In Garibaldi's short absence at Palermo, the Southern Army (as he now called his forces) was left under the command of the Hungarian General Tuerr, as brave an officer as ever lived, and a fast friend to Italy, but his merits do not undo the fact that as soon as the Dictator's back was turned, everything got into a muddle. Pontoon bridges had been thrown across the river at four points; availing himself of one of these, Tuerr crossed the Volturno with a view to taking up a position on the right bank at a place called Caiazzo, a step which, if attempted at all, ought to have been supported by a very strong force. On the 19th of September, Caiazzo was actually taken, but on the 21st the Royalists came out of Capua with 3000 men and defeated with great loss the thousand or fewer Garibaldians charged with its defence, only a small number of whom were able to recross the bridges and join their companions. The saddest part of this adventure was the slaughter of nearly the whole of the boys' company—lads under fifteen, who had run away from home or school to fight with Garibaldi. Fight they did for five mortal hours, with the heroism of veterans or of children. Only about twenty were left.

When Garibaldi returned from Sicily, this was the first news he heard, and it was not cheering. The Royalists, who thought they had won another Waterloo, were in the wildest spirits, and the march on Naples was talked of in their camp as being as good as accomplished.

Garibaldi's lines were spread in the shape of a semi-circle, of which the two ends started from Santa Maria on the left, and Maddaloni on the right, with Castel Morone at the apex. The country is hilly, and this fact, together with the great distance covered, divided the 20,000 men into a number of practically distinct bodies, each of which, in the decisive battle, had to fight its own fight. Here and there improvised fortifications were thrown up. Garibaldi was aware that his line of battle was perilously extended, but the necessity of blocking all the roads and by-ways which led to Naples, dictated tactics which he was the last to defend.

The best policy for the Royalists would have been to bring overwhelming numbers to bear on a single point, and, breaking the line, to march straight on the capital. They were doubtless afraid of an advance which would have left a portion of the Garibaldian army unbeaten in their rear. Nevertheless, of the chances that remained to them, this was the best. At Naples there were no Garibaldian troops to speak of, and the powers of reaction had been working night and day to procure for the rightful King the reception due to a saviour of society. Perhaps they would not have completely failed. There were nobles who were sulking, shopkeepers who were frightened, professional beggars with whom the Dictator had opened a fierce but unequal contest, for no blue-bottle fly is more difficult to tackle than a genuine Neapolitan mendicant; there were priests who, though not by any means all unpatriotic, were beginning to be scared by Garibaldi's gift of a piece of land for the erection of an English church, and by the sale of Diodati's Bible in the streets. And finally, there was the Carrozzella driver whom a Garibaldian officer had struck because he beat his horse. These individuals formed a nucleus respectably numerous, if not otherwise respectable, of anxious watchers for the Happy Return.

If anyone question the fairness of this catalogue of the partisans of the fallen dynasty, the answer is, that had their ranks contained worthier elements, they would not have carefully reserved the demonstration of their allegiance till the King should prove that he had the right of the strongest.

Towards five o'clock in the morning of the 1st of October, the royalists, who crossed the river in three columns, fired the first shots, and the fight soon became general. King Francis had come from Gaeta to Capua to witness what was meant to be an auspicious celebration of his birthday. General Ritucci held the chief command. Of the Garibaldians, Milbitz and Medici commanded the left wing (Santa Maria and Sant' Angelo), and Bixio the right (Maddaloni), while Castel Morone, through which a road led to Caserta, was entrusted to Colonel Pilade Bronzetti and three hundred picked volunteers. Garibaldi's own headquarters was with the reserves at Caserta, but he appeared, as if by magic, at all parts of the line during the day, sometimes bringing up reinforcements, sometimes almost alone, always arriving at the nick of time whenever things looked serious, to help, direct and reanimate the men. A dozen times in these journeys by the rugged mountain paths he narrowly escaped falling into the enemy's hands. No trace of uneasiness was visible on his placid face; there was, however, more than enough to make a man uneasy. In the early part of the battle, both Medici and Bixio were pushed back from their positions. Only Pilade Bronzetti with his handful of Lombard Bersaglieri never swerved, and held in check an entire Neapolitan column, whose commander (Perrone) has been blamed for wasting so much time in trying to take that position instead of joining his 2000 men to the troops attacking Bixio, but his object was to march on Caserta, where his appearance might have caused very serious embarrassment.

Up to midday the Royalists advanced, not fast, indeed, but surely. They fired all the buildings on their path, and amongst others one in which there were thirty wounded Garibaldians who were burned to death. It was said to be an accident, but such accidents had better not happen. Victory seemed assured to them. It is not disputed that on this occasion they fought well, and they had all the advantages of ground, numbers and artillery. But the volunteers, also, were at their best; they surpassed themselves. If every man of them had not shown the best military qualities, skill, resource, the power of recovery, Francis II. would have slept that night at Naples.

Medici acted with splendid firmness, but at the most critical moment he had Garibaldi by his side. Bixio was left to fight his separate battle unaided (so great was the chief's confidence in him), and consummately well he fought it. After the middle of the day, the Garibaldians began to retake their positions, and at some points to assume the offensive; still it was five o'clock before Garibaldi could send his famous despatch to Naples: 'Victory along all the line.' The battle had lasted ten hours.

The Sicilians and Calabrese under Dunne, who stemmed the first onset at Casa Brucciata, and under Eber, whose desperate charge at Porta Capua ushered in the changing fortunes of the day, rivalled the North Italians in steadiness and in dash. The French company and the Hungarian Legion covered themselves with glory; it was a pity there was not the English brigade, 600 strong, which mismanaged to arrive at Naples the day after the fair. Had they been in time for the fight, they would doubtless have left a brighter record than the only one which they did leave: that of being out of place in a country where wine was cheap.

Putting aside Dunne and a few other English officers, England was represented on the Volturno by three or four Royal Marines who had slipped away from their ship, the Renown, and were come over to see the 'fun.' It seems that they did ask for rifles, but they did not get them, their martial deeds consisting in the help they gave in dragging off two captured field-pieces. Never did an exploit cause so much discussion in proportion with its importance; the Neapolitan Minister in London informed Lord John Russell that a body of armed men from the British fleet had been sent by Admiral Mundy to serve pieces of Garibaldian artillery.

Of all the striking incidents of the day, that which should be remembered while Italy endures, was the defence of the hillock of Castel Morone by Bronzetti and his Lombards. Their invincible courage contributed in no small degree to the final result. One man to eight, they held their own for ten hours; when summoned to yield by the Neapolitan officer, who could not help admiring his courage, Pilade Bronzetti replied: 'Soldiers of liberty never surrender!' It was only in the moment of victory that Perrone passed over their dead bodies and uselessly advanced—which cost him dear on the morrow.

The Garibaldian losses were 2000 killed and wounded and 150 prisoners; the Neapolitans had the same number placed hors de combat, and lost 3000 prisoners.

Garibaldi had none but his own men; the report that the battle had been won by soldiers of the Sardinian army who arrived in the afternoon was false, because they did not arrive till next day, when a battalion of Piedmontese Bersaglieri took part in defeating Perrone's column, which (it is hard to say with what idea) descended nearly to Caserta, as its commander wished to do on the first. Did Perrone not know of the defeat of yesterday? His column was surrounded and all the men were taken prisoners.

After the battle of the Volturno the belligerents re-occupied the positions on the right and left banks of that river which they held before. Military critics speculate as to why Garibaldi did not follow up his advantage, and the opinion seems general that he did not feel himself strong enough to do so. The fortress of Capua was a serious obstacle, but Garibaldi was not accustomed to attach much weight to obstacles whatever they were, and it is pretty certain that he would have gone in pursuit had he not received a letter from Victor Emmanuel, who bade him wait till he came.

By this time he had abandoned all thoughts of marching on Rome. From the moment that the King's army started for Naples he understood that persistence in the Roman programme would lead to something graver than a war of words with the authorities at Turin. Always positive, he gathered some consolation from the gain to Italy of two Roman provinces, Umbria and the Marches, and trusted the future with the larger hope.

Constitutional government triumphed over the old absolutism and over the new dictatorship. And here it may be noted which Constitutional government, which never had a more sincere and faithful votary than Cavour, found no favour with Garibaldi at any period of his life. Its hampering restrictions, its slow processes, irritated his mind, intolerant of constraint, and he failed to see that this cumbersome mechanism still gives the best, if not the only, guarantee for the maintenance of freedom. The sudden transition of Southern Italy from a corrupt despotism to free institutions brought with it a train of evils, but there was no alternative. If Italy was to be one, all parts of it must be placed under the same laws, and that at once.

On the 11th of October the Sardinian parliament sitting at Turin passed all but unanimously the motion authorising the King's Government to accept the annexation of those Italian provinces which manifested, by universal suffrage, their desire to form part of the Constitutional Monarchy. Cavour's speech on this occasion was memorable: 'Rome,' he said, 'would inevitably become the splendid capital of the Italian kingdom, but that great result would be reached by means of moral force; it was impossible that enlightened Catholics should not end by recognising that the Head of Catholicism would exercise his high office with truer freedom and independence guarded by the love and respect of 22,000,000 Italians than entrenched behind 25,000 bayonets.' Of Venice, the martyr-city, he said 'that public opinion was rapidly turning against its retention by Austria, and that when the great majority of Germans refused to be any longer accomplices in its subjection, that subjection would be brought to a close either by force of arms or by pacific negotiations.'

The words were strangely prescient at a time when the Prince Regent of Prussia was making most melancholy wails over the fall of the Neapolitan King. The Prussian Government issued a formal protest, which Cavour met by observing that Prussia, of all Powers, had the least reason to object, as Piedmont was simply setting her an example which she ought to follow and would follow, the mission of the two nations being identical. He already thought of Prussia as an ally: 'Never more French alliances,' he was once heard to say.

On the same day, the 11th of October, Victor Emmanuel crossed the Neapolitan frontier at the head of the army which Cialdini led to victory at Castelfidardo. The King published a proclamation, in which he said that he closed the era of revolution in Italy. Other bodies of Piedmontese troops had been despatched by sea to Naples and Manfredonia. The passage of the Piedmontese troops over the Abruzzi mountains was opposed both by a division of the Bourbon army and by armed peasants, who burnt a man alive at a place called Isernia; but their advance was not long delayed.

The Neapolitans now began to retire from the right bank of the Volturno, and retreat towards the Garigliano, their last line of defence. Garibaldi crossed the river with 5000 men, and moved in the direction by which the vanguard of the Piedmontese was expected to arrive. At daybreak on the 26th of October, near Teano, the Piedmontese came in sight. Garibaldi, who had dismounted, walked up to Victor Emmanuel and said: 'Hail, King of Italy!'

Once before the title was given to a prince of the House of Savoy—to Charles Albert, in the bitterest irony by the Austrian officers who saw him flying from his friends and country by order of his implacable uncle. A change had come since then.

Victor Emmanuel answered simply: 'Thanks,' and remained talking for a quarter of an hour in the particularly kind and affectionate manner he used with Garibaldi, but at the end of the interview, when the leader of the volunteers asked that in the imminent battle on the Garigliano they might have the honour of occupying the front line, he received the reply: 'Your troops are tired, mine are fresh, it is my turn now.'

Garibaldi said sadly that evening to an English friend: 'They have sent us to the rear.' It was the first sign of the ungenerous treatment meted out to the Garibaldian array to which the King lent himself more than he ought to have done. He promised to be present on the 6th of November, when Garibaldi reviewed his volunteers, but after keeping them waiting, sent a message to say that he could not come. The last meeting of all between the chief and his faithful followers was at Naples, on the occasion of the distribution of medals to as many as were left of the Thousand—less than half. In all his farewell addresses the same note sounded: 'We have done much in a short time.... I thank you in the name of our country.... We shall meet again.'

The plebiscites in Umbria and the Marches and in the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily took place in October. The formula adopted at Naples was more broadly framed than in the previous plebiscites; it ran: 'The people desire an united Italy under the sceptre of the House of Savoy.' The vote was almost unanimous.

On the 7th of November, Victor Emmanuel made his entry into Naples, with Garibaldi at his side. Next day, in the great throne-room of the palace, the king-maker delivered to the King the plebiscites of the Two Sicilies.

Garibaldi had nothing more to do except to pay a last visit to Admiral Mundy, whose flagship still lay at anchor in the bay. This duty was performed in the grey dawn of the 9th of November. 'There is the ship which is to carry me away to my island home,' he said, pointing to an American merchant vessel, 'but, Admiral, I could not depart without paying you a farewell visit. Your conduct to me since our first meeting at Palermo has been so kind, so generous, that it can never be erased from my memory; it is engraven there indelibly—it will last my life.'

On leaving the flagship he rowed straight to the American vessel, which soon afterwards steamed out of the bay. The parting salute fired by the guns of the Hannibal was all the pomp that attended his departure. Several hours later the people of Naples knew that their liberator had gone to dig up the potatoes which he had planted in the spring.

By Cavour's advice, Victor Emmanuel offered Garibaldi a dukedom and the Collar of the Annunziata, which confers the rank of cousin to the King, besides riches to support these honours. He refused everything, and returned to Caprera poorer than when he left it.



CHAPTER XVI

BEGINNINGS OF THE ITALIAN KINGDOM

1860-1861

Beginnings of the Italian Kingdom—The Fall of Gaeta—Political Brigandage—The Proclamation of the Italian Kingdom—Cavour's Death.

The Neapolitan army retreated, as has been already stated, beyond the Garigliano. Capua, isolated and surrounded, could render no material service to the royal cause; it capitulated on the 2nd of November, though not until the town had been bombarded for forty-eight hours. The siege was witnessed by Victor Emmanuel, who said to General Delia Rocca: 'It breaks my heart to think that we are sending death and destruction into an Italian town.' Two days after the surrender of Capua, Cialdini threw a bridge over the Garigliano near its mouth, an operation covered by the guns of Admiral Persano's squadron. His first attempt on the 29th of October had met with a decided repulse, another proof that this last remnant of the Neapolitan army was not an enemy to be despised. The second attempt, however, was successful; part of the Neapolitans fell back upon Gaeta, and the other part fled over the Papal frontier.

Gaeta, the refuge of the Pope and the fugitive Princes in 1848, now became the ultimate rock of defence of the Bourbon dynasty. The position of the fortress is extremely strong and not unlike Gibraltar in its main features. A headland running out into the sea and rising to a height of three or four hundred feet, it is divided by a strip of sand from the shore-line. The principal defences were then composed of a triple semi-circle of ditches and ramparts one higher than the other. Had the country been flat the difficulties of the siege would have been much increased; its hilly character allowed Cialdini to fix his batteries on heights which commanded the top of the Gaeta hill. But to profit by this, the Piedmontese were obliged to make fourteen miles of roads by which to bring up their artillery. For a month, 10,000 out of the 20,000 besiegers were at work with the spade. The defending force amounted to 11,000 men, and was commanded by General Ritucci. From the first, it was certain that the obstinate stand made at Gaeta could only result in what Lord John Russell called a useless effusion of blood; nevertheless it seems to have been prompted by a real belief that Francis would still recover his kingdom. The precedent of his father's return from Gaeta may have strengthened the King's illusion; every day he received highly-coloured reports of a gathering reaction, and as the French fleet in the bay prevented Admiral Persano from attacking from the sea, he believed that the time which he could hold out was indefinite. This policy of the French Government need not have greatly cheered him, as its motive was less to help Francis than to prepare the way, by hampering the Piedmontese, for a little fishing in troubled waters. Prince Murat, descendant of the Beau Sabreur, was busy writing proclamations to remind the world that if Francis were impossible and Victor Emmanuel 'wanted finish,' there was an eligible young man ready to sacrifice the charms of the Boulevards for the cares of kingship.

On the representations of the British Government the Emperor withdrew his fleet in January, advising Francis II. to renounce a hopeless resistance. But at this eleventh hour the King had adopted the principle of 'no surrender,' and he meant to stick to it. It is difficult to blame him; at anyrate, much more serious is the blame due to the methods of warfare which he was to adopt or to approve thereafter. His young Queen, who was frequently seen on the ramparts encouraging the artillerymen at their guns, had probably much to do with his virile resolution. The fortress was now attacked by land and by sea, and the bursting of a powder-magazine inside the walls hastened its doom. On the 15th of January the Neapolitans laid down their arms, the King having left his dominions by sea. The first act of the conquerors in the half-ruined town was to attend a mass for the repose of the souls of the brave men, friends and foes, who had fallen during the siege. Noisy rejoicings would have been unseemly, for the vanquished were fellow-countrymen.

The telegram announcing the fall of Gaeta went to Caprera; Garibaldi read it, and a weight was taken off his mind. 'Civil war is at an end,' he announced to the little party round the supper-table; 'Cialdini with our army is in Gaeta; now the Italians will not cut one another's throats any more.' Later in the evening he seemed so depressed that they thought him ill; Colonel Vecchj went to his bedside to discover what was the matter. He found him reading the Times, and inquired why he had become so suddenly sad. After a pause, Garibaldi said: 'Poor boy! Born at the foot of a throne and perhaps not by his own fault, hurled from it. He too will have to feel the bitterness of exile without preparation.' 'Is that all?' asked Vecchj. 'Do you think it nothing?' was the answer. 'Why then,' persisted Vecchj, half in jest, 'did you go to Marsala?' 'It was the duty of us all to go,' Garibaldi said quickly, 'else how could there have been one Italy?'

Francis II. would have been happy had he found counsellors to persuade him to keep pure such titles to sympathy as he then possessed. Decorum, if not humanity, should have urged him to retire, surrounded by the solitary flash of glory cast on his fallen cause by the brave defence of Gaeta. But the revolution, the new Islam, if it could not be conquered must be made to suffer for its triumph. Hence the exiled King was advised to call in murder, pillage and rapine as accomplices. The political brigandage which followed the downfall of the King of the Two Sicilies began after the battle of the Volturno and extended over five years. Its effect on the general situation was nil; it harassed and distracted the Italian Government and created the odious necessity of using severe repressive measures, but it never placed the crown in danger. One effect it did have, and that was to raise all over Italy a feeling of reprobation for the late dynasty, which not all the crimes and follies of the two Ferdinands and the first Francis had succeeded in evoking. How many bright lives, full of promise, were lost in that warfare which even the sacred name of duty could not save from being ungrateful and inglorious! Italians who have lost their children in their country's battles have never been heard to complain; nowhere was the seemliness of death for native land better understood than it has been in the Italy of this century, but to lose son or brother in a brigand ambush by the hand of an escaped galley-slave—this was hard. The thrust was sharpened by the knowledge that the fomenter of the mischief was dwelling securely in the heart of Italy, the guest of the Head of the Church. From Rome came money and instructions; from Rome, whether with or without the cognizance of the authorities, came recruits. The Roman frontier afforded a means of escape for all who could reach it, however red their hands were with blood. What further evidence was needed of the impossibility of an indefinite duration of this state within a state?

King Francis held back at first, but his uncle, the Count of Trapani, who openly abetted the brigand partisans, drew him more and more into collusion with them and their works. The Belgian ecclesiastic, Mgr. de Merode, who had then an influence at the Vatican not possessed even by Antonelli, looked, unless he was much belied, with a very kind eye upon the new defenders of throne and altar. Efforts have been made to represent the war as one carried on by loyal peasants. No one denies that every peasants' war must assume, more or less, an aspect of brigandage; nevertheless there have been righteous and patriotic peasants' wars, such as that of the Klephts in Greece. The question is, Whether the political brigandage in South Italy had any real affinity with the wars of the Klephts, or even of the Carlists? And the answer must be a negative.

The partisan chiefs in the kingdom of Naples were brigands, pure and simple, most of whom had either been long wanted by the police, or had already suffered in prison for their crimes. They organised their troops on the strict principles of brigand bands, and proposed to them the same object: pillage. 'Lieut-General' Chiavone who had a mania for imitating Garibaldi, was the least bad among them; unlike his prototype, he did not like being under fire, but neither did he care to spill innocent blood. What, however, can be said for Pilone, 'commander of His Majesty's forces' on Vesuvius; for Ninco Nanco, Bianco dei Bianchi, Tardio, Palma; for Carusso, who cut the throats of thirteen out of fourteen labourers and told the one left to go and tell the tale; for the brothers La Gala, who roasted and ate a priest? It was said that no horror committed during the Indian Mutiny was here without a parallel.

Of respectable Neapolitans who held responsible posts under the late regime not one joined the bands, but they contained French, Austrian and Belgian officers, and one Prussian. A nephew of Mgr. de Merode, the young Marquis de Trazegnies, was with Chiavone; the Carlist, Jose Borjes, was with a scoundrel named Crocco. Borjes' case is a hard one. He had been made to believe in the genuine character of the insurrection and thought that he was giving his sword to an honourable cause. The melancholy disillusion can be traced in the pages of a note-book which he kept from day to day, and which fell into the hands of the Italians when he was captured. The brief entries show a poetic mind; he observes the fertile soil, deploring, only, that it is not better cultivated; he admires the smiling valleys and the magnificent woods whose kings of the forest show no mark of the centuries that passed over their fresh verdure. At first Borjes was pleased with the peasants who came to him, but as they were few, he was obliged to join Crocco's large band, and he now began to see, with horror, what kind of associates he had fallen amongst. He had no authority; the brigands laughed at his rebukes; never in his life, he writes, had he come across such thieves. Before the enemy they ran away like a flock of sheep, but when it was safe to do so, they murdered both men and women. In desperation, Borjes resolved to try and get to Rome, that he might lay the whole truth before the King, but after suffering many hardships, he was taken with a few others close to the Papal frontier and was immediately shot. He died bravely, chanting a Spanish litany.

Borjes' journal notes the opposition of all classes, except the very poorest and most ignorant. Was it to be believed, therefore, that this mountain warfare, however long drawn out, could alter one iota the course of events? If Francis II. supposed the insurrection to be the work of a virtuous peasantry, why did he allow them to rush to their destruction?

The task of restoring order was assigned to General Cialdini. He found the whole country, from the Abruzzi to Calabria, terrorised by the league of native assassins and foreign noblemen. The Modenese general was a severe officer who had learnt war in Spain, not a gentle school. If he exceeded the bounds of dire necessity he merits blame; but no one then hoped in the efficacy of half measures.

One element in the epidemic of brigandage, and looking forward, the most serious of all, was an unconscious but profoundly real socialism. If half-a-dozen socialistic emissaries had assumed the office of guides and instructors, it is even odds that the red flag of communism would have displaced the white one of Bourbon. This feature became more accentuated as the struggle wore on, and after experience had been made of the new political state. The economic condition of a great part of the southern population was deplorable, but liberty, so many thought, would exercise an instantaneous effect, filling the mouths of the hungry, clothing the naked, providing firing in winter, sending rain or sunshine as it was wanted. But liberty does none of these things. The disappointment of the discovery did not count for nothing in the difficulties of that period; it counts for everything in the difficulties of this.

The reorganisation of the southern provinces proceeded very slowly. The post of Lieutenant-Governor was successively conferred on L.C. Farini, Prince Eugene of Carignano, and Count Ponza di San Martino; for a short time Cialdini was invested with the supreme civil as well as military power. None of these changes met with entire success. The government was sometimes too weak, sometimes too arbitrary; of the great number of Piedmontese officials distributed through the south, a few won general approval, but the majority betrayed want of knowledge and tact, and were judged accordingly. It was a misfortune for the new administration that it was not assisted by the steam power of moral enthusiasm which appeared and disappeared with Garibaldi. There is a great amount of certainty that the vast bulk of the population desired union with Italy; but it is equally certain that the new Government, though not without good intentions, began by failing to please anybody, and the seeds of much future trouble were planted.

On the 18th of February 1861, the first Italian legislature assembled at Turin in the old Chamber, where, by long years of patient work and self-sacrificing fidelity to principle, the possibility of establishing an Italian constitutional monarchy had been laboriously tested and established. Only the deputies of Rome and Venice were still missing. The first act of the new parliament was to pass an unanimous vote to the effect that Victor Emmanuel and his heirs should assume the title of King of Italy. The Italian kingdom thus constituted was recognised by England in a fortnight, by France in three months, by Prussia in a year, by Spain in four years, by the Pope never.

After the merging of Naples in the Italian body-politic, one of the thorniest questions that arose was the disposal of the Garibaldian forces. The chief implored Victor Emmanuel to receive his comrades into his own army, a prayer which the King had not the power, even if he had the will, to grant, as in the constitutional course of things the decision was referred to the ministers, who, again, were crippled in their action by the military authorities at Turin. Though it is natural to sympathise with Garibaldi in his eagerness to obtain generous terms for his old companions-in-arms, it may be true that his demand was not one that could be satisfied in its full extent. The volunteers were not inferior to the ordinary soldier; about half of them were decidedly his superior, but they were a political body improvised for a special purpose, and it is easy to see how many were the reasons against their forming a division of a conventional army like that of Piedmont. Nevertheless, the means ought to have been found of convincing them that their King and country were proud of them, that their great, their incalculable services were appreciated. That such means were not found was supposed to be the fault of Cavour. It was only in 1885, on the publication of the fourth volume of the Count's letters, that it became known how strenuously he had fought for justice. Military prejudice was what was really to blame; General Fanti, the Minister of War, even provoked Cavour into telling him 'that they were not in Spain, and that in Italy the army obeyed.' 'A cry of reprobation would be raised,' he wrote, 'if, while the Bourbon officers who ran away disgracefully were confirmed in their rank, the Garibaldians who beat them were coolly sent about their business. Rather than bear the responsibility of such an act of black ingratitude, I would go and bury myself at Leri. I despise the ungrateful to the point of not feeling angered by them, and I forgive their abuse. But, by Heaven, I could not bear the merited blot of having failed to recognise services such as the conquest of a kingdom of 9,000,000 inhabitants.'

Cavour, in fact, did obtain something; much more than the army authorities wished to give, but much less than Garibaldi asked or than the Count would doubtless have given had not his hands been tied. And, doubtless, he would have given it with more grace.

As it was, the volunteers were deeply offended and sent their griefs by every post to Caprera. Garibaldi, who refused every favour and honour for himself, was worked up into a state of fury by what he deemed the wrongs of his faithful followers, and in April he arrived unexpectedly at Turin to plead their cause before the Chamber of Deputies. Perhaps by a wise presentiment he had refused to stand for any constituency; but when Naples elected him her representative, almost without opposition, he submitted to the popular will. At Turin he fell ill with rheumatic fever, but on the day of the debate on the Southern Army he rose from his bed to take his seat in the Chamber. The case for the volunteers was opened, and this is worthy of note, by Baron Ricasoli, aristocrat and conservative. Afterwards Garibaldi got up—at first he tried to make out the statistics and particulars which he had on paper, but blinded by passion and by fever, he threw down his notes and launched into a fierce invective against 'the man who had made him a foreigner in his own birthplace and the government which was driving the country straight into civil war.' At the words 'civil war' Cavour sprang to his feet, unwontedly moved, and uttered some expressions of protest, which were lost in the general uproar. When this was quieted, Garibaldi finished his speech in a moderate tone, and then General Bixio rose to make that noble appeal to concord which, had he done nothing else for Italy, should be a lasting title to her gratitude. 'I am one of those,' he said, 'who believe in the sacredness of the thoughts which have guided General Garibaldi, but I am also one of those who have faith in the patriotism of Count Cavour. In God's holy name let us make an Italy superior to the strife of parties.' He might not be making a parliamentary speech, he added, but he would give his children and his life to see peace established—words flowing so plainly from his honest heart that savage indeed would have been the enmity which, for the time, at least, was not quelled. Cavour grasped the olive branch at once; all his momentary ire vanished. He made excuses for his adversary; from the grief which he had felt himself when he advised the King to cede Savoy and Nice, he could understand the general's resentment. He had always been, he said in general terms, a friend to the volunteers. What he did not even remotely suggest was the dissension which existed between himself and his military colleague on the subject of the Garibaldians. The least hint would have gained for Cavour any amount of applause and popularity; but he preferred to bear all the blame rather than bring the national army into disfavour. Garibaldi replied 'that he had never doubted the Count's patriotism;' but at the end of the three days' debate he declared himself dissatisfied with the Ministerial assurances touching the volunteers in particular and the country's armaments as a whole. As Cavour left the Chamber after the final night's sitting, he remarked to a friend—all his fine equanimity returned: 'And yet, and yet, when the time comes for war, I shall take General Garibaldi under my arm and say: "Let's go and see what they are about inside Verona!"'

Cialdini tried to stir up the quarrel anew by a letter full of foolish personalities; but to this sort of attack Garibaldi was impervious. It mattered nothing to him that a man should make rude remarks about his wearing a red shirt. He admired the victor of Castelfidardo as one of Italy's best soldiers. He was, therefore, perfectly ready to embrace Cialdini at the King's request before he left Turin for Caprera. It cost him more to consent to an interview of reconciliation with the Prime Minister in the royal presence, because his disagreement with Cavour was purely political and impersonal, and was rooted more deeply in his heart than any private irritation could be; but he did consent, and the interview took place on the 23rd of April. Probably Victor Emmanuel in after days was never gladder of anything he had done than of having caused his two great subjects—both his subjects born—to part for the last time in this mortal life in peace.

On one other memorable occasion the man who, at twenty-two, said that he meant to be Prime Minister of Italy, and who now, at fifty-one, was keeping his word, filled with his presence the Chamber of which he seemed to incarnate the life and history—which may be said to have been his only home, for Cavour hardly had a private life. Very soon the familiar figure was to vacate the accustomed place for ever.

An obscure deputy put a question on the 25th of May, which gave Cavour the opportunity of expounding his views about Rome still more explicitly than in the previous autumn. It was impossible, he said, to conceive Italian unity without Rome as capital. Were there any other solution to the problem he would be willing to give it due consideration, but there was not. The position of a capital was not decided by climatic or topographical reasons: a glance at capitals of Europe was sufficient to certify the fact; it was decided by moral reasons. Now Rome, alone out of the Italian cities, had an undisputed moral claim to primacy. 'As far as I am personally concerned,' he said, 'I shall go to Rome with sorrow; not caring for art, I am sure that among the most splendid monuments of ancient and modern Rome I shall regret the sedate and unpoetic streets of my native town.' It grieved him to think that Turin must resign her most cherished privilege, but he knew his fellow-citizens, and he knew them to be ready to make this last sacrifice to their country. Might Italy not forget the cradle of her liberties when her seat of government was firmly established in the Eternal City!

He went on to say that he had not lost the hope that France and the Head of the Church would yield to the inexorable logic of the situation, and that the same generation which had resuscitated Italy would accomplish the still grander task of concluding a peace between the State and the Church, liberty and religion. These were no formal words; Cavour's whole heart was set on their realisation. He did not doubt that the knot, if not untied, would be cut by the sword sooner or later. He felt as sure as Mazzini felt that this would happen; but more than any man of any party he had reckoned the cost of ranging the Church with its vast potential powers for good, for order, for public morality, among the implacable enemies of the nascent kingdom. And, therefore, his last public utterance was a cry for religious peace.

Always an immense worker, in these latter months Cavour had been possessed by a feverish activity. 'I must make haste to finish my work,' he said; 'I feel that this miserable body of mine is giving way beneath the mind and will which still urge it on. Some fine day you will see me break down upon the road.' On the 6th of June, after two or three days of so-called sudden illness, he broke down upon the road.

Fra Giacomo, faithful to his old promise, administered the sacraments to the dying minister, who told Farini 'to tell the good people of Turin that he died a Christian.' After this his mind rambled, but always upon the themes that had so completely absorbed it: Rome, Venice, Naples—'no state of siege,' was one of his broken sayings that referred to Naples. It was his farewell protest against brute force in which he had never believed. 'Cleanse them, cleanse them,' he repeated; cleanse the people of the South of their moral contagion; that, not force, was the remedy. He was able to recognise the King, but unable to collect the ideas which he wished to express to him.

Cavour's death caused a profound sensation in Europe, and in Italy and in England awakened great sorrow. Hardly any public man has received so splendid a tribute as that rendered to his memory in the British Houses of Parliament. The same words were on the lips of all: What would Italy do without him? Death is commonly the great reminder that no man is necessary. Nations fulfil their destinies even though their greatest sons be laid under the turf. And Italy has fulfilled her destinies, but there are Italians who believe that had Cavour lived to complete his task, although his dream of an Eirenicon might never have been realised, their country would not have passed through the selva selvaggia of mistakes and humiliations into which she now entered.



CHAPTER XVII

ROME OR DEATH

1861-1864

Cavour's Successors—Aspromonte—The September Convention—Garibaldi's Visit to England.

There were two possible successors to Cavour, the Tuscan, Bettino Ricasoli, and Urban Rattazzi, a Piedmontese barrister. The first belonged to the right, the second to the left centre in the Parliamentary combinations. Cavour had no very close personal relations with either, but he knew their characters. Rattazzi formerly held ministerial office under him, and the long Tuscan crisis of 1859, looked at, as he looked at it, from the inside, gave him opportunities of judging the Iron Baron who opposed even his own will on more than one occasion in that great emergency. Ricasoli was rigid, frigid, a frequenter of the straightest possible roads; Rattazzi, supple, accommodating, with an incorrigible partiality for umbrageous by-ways. He was already an 'old parliamentary hand,' and in the future, through a series of ministerial lapses, any one of which would have condemned most men to seclusion, he preserved his talent for manufacturing majorities and holding his party together. Choosing between these two candidates, Cavour before he died gave his preference to Ricasoli, who was charged by the King with the formation of a ministry in which he took the Treasury and the Foreign Office.

Ricasoli was without ambition, and he rather under than over-rated his abilities, but he went to work with considerable confidence in his power of setting everything right. A perfectly open and honest statesman ought to be able, he imagined, to solve the most difficult problems. Why not, except that the world is not what it ought to be? In home politics he offended the Party of Action by telling them plainly that if they broke the law they would have to pay the cost, and he offended his own party by refusing to interfere with the right of meeting or any other constitutional right of citizens, whether they were followers of Mazzini or of anybody else, as long as they kept within legal bounds. He wrote an elaborate letter to Pius IX., in which he sought to persuade the Pontiff of the sweet reasonableness of renouncing claims which, for a very long spell, had cast nothing but discredit on religion. Ricasoli's attitude towards the Temporal Power was unique in this century. Like Dante's, his hatred of it was religious. He was a Catholic, not because he had never thought or studied, but because, having thought and studied, he assented, and from this standpoint he ascribed most of the wounds of the Church to her subordination of her spiritual mission to material interests. He encouraged Padre Passaglia to collect the signatures of priests for a petition praying the Pope to cease opposing the desires of all Italy; 8943 names were affixed in a short time. The only result of these transactions was that Cardinal Antonelli remarked to the French Government that the Holy See would never come to terms with robbers, and that, although at war with the Turin Cabinet, 'the Pope's relations with Italy were excellent.' More harmful to Ricasoli than the fulminations of the Vatican was the veiled but determined hostility of Napoleon III. Cavour succeeded in more or less keeping the Emperor in ignorance of the degree to which their long partnership resembled a duel. He made him think that he was leading while he was being led. With Ricasoli there could be no such illusions. Napoleon understood him to be a man whom he might break, not bend. He thought it desirable to break him, and Imperial desires had many channels, at that time, towards fulfilment.

The Ricasoli ministry fell in February 1862, and, as a matter of course, Rattazzi was called to power. The new premier soon ingratiated himself with the King, who found him easier to get on with than the Florentine grand seigneur; with Garibaldi, whom he persuaded that some great step in the national redemption was on the eve of accomplishment; with Napoleon, who divined in him an instrument. Meanwhile, in his own mind, he proposed to eclipse Cavour, out-manoeuvre all parties, and make his name immortal. This remains the most probable, as it is the most lenient interpretation to which his strange policy is open.

Garibaldi was encouraged to visit the principal towns of North Italy in order to institute the Tiro Nazionale or Rifle Association, 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 L40,000. 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 assuming 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 circumstances 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 assert 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 scum 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 Assembly 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 shore 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 superstition 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 mass 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 passed 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 institutions.

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 asserted that the Pope ever assumed a gratitude 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 circumstances, 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 illustrious members of the English aristocracy; when the Friend of the People was announced (a title 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 passages 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 ambassador 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 assured 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 passed 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 emancipation 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 gods 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 mass 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 assistance, 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 assumed 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 assumption 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. An English statesman who called on Pius IX. was somewhat surprised by the Pope saying that Italian unity was very well, but it was a pity it did not include Trento and Trieste.

The case of Dalmatia is different; there the mass of the population is unquestionably of a non-Italian race, though that race is one which, whenever left to itself, seems created to amalgamate with the Italian. Slav and Teuton are racially antagonistic, but the Slav falls into Italian ways, speaks the Italian language and mixes his blood with Italian blood: with what results Venice can tell. For more than two thousand years the civilisation of Dalmatia has been exclusively Latin; the Roman column points to the Venetian Campanile; all the proudest memories are gathered round the Lion of St Mark, which in every town, almost in every village, recalls the splendid though not blameless suzerainty of the Serene Republic. The sky, the olive-groves, the wild pomegranates make us think of Salerno; by the spoken tongue we are often reminded of Tuscany, for few Italian dialects are so pure. The political subjection of the country to Italy dates from Augustus; its political subjection to Austria dates from Napoleon. Dalmatia, with the glorious little commonwealth of Ragusa, and the free city of Cattaro, was bartered away with Venice at Campo Formio; and as with Venice, so with Dalmatia, the Holy Alliance violated its own principle of restoring the proe-Napoleonic state of things and confirmed the sale.

At the beginning of the war, Austria did not ignore that her loss of territory might exceed Venetia. The Archduke Albrecht, in his proclamation to his soldiers, appealed to them to protect their mothers, wives and sisters from being ruled by a foreign race.

Even a successful raid upon Dalmatia or Istria need not have given those districts to Italy, but it would have brought such an event within the range of a moderately strong political telescope. The Slavs (erected since into a party hostile to their Italian fellow-citizens by a fostering of Panslavism which may not, in the long run, prove sound policy for Austria) were then ready to make friends with anyone opposed to their actual rulers. They would not have been easy to govern after an Italian invasion; still less easy to govern would the Latin element have been, which was and is Italianissimo. Since Prussia became the German Empire, she has set her face against Italian extension eastward, but in 1866, had her advice been intelligently acted upon, it might have generated facts the logic of which none would have had the power to stay.

Moltke's plan more than hinted at a march on Vienna by the Semmering, and this is what is supposed to have induced La Marmora to treat it with scorn. With the bogey of Prussia vanquished before his eyes, he doubtless asked what the Italians would do at Vienna if they got there? He put the plan in his pocket, and showed it neither to his staff nor to the King, who would certainly have been attracted by it, as he had set his heart on the volunteers, at least, crossing the Adriatic. With regard to the campaign at home, both Moltke and Garibaldi counselled turning the Quadrilateral in preference to a direct attack upon fortresses which had been proved impregnable except with the assistance of hunger, and at present they were better provisioned than in 1848. The turning of the Quadrilateral meant the adoption of a route into Venetia across the Po below Mantua. An objection not without gravity to that route was the unfavourable nature of the ground which, being marshy, is liable after heavy rains to become impassable. But against this disadvantage had to be weighed the advantage of keeping out of the mouse-trap, the fatality of which needed no new demonstration.

In Italy it is common to hear it said that it was necessary to station a large army on the Mincio to bar the Archduke's path to Milan. But apart from the rumoured existence of a promise to the French Emperor not to invade Lombardy, it was unlikely that so good a general as the Archduke would have taken his small army far from the security it enjoyed among the four fortresses which, if the worst came to the worst, assured him a safe line of retreat.

The plan adopted by La Marmora is vaguely said to have been that which was prepared by the French and Sardinian staffs for use in 1859, had the war been continued. But in what it really consisted is not to this day placed beyond dispute. The army, roughly speaking, was divided into halves; one (the larger) half under the King and La Marmora was to operate on the Mincio; the other, under Cialdini, was to operate on the lower Po. It is supposed that one of these portions was intended to act as a blind to deceive the enemy as to the movements of the other portion; the undecided question is, which was meant to be the principal and which the accessory?

The volunteers were thrown against the precipices of the Tridentine mountains, where a detachment of the regular army, well-armed and properly supplied with artillery, would have been better suited for the work. The Garibaldian headquarters was at Salo on the Lake of Garda. Less than half of the 35,000 volunteers who appear upon paper, were ever ready to be sent to the front. It was widely said that only patriotism prevented Garibaldi from throwing up his command, so dissatisfied was he with the conduct of affairs.

Prussia invaded Hanover and Saxony on the 16th of June, and declared war with Austria on the 21st, one day after the Italian declaration of war had been delivered to the Archduke Albrecht. On the 23rd La Marmora's army began to cross the Mincio. It consisted of three corps d'armee under the command of Generals Durando, Cucchiari and Delia Rocca, each corps containing four divisions. The force under Cialdini was composed of eight divisions forming one corps d'armee. An Italian military writer rates the numbers at 133,000 and 82,000 respectively. La Marmora acquired the belief that the Archduke's attention was absorbed by Cialdini's movements on the Po, and that his own operations on the Mincio would pass unobserved.

While the Italian commander had no information of what was going on in the enemy's camp, the Archduke's intelligence department was so efficient that he knew quite well the disposition of both Italian armies. Cialdini's advance, if he meant to advance, was checked by floods. On the night of the 23rd most of La Marmora's force bivouacked on the left (Venetian) bank of the Mincio. No reconnaissances were made; everyone supposed that the Austrians were still beyond the Adige, and that they intended to stay there. The King slept at Goito.

Before the early dawn next morning the whole Italian army of the Mincio had orders to advance. The soldiers marched with heavy knapsacks and empty stomachs, and with no more precautions than in time of peace. The Austrian Archduke was in the saddle at four a.m., and watched from an eminence the moving clouds of dust which announced the approach of his unsuspecting foe.

La Marmora's intention had been to occupy the heights of Santa Giustina, Sona and Somma Campagna, but the Archduke anticipated his design, and while the Italians were moving from the Mincio, the Austrians were ranging themselves in those positions. At half-past five on the midsummer Sunday morning, the Austrian advance guard led by Colonel Pulz came up with Prince Humbert's division near Villafranca. The battle began dramatically, with a charge of the splendid Polish and Hungarian Hussars, who dashed their horses against the Italian squares, in one of which, opportunely formed for his shelter, was the gallant heir to the throne. Bixio's division was also engaged in this prelude, which augured not ill for the Italians, since at about eight o'clock Pulz received the Archduke's orders to retire.

The first hours of the battle were spent in fortuitous encounters along the extensive chain of hillocks which La Marmora had intended to occupy. As the Italians approached each position they found it in the possession of a strong force of the enemy. On the right, however, Custoza and the heights between it and Somma Campagna had not been occupied by the Austrians. Here La Marmora placed the flower of his army, the Sardinian and Lombard Grenadiers, the latter commanded by Prince Amedeo. The fighting continued through the day over very widely distributed ground, but from about nine in the morning the supreme interest was concentrated at and near Custoza, in which the Archduke promptly detected the turning-point of the battle. To wrest Custoza from the hold of the Italians was to the Austrians on the 24th of June 1866, what the taking of the crest of Solferino had been to the French on the 24th of June 1859. La Marmora in person led the Grenadiers into action; they proved worthy of their reputation, but after losing a great many men, Prince Amedeo being among the wounded, they were obliged to retreat. At about midday, however, the Italian prospects improved so much that in the opinion of Austrian military writers, with moderate reinforcements they would have had a strong probability of winning the battle. La Marmora saw the importance of getting fresh troops into the field, but, instead of sending for the divisions under Bixio and Prince Humbert, which since eight a.m. had been fretting in inaction close by, at Villafranca, he rode himself to Goito, a great distance away, to look after the reserves belonging to the 2nd corps d'armee; a task which any staff officer could have performed as well. This inexplicable proceeding left the army without a commander-in-chief. The generals of division followed their individual inspirations, Govone, Pianel and Cugia especially distinguishing themselves: it is sad to think that death has removed these three officers from the Italian ranks. But the Austrians fatally gained ground, and as the afternoon closed in the Archduke began to feel sure that the Italian reinforcements whose arrival he had so much feared, were never coming. He therefore prepared for the final effort which was to give him the well-deserved honours of the day. Towards seven o'clock in the evening, his soldiers succeeded in storming the heights of Custoza, and Austria could write a second battle of that name among her victories.