Garibaldi
Page 12
In military terms, the Lake Maggiore campaign was a failure. It may not have been helped by the fact that Garibaldi was sick with malaria for much of the time – ‘very dejected and discouraged and rather ill’, as one government official who saw him put it59 – or by the unresolved tensions over military strategy between Garibaldi, on the one hand, and Medici and Mazzini, on the other. Yet it is hard to escape the conclusion that, as a military action, Garibaldi's Lake Maggiore campaign was entirely unwinnable. Why, then, did he pursue it? The desire to embarrass the Piedmontese government by breaking the armistice with Austria should not be discounted, nor should the plan to disrupt the progress of the Austrian army via surprise appearances and rapid manoeuvres and by generally making a nuisance of themselves. In both aims, moreover, Garibaldi was quite successful, if the correspondence between Austrian and between Piedmontese officials is anything to go by.60 But perhaps a comment made about Mazzini in an anonymous report to the Austrians provides the real key to understanding what they were all up to. Mazzini, according to the anonymous writer, ‘knows that the war cannot bring any great success, but his idea is to attract the attention of Europe and to get sympathy for the Republic and for the relentless struggle for freedom’.61 In other words, Garibaldi's action in Lake Maggiore was part of an ongoing drive to win support for the struggle through his own valiant example. By remaining as much as possible in the public eye, he hoped to promote and diffuse revolutionary and nationalist propaganda.
Arriving in Lugano in early August, Mazzini issued a proclamation ‘to Italians’, with the memorable opening sentence: ‘The royal war is over; the war of the people begins.’ It was published as a sixteen-page pamphlet, first in Lugano and then in Italy; extracts were subsequently published in various newspapers including the Corriere Mercantile and the Corriere Livornese. He also published a shorter ‘Protest’, first as a flyer in Lugano and then in a series of newspapers.62 With an eye on the wider world, he published a series of articles on ‘Parties and affairs in Italy’ in the London Spectator, in which he argued that both monarchs and moderates had betrayed their claims to leadership in Italy and that the republicans were the only true leaders, capable of enacting and inspiring feats of selfsacrifice and heroism.63 At his temporary headquarters at Castelletto Ticino, just south of Lake Maggiore, on 13 August Garibaldi also issued a ‘Protest’ to ‘Italians’, which began with Mazzini's slogan ‘God and the People’. Rejecting the ‘humiliating agreements’ signed by a king who kept his crown ‘through cowardice and misdeed’ and affirming that ‘the People doesn't want any more tricks’, Garibaldi swore that his army would fight ‘without pause and like lions the holy war, the war of Italian Independence’.64 Both this, and an earlier manifesto issued at Bergamo, were printed and clearly intended for mass circulation; the Castelletto appeal was apparently taken with Garibaldi into action, was posted on walls as the army passed through built-up areas and made news in Tuscany and Rome, as well as falling into the hands of the Austrians.65
Although at the time the claims of Mazzini and Garibaldi may have seemed like wishful thinking, in retrospect they mark a turning-point in the revolution. Along with the decision of Venice to resist Austrian attack and the Bologna riots of 8 August, the action in Lake Maggiore and the Ticino meant that the democratic movement gained the initiative from the moderate liberals, who had always been frightened of the mass protests and uprisings in Italian cities and who had no response to Carlo Alberto's hasty abandonment of Lombardy. Instead, the democrats embraced the collapse of the Piedmontese front and the defection of the Pope, and they took advantage of the vacuum left by the royal retreat to introduce a new language based on ‘people’ and ‘nation’ into Italian political discourse. Moreover, this initiative produced practical results. Disturbances in Livorno in October resulted in the formation of a democratic government in Tuscany, and a month later in Rome popular militancy culminated in the assassination of the moderate minister, Pellegrino Rossi, after which a panic-stricken Pius IX fled to the safety of Gaeta in Neapolitan territory. During the weeks that followed, popular elections for a Roman constituent assembly were called, and democrats of all types, including talented pro-Mazzinian propagandists like Piero Ceroni, Antonio Torricelli and Filippo de Boni, moved to Rome.66
Garibaldi's own fame grew considerably during the summer and autumn of 1848. While his main concern was military – raising and deploying an army of young volunteers – his speeches and proclamations at this time are an interesting reflection of both nationalist rhetoric in 1848 and his own place within it. On the one hand, Garibaldi sought to project to his audience an ideal of selfless service to a nation in danger and to identify himself with a model of humble and disinterested virtue, whose heroic example could nevertheless inspire others:
He who speaks these words to you has fought as best he could to honour the Italian name in far-off shores; he has rushed with a handful of valiant companions from Montevideo so that he too can help the fatherland in victory, and to die on Italian soil. He has faith in you; young men, will you have faith in him?67
On the other hand, he offered an extraordinarily eclectic image of national belonging, which was seemingly conceived to be both as compelling and as inclusive as possible. Perhaps the best example of Garibaldian bricolage is the proclamation issued in Bergamo on 3 August, in which he appealed to Italy's classical and medieval past, to religion, martyrdom and betrayal, to military aggression and hatred of the foreigner (the ‘cowardly German’), to sex, the family and local pride in order to encourage the youth of Bergamo to join him:
When Rome had barbarians at the gate … it sent its Legions to Spain, to Africa, and they made them march past the besiegers so as to scorn them … Look, for God's sake, at your babies, who expect from you a life as free people, to your women, to your virgins … I hope that my words, however weak, will be listened to: that the generous people of the city, of the towns, of the valleys and the mountains will repeat the echo of the Italian crusade, of the wiping-out of the foreigner; everyone, looking around himself, will find an arm, a tool to defend the beautiful land which has nourished him and brought him up.68
Finally, Garibaldi added, in an explicit reference to what was a central episode for historians, poets, musicians and painters during the Risorgimento, and was especially important for Lombardy: ‘Bergamo will be the Pontida of the present generation and God will bring us to Legnano.’ (Pontida was the place where the Lombard cities made an alliance against Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1167, and the battle of Legnano in 1176 resulted in a famous victory for the Lombard League over Frederick.)69
Of course, we can have little idea of the effect of this rhetoric on Garibaldi's audience. It seems that any initial rush to volunteer in Milan ran out of steam in the mountains; by all accounts, the people of the Varesotto were unenthusiastic about his campaign and, even where they cheered his progress, were reluctant actually to join him.70 Yet there is no doubt about his growing reputation. When Garibaldi arrived back in the Italian Riviera at the beginning of September, La Concordia greeted his return as a hero: it reported that he had been reunited with his wife and children and was ‘physically exhausted’; that ‘[h]e tells of the exploits of his legion with a moderation and sincerity which has no equal’; and that Garibaldi's ‘strong constitution and even more his indomnitable spirit will win out and soon he will go back into battle’.71 Earlier, the governor-general of Nice had asked Turin for instructions about letting Garibaldi return to his home town. The governor was concerned about the effect of Garibaldi's presence on the mood of the people; indeed his popularity was such, the governor worried, that either a refusal to allow him entry or a decision to permit his return would be likely to lead to serious disorder.72
Towards the end of September, as his health recovered, Garibaldi decided to travel to Genoa and to make contact with the democratic clubs there. His journey was punctuated by halts at San Remo, Oneglia and Savona: these were occasions for Garibaldi to make speeches and
for public festivities held in his honour, and his appearances were reported as major events in La Concordia and in Il Pensiero Italiano.73 In San Remo, Garibaldi was formally greeted by the mayor and by the French and Spanish vice-consuls (the latter had him to stay in his home). He enjoyed a guard of honour throughout the night, courtesy of the mayor, was serenaded at 9 p.m. by the municipal band and was given lunch the next day, again by the mayor and the officers of the Civic Guard. Yet although the crowd was equally enthusiastic, there was evidently some confusion about what Garibaldi represented. On his way to the Spanish vice-consul's house, he was pursued by an excited crowd shouting ‘Viva Garibaldi. Evviva Pio IX. Evviva l'independenza italiana’. After the 9 p.m. serenade, when Garibaldi came out to speak to his public, he was greeted by cries of ‘Viva Garibaldi. Viva Pio IX. Viva Carlo Alberto.’74 The reaction of the crowd to Garibaldi suggests that if, as Mazzini had proclaimed, the war of the people was under way, the traditional presence of royalty and religion was still very much at hand.
The Third Rome
The revolutions of 1848–9 have generally not been favourably judged by historians. As Jonathan Sperber tells us, ‘[g]entle mockery, open sarcasm and hostile contempt have frequently set the tone for narrative and evaluation’. The political movements of 1848–9 are treated as too poetic and too romantic, or simply too incompetent, to be taken seriously, or at any rate to be compared ‘to the real business of 1789 and 1917’.75 In this way, the failure of the 1848–9 revolutions – the practical reversals suffered as a result of internal divisions, military weakness and conservative counter-attack between the summer of 1848 and the summer of 1849 – has tended to overshadow its more lasting achievement in politicising the people.
In fact, during the eighteen or so months of revolution, a ‘new space opened up for political activity in Europe’.76 Parliaments provided a forum for public debate and for political alignment (and realignment) at the centre of power, and this change also affected society. Petitions offered a means of dialogue between people and the politicians, and the establishment of political clubs, both in capital cities and in regional and local centres, allowed for wide-ranging discussions on a regular basis and the formation of new associational networks. The revolution saw the affirmation of more traditional forms of mass political expression, such as riots and popular festivals, as well as the emergence of more orderly ‘modern’ events like mass meetings and demonstrations. The revolutionary events themselves generated a new political culture. Representing, celebrating, denigrating or just reporting the revolution became central to the whole political process, and with the end of censorship and the arrival of new technologies – notably the electric telegraph and cheaper printing machines – there was an information revolution, expressed in the proliferation of newspapers and a popular press. None of this, moreover, was confined to the major cities. Research on France, in particular, has shown how far the politics of rural life and in the periphery were affected by revolutionary events. So, far from being a failure, it seems that the revolution should best be seen ‘as a pioneering venture in mass political mobilization’.77
Events in Italy bear out this interpretation. Although research is relatively sketchy, it is evident that the Italian revolutions were preceded and accompanied by newspapers and pamphlets, and marked by popular demonstrations and the establishment of political clubs.78 During the spring and summer of 1849, a great deal of this general political activity came to be centred on Rome, which had been in a state of political flux for some time, and where a republic was declared in February. Indeed, from the moment of the first constitutional changes in the spring of 1848, the unfolding events were discussed, written about, celebrated and opposed by men and by women, not just in Rome but also in cities, towns and villages throughout the Papal States, and not just in formal meetings and on special occasions but in taverns, osterie, cafés, piazzas and the street as well.79 Newspapers, periodicals and pamphlets of every kind proliferated. Mainstream papers assumed a crucial function as ‘a tool of organisation and propulsion in public life and as a centre of association for the currents which faced each other in political life’;80 others were deliberately ephemeral, openly satirical or concerned with purely local or material issues.81
During late 1848 and early 1849, and especially after the declaration of a republic in February, the radicals gained control in Rome and political mobilisation intensified. The politicial clamp-down in the republican stronghold of Genoa and in Lombardy – Venetia (outside the republican enclave in the city of Venice), the increasing strength of reaction in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the second resounding defeat of the Piedmontese army by the Austrians, at Novara in March 1849, led to increased political interest in Rome and cemented its real importance for the nationalist cause. Mazzinian activists and propagandists moved to Rome from northern Italy because they saw an opportunity there, and because political activity had simply become too difficult at home. Many went first to Tuscany, but the radical government there was lukewarm about their unitarian plans, so sooner or later they all moved on to Rome. The elections in Rome for a proposed Italian constituent assembly in January 1849 also helped endorse the Mazzinians and Mazzinian policies, and Mazzini himself arrived in Rome on 5 March and attempted to become its temporary dictator.82 He was joined by a large and important group of sympathisers (including famous names of the future like Saffi, Pisacane, Nicotera, Bertani, Belgioioso, Medici, Mameli, and Garibaldi himself). Other non-Mazzinians arrived later, notably a group of 600 Lombard volunteers led by a veteran of the Cinque Giornate in Milan, Luciano Manara. For all these reasons, by the spring of 1849 Rome had become the main focus of nationalist aspirations in the Italian peninsula as well as the basis for republican experiments.
Yet Rome had an importance all of its own, ‘a mystical significance’ which represented a particular political challenge to the revolutionaries in 1849.83 As the capital of Roman Catholicism, it had an unrivalled symbolic role as the capital of (almost) all Italians, and this was recognised by Mazzini in his appeal to ‘the Third Rome’ of ‘the people’ (after the ‘Rome of the Caesars’ and the ‘Rome of the Popes’). The problem, however, was the same one which had faced the Jacobins in the 1790s: how to replace the religion of the Pope and the Catholic Church with the new religion of humanity and the nation as the source of popular identity, and how to do this without offending or alienating a deeply religious and Catholic population. Nor was this task made any easier by the pervasiveness of papal symbols and Catholic rituals in the city of Rome and throughout the papal territories, or by the existence of a tradition which linked Catholicism to a sense and expressions of national belonging.84 And although, by the middle of the nineteenth century, Rome had become a dusty and declining backwater, surpassed by the size of Naples, the growth of Milan and the sophistication of Florence, it had an immense cosmopolitan significance, with a powerful resonance for foreigners as both religious centre and ‘cradle of civilisation’.85 Its fame assured international attention, and this attention was both an opportunity – to win publicity and support for the nationalist struggle – and a danger, as the republic was physically isolated and could easily attract hostile intervention from foreign powers. Finally, there is evidence that many Roman political leaders – notably Pietro Sterbini – resented the intrusion of Mazzini and his unitarian ideas into their revolution. The assembly initially refused his bid to be an emergency dictator; they also disliked some of his domestic policies and not everyone endorsed his plans for union with the other Italian republics.86
The importance of Rome on both a practical and a symbolic level for a whole series of opposing groups and governments guaranteed a bitter struggle for its future. Although Mazzini soon succeeded in gaining power in Rome, as one of a triumvirate with Carlo Armellini and Aurelio Saffi, criticism of him continued and his position was insecure in every other way. That Mazzini was fully aware of his own isolation is indicated by his repeated attempts not to offend religious sensibil
ities: the republican constitution declared Catholicism to be the official religion, the Pope's spiritual authority was guaranteed and Mazzini himself attended Easter Sunday mass at St Peter's. He encouraged popular support for the government by introducing a series of social reforms – the confiscation and redistribution of church property; the lowering of taxes; new schools for the poor – as well as abolishing the death penalty, censorship and the monopoly of ecclesiastical courts. Mazzini also revived his newspaper, L'Italia del Popolo, as a tool of propaganda. In late April, he helped organise a huge republican festival in and around the ancient Roman monuments, which culminated in the illumination of the Colosseum with the colours of the tricolour flag.87
Yet it is uncertain whether any of these measures were particularly successful. Research has shown that this short experience of republican government and its downfall marks a crucial stage in the politics of the Papal States, in that it led to the decline of traditional deference to authority and challenged popular affection for the Pope. It also marked a definitive break between the Italian nationalist movement and the Catholic world.88 Yet it is much less likely that the republican government succeeded in transferring the dwindling loyalty to papal government to itself or to the national idea.89 In any case, the government faced a far more serious external threat to its existence. In a response to the Pope's appeal for international aid, Austria, Spain, Naples and France sent armies to intervene against the Roman Republic. The most dangerous of these – a 12,000-strong French expeditionary force led by General Oudinot – was allowed to land unopposed at Civitavecchia, some forty miles north of Rome, towards the end of April. Confident, according to the famous phrase of one French envoy, that ‘the Italians do not fight [les Italiens ne se battent pas]’, i.e. they were too cowardly to fight, they proceeded to march on the capital, expecting to take it without too much resistance.90