The Liberation of Italy, 1815-1870 Part 17

Garibaldi was encouraged to visit the princ.i.p.al towns of North Italy in order to inst.i.tute the _Tiro n.a.z.ionale_ or Rifle a.s.sociation, which was said to be meant to form the basis of a permanent volunteer force on the English pattern. For many reasons, such a scheme was not likely to succeed in Italy, but most people supposed the object to be different--namely, the preparation of the youth of the nation for an immediate war. The idea was strengthened when it was observed that Trescorre, in the province of Bergamo, where Garibaldi stopped to take a course of sulphur baths, became the centre of a gathering which included the greater part of his old Sicilian staff. There was no concealment in what was done, and the Government manifested no alarm.

The air was full of rumours, and in particular much was said about a Garibaldian expedition to Greece, for which, it was stated and re-stated, Rattazzi had promised 40,000. That Garibaldi meant to cast his lot in any struggle not bearing directly on Italian affairs, as long as the questions of Rome and Venice still hung in the balance, is not to be believed. A little earlier than this date, President Lincoln invited him to take the supreme command of the Federal army in the war for the Union, and he declined the offer, attractive though it must have been to him, both as a soldier and an abhorrer of slavery, because he did not think that Italy could spare him. But the 'Greek Expedition,' though a misleading name, was not altogether a blind.

Before Cavour's death, there had been frequent discussion of a project for revolutionising the east of Europe on a grand scale; Hungary and the southern provinces of the Austrian Empire were to co-operate with the Slavs and other populations under Turkey in a movement which, even if only partially successful, would go far to facilitate the liberation of Venice. It cannot be doubted that Rattazzi's brain was at work on something of this sort, but the mobilisation, so to speak, of the Garibaldians suggested proceedings nearer home. Trescorre was very far from the sea, very near the Austrian frontier.

In spite of contradictions, a plan for invading the Trentino, or South Tyrol, almost certainly did exist. Whether Garibaldi was alone answerable for it cannot be determined. The Government became suddenly alive to the enormous peril such an attack would involve, and arrested several of the Garibaldian officers at Sarnico. They were conveyed to Brescia, where a popular attempt was made to liberate them; the troops fired on the crowd, and some blood was shed. Garibaldi wrote an indignant protest and retired, first to the villa of Signora Cairoli at Belgirate, and then to Caprera. He did not, however, remain there long.

After this point, the thread of events becomes tangled beyond the hope of unravelment. What were the causes which led Garibaldi into the desperate venture that ended at Aspromonte? Recollecting his hesitation before a.s.suming the leadership of the Sicilian expedition, it seemed the more unintelligible that he should now undertake an enterprise which, unless he could rely on the complicity of Government, had not a single possibility of success. His own old comrades were opposed to it, and it was notorious that Mazzini, to whom the counsels of despair were generally either rightly or wrongly attributed, had nothing to do with inspiring this attempt. In justice to Rattazzi, it must be allowed that, after the arrests at Sarnico, Garibaldi went into open opposition to the ministry, which he denounced as subservient to Napoleon. Nevertheless, with the remembrance of past circ.u.mstances in his mind, he may have felt convinced that the Prime Minister did not mean or that he would not dare to oppose him by force. One thing is certain; from beginning to end he never contemplated civil war. His disobedience to the King of Italy had only one purpose--to give him Rome. He was no more a rebel to Victor Emmanuel than when he marched through Sicily in 1860.

The earlier stages of the affair were not calculated to weaken a belief in the effective non-intervention of Government. Garibaldi went to Palermo, where he arrived in the evening of the 28th of June. The young Princes Umberto and Amedeo were on a visit to the Prefect, the Marquis Pallavicini, and happened to be that night at the opera. All at once they perceived the spectators leave the house in a body, and they were left alone; on asking the reason, they heard that Garibaldi had just landed--all were gone to greet him! Before the departure of the Princes next day, the chief and his future King had an affectionate meeting, while the population renewed the scenes of wild enthusiasm of two years ago. Some of Garibaldi's intimate friends a.s.sert that when he reached Palermo he had still no intention of taking up arms. He soon began, however, to speak in a warlike tone, and at a review of the National Guard in presence of the Prefect, the Syndic, and all the authorities, he told the 'People of the Vespers'

that if another Vespers were wanted to do it, Napoleon III., head of the brigands, must be ejected from Rome. The epithet was not bestowed at random; Lord Palmerston confirmed it when he said from his place in the House of Commons: 'In Rome there is a French garrison; under its shelter there exists a committee of 200, whose practice is to organise a band of murderers, the sc.u.m and dross of every nation, and send them into the Neapolitan territory to commit every atrocity!' As a criticism the words are not less strong; but the public defiance of Napoleon, and the threat with which it was accompanied, dictated one plain duty to the Italian Government if they meant to keep the peace--the arrest of Garibaldi and his embarkation for Caprera.

This they did not do; confining themselves to the recall of the Marquis Pallavicini. Garibaldi went over the ground made glorious by his former exploits--past Calatafimi to Marsala. It was at Marsala that, while he harangued his followers in a church, a voice in the crowd raised a cry of '_Rome or death!_' 'Yes; Rome or death!'

repeated Garibaldi; and thus the watchword originated which will endure written in blood on the Bitter Mount and on the Plain of Nomentum. Who raised it first? Perhaps some humble Sicilian fisherman.

Its haunting music coming he knew not whence, sounding in his ear like an omen, was what wedded Garibaldi irrevocably to the undertaking. It was the casting interposition of chance, or, shall it be said, of Providence? Like all men of his mould, Garibaldi was governed by poetry, by romance. Besides the general patriotic sentiment, he had a peculiar personal feeling about Rome, 'which for me,' he once wrote, 'is Italy.' In 1849, the a.s.sembly in its last moments invested him with plenary powers for the defence of the Eternal City, and this vote, never revoked, imposed on his imagination a permanent mandate.

'Rome or death' suggested an idea to him which he had never before entertained, prodigal though he had been of his person in a hundred fights: What if his own death were the one thing needful to precipitate the solution of the problem?

From Marsala he returned to Palermo, where, in the broad light of day, he summoned the Faithful, who came, as usual, at his bidding, without asking why or where?--the happy few who followed him in 1859 and 1860; who would follow him in 1867, and even in 1870, when they gave their lives for a people that did not thank them, because he willed it so.

He sent out also a call to the Sicilian _Picciotti_, the _Squadre_ of last year; and it is much to their credit that they too who cared possibly remarkably little for _Roma Capitale_, obeyed the man who had freed them. And Rattazzi knew of all this, and did nothing.

On the 1st of August, Garibaldi took command of 3000 volunteers in the woods of Ficuzza. Then, indeed, the Government wasted much paper on proclamations, and closed the door of the stable when the horse was gone. General Cugia was sent to Palermo to repress the movement.

Nevertheless Garibaldi, with his constantly increasing band, made a triumphant progress across the island, and a more than royal entry into Catania. At Mezzojuso he was present at a _Te Deum_ chanted in his honour. On the 22nd, when the royal troops were, it seems, really ordered to march on Catania, Garibaldi took possession of a couple of merchant vessels that had just reached the port, and sailed away by night for the Calabrian coast with about 1000 of his men.

By this time the Italian Government, whether by spontaneous conviction or by pressure from without, had resolved that the band should never get as far as the Papal frontier. If Garibaldi knew or realised their resolution, it is a mystery why he did not attempt to effect a landing nearer that frontier, if not actually within it. The deserted sh.o.r.e of the Pontine marshes would, one would think, have offered attractions to men who were as little afraid of fever as of bullets. A sort of superst.i.tion may have ruled the choice of the path, which was that which led to victory in 1860. It was not practicable, however, to follow it exactly. The tactics were different. Then the desire was to meet the enemy anywhere and everywhere; now the pursuer had to be eluded, because Garibaldi was determined not to fight him. Thus, instead of marching straight on Reggio, the volunteers sought concealment in the great mountain ma.s.s which forms the southernmost bulwark of the Apennines. The dense and trackless forests could have given cover for a long while to a native brigand troop, with intimate knowledge of the country and ways and means of obtaining provisions--not to a band like this of Garibaldi. They wandered about for three days, suffering from almost total want of food, and from the great fatigue of climbing the dried-up watercourses which serve as paths. On the 28th of August they reached the heights of Aspromonte--a strong position, from which only a large force could have dislodged them had they defended it.

General La Marmora, then Prefect of Naples, and commander-in-chief of the army in the south, reinforced the troops in Calabria to prevent Garibaldi's advance, but the direction of the decisive operation fell by accident to Cialdini, whom the Government despatched to Sicily when they tardily made up their minds to take energetic measures. On his voyage to Messina, Cialdini heard that the volunteers had already crossed the Straits; he therefore changed his course, and hastening to Reggio, invested himself with the command on the mainland. At Reggio he met Colonel Pallavicini, whom he ordered in terms that might have been more suitable had he been engaged in hunting brigands, 'to crush Garibaldi completely, and only accept from him unconditional surrender.' Pallavicini started with six or seven battalions of Bersaglieri. It was the 29th of August. Garibaldi saw them coming when they were still three miles off. He could have dispersed his men in the forest and himself escaped, for the time, and perhaps altogether, for the sea which had so often befriended him was not far off. But although he did not mean to resist, a dogged instinct drove away the thought of flight. In the official account it was stated that an officer was sent in advance of the royal troops to demand surrender.

No such officer was seen in the Garibaldian encampment till after the attack. The troops rapidly ascended an eminence, facing that on which the Garibaldians were posted, and opened a violent fusillade, which, to Garibaldi's dismay, was returned for a few minutes by his right, consisting of young Sicilians who were not sufficiently disciplined to stand being made targets of without replying. The contention, however, that they were the first to fire, has the testimony of every eye-witness on the side of the volunteers against it. All the Garibaldian bugles sounded 'Cease firing,' and Garibaldi walked down in front of the ranks conjuring the men to obey. While he was thus employed, a spent ball struck his thigh, and a bullet entered his right foot. At first he remained standing, and repeated, 'Do not fire,' but he was obliged to sit down, and some of his officers carried him under a tree. The whole 'feat of arms,' as General Cialdini described it, did not last more than a quarter of an hour.

Pallavicini approached the wounded hero bareheaded, and said that he made his acquaintance on the most unfortunate day of his own life. He was received with nothing but kind praise for doing his duty. The first night was pa.s.sed by the prisoner in a shepherd's hut. The few devoted followers who were with him were strangely impressed by that midnight watch; the moon shining on the forest, the shepherds' dogs howling in the mountain silence, and their chief lying wounded, it might be to death, in the name of the King to whom he had given this land.

Next day, in a litter sheltered from the sun with branches of wild laurel, Garibaldi was carried down the steep rocks to Scilla, whence he was conveyed by sea to the fort of Varignano. It was not till after months of acute suffering, borne with a gentleness that made the doctors say: 'This man is not a soldier, but a saint,' that, through the skill of the French surgeon, Nelaton, the position of the ball was determined, and its extraction rendered possible.

A general amnesty issued on the occasion of the marriage of the King's second daughter with the King of Portugal relieved the Government of having to decide whether Garibaldi was to be tried, and if so, what for; but the unpopularity into which the ministry had fallen could not be so easily dissipated. The Minister of Foreign Affairs (Durando) published a note in which it was stated that Garibaldi had only attempted to realise, in an irregular way, the desire of the whole nation, and that, although he had been checked, the tension of the situation was such that it could not be indefinitely prolonged. This was true, but it hardly improved the case for the Government. In Latin countries, ministers do not cling to power; as soon as the wind blows against them, they resign to give the public time to forget their faults, and to become dissatisfied with their political rivals.

Usually a very short time is required. Therefore, forestalling a vote of censure in the Chambers, where he had never yet had a real majority, Rattazzi resigned office with a parting homily in which he claimed to have saved the national inst.i.tutions.

The administration which followed contained the well-known names of Farini, Minghetti, Pasolini, Peruzzi, Delia Rovere, Menabrea. When Farini's fatal illness set in, Minghetti replaced him as Prime Minister, and Visconti Venosta took the Foreign Office. They found the country in a lamentable state, embittered by Aspromonte, still infected with brigandage, and suffering from an increasing deficit, coupled with a diminishing revenue. The administrative and financial unification of Italy, still far from complete, presented the gravest difficulties. The political aspect of affairs, and especially the presence of the French in Rome, provoked a general sense of instability which was contrary to the organisation of the new state and the development of its resources. The ministers sought remedies or palliatives for these several evils, and to meet the last they opened negotiations with France, which resulted in the compromise known as the September Convention. It was long before the treaty was concluded, as for more than a year the French Government refused to remove the garrison on any terms; but in the autumn of 1864 the following arrangement was signed by both parties: that Italy should protect the Papal frontier from all attack from the outside; that France should gradually withdraw her troops, the complete evacuation to take place within two years; that Italy should waive the right of protest against the internal organisation of the Papal army unless its proportions became such as to be a manifest threat to the Italian kingdom; that the Italian capital should be moved to Florence within six months of the approval of the Convention by Parliament.

These terms were in part the same as those proposed by Prince Napoleon to Cavour shortly before the death of that statesman, who had promised to support them as a temporary makeshift, and in order to get the French out of Italy. But they were in part different, and they contained two new provisions which it is morally certain that Cavour would never have agreed to--the prolongation of the French occupation for two years (Cavour had insisted that it should cease in a fortnight), and the transfer of the capital, which was now made a _sine qua non_ by Napoleon, for evident reasons. While it was clear that Turin could not be the permanent capital of a kingdom that stretched to aetna, if once the seat of government were removed to Florence a thousand arguments and interests would spring up in favour of keeping it there. So, at least, it was sure to seem to a foreigner.

As a matter of fact, the solution was no solution; the Italians could not be reconciled to the loss of Rome either by the beauty and historic splendour of the city on the Arno, or by its immunity from malaria, which was then feared as a serious drawback, though Rome has become, under its present rulers, the healthiest capital in Europe.

But Napoleon thought that he was playing a trump card when he dictated the sacrifice of Turin.

The patriotic Turinese were unprepared for the blow. They had been told again and again that till the seat of government was established on the Tiber, it should abide under the shadow of the Alps--white guardian angels of Italy--in the custody of the hardy population which had shown itself so well worthy of the trust. The ministry foresaw the effect which the convention would have on the minds of the Turinese, and they resorted to the weak subterfuge of keeping its terms secret as long as they could. Rumours, however, leaked out, and these, as usual, exaggerated the evil. It was said that Rome was categorically abandoned. On the 20th of September crowds began to fill the streets, crying: 'Rome or Turin!' and on the two following days there were encounters between the populace and the military, in which the latter resorted to unnecessary and almost provocative violence. Amidst the chorus of censure aroused by these events, the Minghetti cabinet resigned, and General La Marmora, who, as a Piedmontese, was fitted to soothe the excited feelings of his fellow-citizens, was called upon to form a ministry.

The change of capital received the sanction of Parliament on the 19th of November. Outside Piedmont it was not unpopular; people felt that, after all, it rested with themselves to make Florence no final halting-place, but a step towards Rome. The Papal Government, which had been a stranger to the late negotiations, expressed a supreme indifference to the whole affair, even to the contemplated departure of the French troops, 'which concerned the Imperial Government, not the Pope,' said Cardinal Antonelli, 'since the occupation had been determined by French interests.' It cannot be a.s.serted that the Pope ever a.s.sumed a grat.i.tude which he did not feel towards the monarch who kept him on his throne for twenty years.

This year, 1864, was marked by an incident which, though not a political event, should never be forgotten in the history of Italian liberation--Garibaldi's visit to England. He came, the prisoner of Aspromonte, not the conqueror of Sicily: a distinction that might have made a difference elsewhere, but the English sometimes worship misfortune as other peoples worship success. No sovereign from oversea was ever received by them as they received the Italian hero; a reception showing the sympathies of a century rather than the caprice or curiosity of an hour. Half a million throats shouted London's welcome; the soldier of two worlds knew the roar of battle, and the roar of the sea was familiar to the Nizzard sailor, but it is said that when Garibaldi heard the stupendous and almost awful British roar which greeted him as he came out of the Nine Elms station, and took his seat in the carriage that was to convey him to Stafford House, he looked completely disconcerted. From the heir to the throne to the crossing-sweeper, all combined to do him honour; where Garibaldi was not, through the breadth of the land the very poor bought his portrait and pasted it on their whitewashed cottage walls. London made him its citizen. The greatest living English poet invited him to plant a tree in his garden: a memory he recalled nearly at the close of his own honoured life:--

Or watch the waving pine which here The warrior of Caprera set, A name that earth shall not forget Till earth has rolled her latest year.

Garibaldi showed himself mindful of old friends; at the opera he recognised Admiral Mundy in a box, and immediately rose and went to offer him his respects. At Portsmouth, he not only went to see the mother of Signora White-Mario (the providence of his wounded in many a campaign), but also paid an unrecorded visit to two maiden sisters in humble circ.u.mstances, who had shown him kindness when he was an exile in England; they related ever afterwards the sensation caused by his appearance in their narrow courtyard, where it was difficult to turn the big carriage which the authorities had placed at his disposal. He twice met the great Italian whom he addressed as Master: transferring, as it were, to Mazzini's brows the crown of glory that surrounded his own. Another exile, Louis Blanc, used to tell how, when he went to call on Garibaldi, he found him seated on a sofa, receiving the homage of the fairest and most ill.u.s.trious members of the English aristocracy; when the Friend of the People was announced (a t.i.tle deserved by Louis Blanc, if not for his possibly fallacious theories, still for the rare sincerity of his life), the hero started to his feet and most earnestly begged him to sit beside him. 'Which I could not do!' the narrator of the scene would add with a look of comical alarm for his threatened modesty.

These friendly pa.s.sages with the proscripts in London, as well as the stirring appeal spoken by Garibaldi on behalf of the Poles, did not please foreign Powers. The Austrian amba.s.sador shut himself up in his house; it was remarked that the only members of the diplomatic body who were seen at the Garibaldi _fetes_ were the representatives of the United States and of the Sublime Porte. The Emperor Napoleon was said to be angry. Lord Palmerston a.s.sured the House of Commons that no remonstrance had been received from France or from any foreign government, and that if it had been received, it would not have been heeded. Yet the English Government took the course of hinting to the guest of England that his visit had lasted long enough. In some quarters it was reported that they feared disturbances among the Irish operatives in the manufacturing towns, had he gone, as he intended, to the north. Whatever were the motives that inspired it, their action in the matter cannot be remembered with complacency, but it was powerless to undo the significance of the great current of enthusiasm which had pa.s.sed through the English land.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE WAR FOR VENICE

1864-1866

The Prussian Alliance--Custoza--Lissa--The Volunteers--Acquisition of Venetia.

The change of capital was carried out in 1865, and the lull which followed gave an appearance of correctness to the surmise that if the September Convention had not solved the Roman question, it had, anyhow, reduced it to a state of quiescence. But there were other reasons why Rome was kept, for the moment, not indeed out of mind, but out of sight. The opinion grew that the emanc.i.p.ation of Venice, too long delayed, ought to take precedence of every other political object. On this point there was no disagreement among the 22,000,000 free Italians, who felt the servitude of Venice to be an hourly disgrace and reproach; no one even ventured to preach patience. A curious chapter might be written on the schemes woven between the Peace of Villafranca and the year 1866, for the realisation of the unfulfilled promise of freedom from Alps to sea. Foremost among the schemers was Victor Emmanuel, and if some persons may be shocked by the idea of a royal conspirator, more will admire the patriotism which made the King hold out his hand to Mazzini, whose sentiments about monarchy, and especially about the Savoy dynasty, were a secret to no one, least of all to him. But as Mazzini placed those sentiments on second rank to the grand end of Italian unity, so the King, to serve the same end, showed himself superior to prejudices which in most men would have proved insuperable. The fact that Victor Emmanuel opened negotiations with Mazzini, and maintained them, off and on, for years, proves amongst other things, that he knew the exiled patriot better than the world yet knew him. He may have understood that by turning republican sympathies into the groove of unity (not their necessary or even their most natural groove), Mazzini made an Italian kingdom possible. There is reason to think that the King's ministers were kept entirely ignorant of his correspondence with the Agitator. The letters were impersonal drafts carried to and fro by means of trusted emissaries; each party freely expounded his views, and stated the terms on which his support could be given. Victor Emmanuel's favourite idea was a revolution in Galicia. When Garibaldi returned from England he was nearly commissioned to start for Constantinople, whence he was to lead an expedition through Roumania into Galicia. It seems to have been due to Garibaldi's own good sense that so extremely unpromising a project was abandoned. General Klapka was another of Victor Emmanuel's secret revolutionary correspondents. The very wildness of the plans that floated in the air betokened the feverish anxiety to do something which had taken hold of all minds.

In 1865 a scheme of a different sort, and of momentous consequences, grew into shape. It was a scheme of which Cavour first guessed the possibility, as well as the far-reaching results. In August 1865 Count Bismarck asked General La Marmora whether Italy would join Prussia in the contingency of a war with Austria? Only a year before he was still thinking of carrying out his policy with the aid of Austria, and he had offered to help her to wrench Lombardy from Italy (and from France if she intervened), in payment for her consent to his designs. But now, though the Austrians did not even remotely suspect it, his thoughts were resolutely turned to the Italian alliance. Without this alliance Italy might, indeed, have acquired Venice, but would the German Empire have been founded?

For a time the proposal was suspended, owing to the temporary understanding concluded between Prussia and Austria at Gastein; and in the interim, General La Marmora urged the Viennese Government to cede Venetia in return for a compensation of five hundred million francs. But those whom the G.o.ds would destroy they make mad. Austria preserved her infatuated sense of security almost till the rude awakening caused by the rifle-shots that ushered in the campaign of Sadowa.

One thing which contributed to keeping Europe in the dark as to the impending cataclysm was the character and known tendencies of King William I. of Prussia, whose conservative, not to say retrograde sentiments made it difficult to picture him at the head of what was really a great revolutionary movement, in spite of the militarism that surrounded it. With consummate art, Count Bismarck little by little concentrated all his master's ideas about royal divinity in general into one overwhelming belief in his own divine right to be German Emperor, and so transformed an obstacle into the corner-stone of the edifice he wished to build. But this could hardly be foreseen. At the New Year's Day reception of 1866, Napoleon announced an era of universal peace; henceforth all nations were to arrange their differences amicably, as had been done at Gastein If the illusion was complete, it was destined to be of short duration.

In the spring the Prussian proposal to Italy was formally renewed, and this time it was accepted. The secret treaty of an offensive and defensive alliance for three months was signed on the 8th of April.

Less than three weeks later, Austria, which was slowly beginning to feel some uneasiness, proposed to Napoleon the cession of Venetia, while exacting from Italy only a simple promise of neutrality in case of war. General La Marmora held the honour of the country and his own to compel fidelity to the prior arrangement with Prussia, and he refused the tempting offer. His choice has been variously characterised as one of common honesty and of uncommon magnanimity; at all events, it was of incalculable advantage to Prussia, which already gave signs of not being a particularly delicate-minded ally. When La Marmora asked Bismarck whether, in case Austria took the initiative of attacking Italy, Prussia would intervene, the answer was 'No.'

The three countries now pushed on their war preparations: Austria with less ardour than the others, as she still failed to more than faintly realise her danger. The Italian army, which the opening of the year found in a deplorably unserviceable condition, was rapidly placed on a war-footing, and, considering the shortness of the time allowed for the work, and the secrecy with which, at the outset, it had to be conducted, it is generally agreed that La Marmora produced surprising results. As was natural in an army which, except for the old Piedmontese nucleus, might almost be called improvised, the weakest points were the cavalry and the artillery. The infantry was good; not only the picked corps of Bersaglieri, but also the line regiments were equal to any troops likely to be opposed to them. No one can see the fine appearance of a line regiment marching down the streets of an Italian town without receiving the impression that, however much the other branches of the service may have improved since the Sixties, the fondest hopes of Italy in case of war still lie in that common soldier who best supported the rigours of the Russian snows.

Unfortunately, the attention paid to the army was not extended to the fleet, which continued totally unready; nor was the organisation of the volunteers carried out in an efficient manner. The excuse afterwards advanced was that not more than 15,000 enrolments were expected, while the actual figure reached 35,000. Besides being from its very bulk less manageable than the 'few and good' of 1859, this ma.s.s of men was ill-provided with officers who could inspire and keep discipline. Garibaldi's own generals, Bixio, Medici, Cosenz and Sirtori, were now all in the regular army, and therefore not free to join him. He begged for the loan of a few regular officers, indicating amongst other names that of Colonel Pallavicini, who commanded against him at Aspromonte: a trait characteristic of the man. But this a.s.sistance, though promised, was not granted, and the same was the case with the guns which were vainly asked for. Without charging La Marmora with a deliberate intention of neglecting the volunteers, it must be owned that under the influence of the prejudice which holds irregular troops in small esteem, he did not do for them what ought to have been done if their services were accepted at all.

The Austrian Southern Army, excellent in discipline and equipment though weak in numbers, was commanded up to the outbreak of the war by Field-Marshal Benedek, but he was called to Vienna to take command of the unfortunate army of operation against Prussia, and was succeeded in Italy by the Archduke Albrecht, with General Von John, an officer of the first capacity, as chief of the staff.

The numerical strength of the forces which could be put in the field has been stated with startling divergence by different military writers on the war, but every calculation gives the Italian side (exclusive of the volunteers) a superiority of not less than two to one. The Austrian mobilised army has been reckoned at as low a figure as 63,000, certainly an understatement, as it appears that the Archduke mustered not less than 70,000 at the battle of Custoza. That he mustered on that day every man he could produce is probably a fact.

Had the Italian generals followed the same rule, however enormous their other errors might have been, they would have won. Of all conceivable faults in a military commander that which is the least pardonable is the neglect to crush his antagonist by force of superior numbers when he has them at his disposal. How many great military reputations have been built up, and justly built up, on the care never to meet an enemy without the odds being largely in your favour!

For obvious political reasons the King of Italy a.s.sumed the supreme command of the army, with General La Marmora as chief of the staff.

Cialdini had been offered the latter post, but he declined it, objecting, it is said, to the arrangement by which the real head of the army has no guarantee against the possible interference of its nominal head. When La Marmora went to the front, Baron Ricasoli took his place as Prime Minister; Visconti-Venosta became Minister of Foreign Affairs; and the Ministry of the Marine was offered to Quintino Sella, who refused it on the ground that he knew nothing of naval matters. It was then offered to and accepted by a man who knew still less, because he did not even know his own ignorance, Agostino Depretis, a Piedmontese advocate.

Before the commencement of hostilities a secret treaty was concluded between Napoleon III. and the Austrian Government, according to which Venetia was to be ceded to the Emperor for Italy, even if Austrian arms were victorious both on the Mincio and on the Maine. Napoleon's real purpose in this singular transaction is not perfectly clear; but he was probably acting under a semi-romantic desire to have the appearance of completing his programme of freeing Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic which had been interrupted at Villafranca. In spite of his enmity towards Italian unity, there is no reason to doubt that he was in very few things as sincere as in the wish to see the Austrians out of Italy. His reckonings at this time were all founded on the a.s.sumption that Prussia would be defeated; he even seems to have had some hopes of getting the Rhine bank in return for his good offices on behalf of that Power with triumphant Austria. Be this as it may, he inspired the Italian Government (or rather La Marmora, for there were then two Italian Governments, and the real one was on the Mincio) with his own expectation of Prussian disasters, and it is possible that this expectation had a material and unfavourable influence on the manner of conducting the war in Italy.

Through the Prussian Minister at Florence, General La Marmora received the draft of a plan of campaign which is known to have been prepared by Count Moltke; in it the great feature was a descent on the Dalmatian coast. From an independent quarter he received another plan in which a descent on the east coast of the Adriatic was contemplated, the main difference being that Istria, instead of Dalmatia, was proposed for the landing-point. This second plan was modestly submitted to him by Garibaldi, who was thus in substantial accord with the Prussian strategist. The prospect which either of these plans opened was one of great fascination. What Italian can look across the sea to where the sun rises and forget that along that horizon lies a land colonised by Rome and guarded for four hundred years by Venice?

Istria was marked out by Dante as the frontier province of Italy:

Si come a Pola presso del Quarnero Che Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna.

It forms, with the Trentino, what is called _Italia Irredenta_.

Although the feeling of Italians for unredeemed Italy is not what their feeling was for Lombardy or Venetia, it is a mistake to imagine that they have renounced all aspirations in that direction. Only fanatics of the worst kind would be disposed to attempt, in the present situation, to win those provinces by force, but that has nothing to do with the matter. The aspiration exists and cannot help existing. It has always been shared by patriots of all denominations.