture Napoleon proposed the usual Congress. While he told Cavour that he must not expect a.s.sistance from him, his private language towards the Northern Powers did not exclude the possibility of French intervention. A diversion was created by a note which Lord John Russell addressed to Sir James Hudson, "the most unprincipled doc.u.ment," as it was called at Rome, "that had ever been written by the minister of any civilised court." Lord John defended every act of Sardinia in the strongest and plainest terms, and people grew almost more angry with him than with Cavour. The Italian statesman never quailed through this last perilous crisis; "Nous sommes prets," he wrote, "a jouer le tout pour le tout." There are moments when the problems of politics, as of life, cease to perplex. By degrees the storm-clouds rolled away without breaking. In November Cavour felt himself strong enough to affirm that the questions of Naples and the Marches were purely Italian, and that the Powers of Europe had no business to meddle with them. During the autumn, amidst other cares, he was seriously preoccupied by a persistent rumour that his faithful friend, Sir James Hudson, was to be removed to make room for the ex-British Minister at Naples, whose occupation was gone through the fall of the dynasty. It has been denied that the change was then contemplated; at any rate it was not carried out till a later period, and Cavour had the comfort of keeping his English fellow-worker near him till he died.

The Garibaldian epic closed with the battle near the left bank of the Volturno on October 1. Still Garibaldi showed no disposition to resign the dictatorship, or to abandon the designs on Rome which he had postponed, not renounced. On his side, Cavour was resolved that a normal government should be established at Naples, and that Garibaldi should not go to Rome, but he was no less resolved that, as far as he could compa.s.s it, the giver of two crowns should be generously treated. Unfortunately Fanti, the virtual head of the royal army, represented the old military prejudice which cla.s.sed volunteers with banditti. A violent scene took place between this general and Cavour; Fanti wished that the Garibaldians should be simply sent home with a gratuity, alleging that "the exigencies of the army" were opposed to the recognition of their grades. Cavour replied that they were not in Spain,--in Italy the army obeyed. The ministerial emissaries in the south received instructions (which they did not invariably execute) to spare no pains to act in harmony with the dictator. Cavour, himself, treated him always as a power and an equal. He took care that he was the first to whom the secret of the invasion of the Marches was confided. He a.s.sured him that in case of a war with Austria he would be called upon to play an important part. When the king started on the march for Naples, Cavour wrote to him advising that "infinite regard"

should be paid to the leader of the Thousand; "Garibaldi," he added, "has become my most violent enemy, but I desire for the good of Italy, and the honour of your Majesty, that he should retire entirely satisfied." To L.C. Farini, who accompanied the king to Naples, he wrote that the whole of Europe would condemn them if they sacrificed to military pedantry men who had given their blood for Italy. He would bury himself at Leri for the rest of his life rather than be responsible for an act of such black ingrat.i.tude. In spite of all he could do, however, a certain grudging spirit hung about the conduct of Piedmontese officialdom towards the volunteers and their chief, but great personal offers were made to Garibaldi--the highest military rank, a castle, a ship, the dowry of a princess for his daughter. All was refused. Garibaldi asked for the governorship of the Two Sicilies for a year with unlimited power, and this, in the opinion of every person of weight in Italy, it was impossible to grant.

In reviewing Cavour's conduct of affairs at this point, it is important to dwell on his unwavering fidelity to const.i.tutional methods. We know now that he was strongly urged to take an opposite course. Ricasoli telegraphed to him: "The master stroke would be to proclaim the dictatorship of the king." The Iron Baron told Victor Emmanuel to his face that it was humiliating for him to accept half Italy as the gift even of a hero. It was no time for scruples; the _coup d'etat_ would be legitimised afterwards by universal suffrage; Garibaldi himself would approve of the king's dictatorship if it were accompanied by a thoroughly Italian policy. This was perfectly true; as Cavour said, the conception was really the same as Garibaldi's own: a great revolutionary dictatorship to be exercised in the name of the king without the control of a free press, and with no individual or parliamentary guarantees. But Cavour would have none of it. What, he asked, would England say to a _coup d'etat?_ His hope had always been that Italy might make herself a nation without pa.s.sing through the hands of a Cromwell; that she might win independence without sacrificing liberty, and abolish monarchical absolutism without falling into revolutionary despotism. From parliament alone could be drawn the moral force capable of subduing factions.

Not from his fellow-countrymen only, but from some who believed themselves to be Italy's best friends abroad, came the prompting of the tempter: more power! Few ministers in a predicament of such vast difficulty would have resisted the evil fascination of those two words. Cavour heard them unmoved. He told his various counsellors that they counted too much on his influence, and were too distrustful of liberty. He had no confidence in dictatorships, least of all in civil dictatorships; with a parliament many things could be done which would be impossible to absolute power. The experience of thirteen years convinced him that an honest and energetic ministry, which had nothing to fear from the revelations of the tribune, and which was not of a humour to be intimidated by extreme parties, gained far more than it lost by parliamentary struggles. He never felt so weak as when the Chambers were closed. In a letter to Mme. de Circourt, he said that, if people succeeded in persuading the Italians that they needed a dictator, they would choose Garibaldi, not himself, and they would be right. He summed up the matter thus: "I cannot betray my origin, deny the principles of all my life. I am the son of liberty, and to it I owe all that I am. If a veil is to be placed on its statue, it is not for me to do it."

Meanwhile the edge of the precipice was reached. The king was marching on, and still the dictator held the post which he owed to his sword and the popular will. He openly begged the king to dismiss his minister (in his idea kings could change their ministers as easily as dictators). The public challenge could not be ignored. There was no time to lose, and Cavour lost none; his answer was an appeal to parliament. "A man," he said, "whom the country holds justly dear has stated that he has no confidence in us. It behoves parliament to declare whether we shall retire or continue our work." He invited the deputies to pa.s.s a Bill authorising the king's Government to accept the immediate annexation of such provinces of Central and Southern Italy as manifested by universal suffrage their desire to become an integral part of the const.i.tutional monarchy of Victor Emmanuel.

This was voted on October 11. The majority of Cavour's party did not believe that Garibaldi would give in to the national mandate; he knew him better. On the 13th the dictator called together his advisers of all shades of opinion. There was a heated discussion: a solution seemed farther off than ever. Then, when they had all spoken, the chief rose serenely and said that, if annexation were the will of the people, he would have annexation; _si faccia l'Italia!_ He decreed the plebiscite, but, having made up his mind, he did not wait for its verdict. He issued one more ukase: "that the Two Sicilies form an integral part of Italy, one and indivisible under the const.i.tutional king, Victor Emmanuel, and his successors." By a stroke of the pen he handed over his conquests as a free gift. It was not const.i.tutional, still less democratic; puritan republicans averted their eyes, so did rigid monarchists, but Cavour was perfectly content. He had forced Garibaldi's hand without straining the royal prerogative or the minister's authority. He had gained his end, and he had not betrayed freedom. It could be argued now with more force than in 1860 that Garibaldi and Ricasoli were right in contending that the best government for the southern populations, only just released from a demoralising yoke, would have been a wise, temporary despotism. But despotisms have the habit of being neither wise nor temporary, and, apart from this, the establishment of any partial or regional rule, which placed the south under different inst.i.tutions from the rest of Italy, would have killed Italian Unity at its birth.

Cavour went on a brief visit to Naples, his name having been the first to be drawn when the deputies were chosen who were to take the congratulations of parliament to the king. Umbria, the Marches, and the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples were joined to the common family.

Much had, indeed, been done, but there was trouble still at Gaeta, where Napoleon placed his fleet in such a position as to render an attack from the sea impossible. It was difficult to decide if dust-throwing were the object, or if Napoleonic ideas had taken a new turn. Italy was made, but it might be unmade. This was what French politicians were constantly repeating. "L'Italie est une invention de l'Empereur," said M. Rouher. "Rome l'engloutira!" predicted M. de Girardin. Italy, declared M. Thiers, was an historical parasite which lived on its past and could have no future. If all this were so, the waters would be disturbed again soon, and there might be play for anglers. The Murat scheme would have a new chance, were Victor Emmanuel tried and found wanting. Young Prince Murat confided to his friends that he expected to be wanted soon at Naples; "a great bore,"

but he would do his duty and go if required.

Whatever purpose Napoleon had in view, he was induced, at last, by the British Government to desist from prolonging a struggle which could only end in one way. The French fleet was withdrawn in January 1861, and Gaeta capitulated on February 13. King Francis began the sad life of exile, which closed a few years ago at Arco. The true Bourbon takes misfortune easily; the pleasures of a mock court are dear to him, his spirits never fail, nor does his appet.i.te. But Francis II., the son of a Savoyard mother, never consoled himself for the loss of country and crown.

Cavour hoped that with the fall of Gaeta the state of the old _Regno_ would rapidly improve, but another citadel remained to the reaction--Rome, whence the campaign against unity continued to be directed. A veritable _terreur blanche_, called by one side brigandage, by the other a holy war, possessed the hills from Vesuvius to the Sila forest. But though there were several foreign n.o.blemen who took part in it, not one Neapolitan of respectability or standing joined the insurgents. The general elections showed in the south, as over the whole country, a large majority pledged to support Cavour.

The first act of the new Chamber was to vote the a.s.sumption of the t.i.tle of King of Italy by Victor Emmanuel. The king might have a.s.sumed the t.i.tle a year before with more correctness than the Longobard kings of Italy or the First Consul, but he did well to wait till none could gainsay his right to it. Some faddists proposed to subst.i.tute "King of the Italians." Cavour replied that the t.i.tle of King of Italy was the consecration of a great fact: the transformation of the country, whose very existence as a nation was denied, into the kingdom of Italy.

It condensed into one word the history of the work achieved. On the proclamation of the new kingdom Cavour resigned office; Victor Emmanuel, who was never really at his ease with Cavour, thought of accepting in earnest what was done as a matter of form, but Ricasoli dissuaded him from the idea. The Cavour ministry therefore returned to office, with a few modifications.

The new Chamber represented all Italy, except Rome and Venice. From Villafranca to his death, Venice was never out of Cavour's mind. He kept in touch with the revolutionary forces in Hungary, and Kossuth believed to the last that, if Cavour had lived, he would have compa.s.sed the liberation of both Hungary and Venetia within the year 1862. He would have supported Lord John Russell's plan, which was that Italy should buy the Herzegovina and give it to Austria in exchange for Venetia, but, on the whole, he thought that the most likely solution was war, in which Prussia and Italy were ranged on the same side. He, almost alone, rated at its true value the latent military force of Prussia. He had a knack of calling Prussia "Germany," as he used to call Piedmont "Italy." He turned off the furious remonstrances which came like the burden of a song from Berlin, with the polite remark that the Prussian Government would be soon very glad to follow his example. When William I. ascended the throne, he ignored the rupture of diplomatic relations, and sent La Marmora to whisper into the ear of the new monarch words of artful flattery. He may have doubted if a Prussianised Germany would exactly come as a boon and a blessing to men. In 1848 he prophesied that Germanism would disturb the European equilibrium, and that the future German Empire would aim at becoming a naval power in order to combat and rival England on the seas. But he saw that the rise of Prussia meant the decline of Austria, and this was all that, as an Italian statesman, with Venetia still in chains, he was bound to consider.