In Lombardy and Venctia the famous Austrian Minister, Metternich, had promised a rule ‘ conforming to Italian character and custom.’ Bitter was the chagrin when the people saw Austrian law introduced, conscription enforced, and Austrians and Tyrolese seizing all the higher posts of civil government. The emperor let it be known that he ‘ wanted not learned men, but loyai subjects.’ Austrian soldiers in their white coats were everywhere in the North — Vcnice, Milan, Verona — brutal and insolent with the populace, despising the Italians as a race.
In Tuscany the Tuscan statesmen held their own, Archduke Leopold was kind and stupid. Florence grudgingly restored some of the monastic possessions, and, following Lombardy, determinedly shut out the sly, retrogressive, intriguing, masterful Jesuits.
Rome and the papal states returned to old clerical rule, depending on spies and police and cunning and cruelty; and the Jesuits, with their determination not to let men escape their clutches, soon had their net over the Romagna, and over brave Bologna and Ravenna, the two fierce cities.
But it was too late to set the tide right back to the old Catholic submissiveness and mindlessness and the feudal rule. The army had become infected with democratic notions, the people were touched by the spirit of liberty, and educated men of the middle classes, longing for their day to come, watched the movements of the British and French Parliaments, of the Greek hetsera, and followed the pamphlets and writings published by leaders of freedom in the foreign countries.
And thus, in the South, the first quick result appeared. In the South the Freemasons had for a long time been a strong secret society, binding men together apart from Church and State. A number of the better-class Freemasons, hating the Bonapartist rule, took to the mountains. There they formed a new society, calling themselves the Carbonari. The Carbonari were a mysterious society, with the same rules, very nearly, and the same ritual as the Freemasons, vowed to purity and a good life like the Freemason, worshipping the Divine Order in the universe, expressing themselves in profound religious phraseology and occult symbolism, having a Crucifix in every lodge, and calling Jesus the ‘ first victim of tyrants,’ yet amounting in actuality to no more than a political society of republican tendency. What their actual ideas were they kept secret among the higher members of the cult, the initiated. Certainly one of their aims was to have power, unlimited power. But they only taught the rank and file vaguely to worship liberty and resist tyrants.
Great numbers flocked to join the society, and soon anybody was admitted. There was a secrecy, a mystery, a semi-religious, semi-worldly mysticism about it all which fascinated the South. The old dark religious impulse was now grafted on to a political purpose.
And in this way the movement for liberty began in Italy. Now, when so much is accomplished and achieved, we cannot help regretting that ever the deep religious spirit in man tacked itself on to politics. Politics, even liberty from a foreign master, is not a religious affair. Man fights for his liberty as a wolf fights for its liberty, because he wants to go his own way. And politics, at last, works out to nothing more than a mere arranging of the material conditions of life. It is not a religious activity. It is a sort of great commissariat organisation among men: nothing godly. You can’t save mankind by politics. Liberty isn’t salvation. We must have liberty. But having liberty, we have only got food to eat, clothes to wear, roads to walk on, and language to fill our mouths with. And still we have not even touched the inward satisfaction which the deep spirit demands.
Be that as it may, the liberty movement in Italy started, and ended, as a dual thing: a deep, religious passion, and a clever material scheming. It was both things, and the two things are really contradictory. And so, all the way, we feel a certain dividedness, a breach in our sympathy.
The Carbonari movement, being a secret society, naturally started in the South. But it spread to the North, where men naturally think and act more openly. The Austrians ruled well enough in Lombardy. Steamboats and spinning-jennies were being introduced. Milan was to be lighted by gas. Milan was the go-ahead city. The Carbonari were active there. They even started a newspaper of their own. But Austrian governors, smelling powder, snuffed out the flame.
Encouraged by the sudden bloodless revolution in Spain, a revolt broke out all at once in the Neapolitan kingdom in 1820. King Ferdinand was forced to promise a constitution, and put Carbonari liberals into power. Then Sicily, which loathed Naples, broke into insurrection, with wild mob atrocities. Europe was scared. Metternich sent an Austrian army southwards. It was met by the new militia and army of the liberals, which was broken. Austrians entered Naples, and Ferdinand sat tighter on his unscrupulous throne.
Three days after the Neapolitan Revolution was defeated, Piedmont rose. The Piedmontese wanted a constitution, and a war with Austria. For they hated the Austrians, 1 the white leeches,’ as they called the white- coat soldiers. The revolution had effect at first. The King abdicated. A charter was granted. And then it all fizzled out, the old regime seized power again.
In Modena Duke Francis had to crush an incipient revolt. In the ever-stirring Romagna, in the pine forest round Ravenna a brigade of Carbonari called the American Hunters drilled and prepared to rise, while Lord Byron, hand in glove with them at Ravenna, had his house filled with arms in readiness for the rising. It failed to come off, however.
Now the whole country lay prostrate under its tyrants. Metternich indeed tried to prevent persecution and the exasperation of Italy. But Emperor Francis played with his victims cruelly, and we have only to read Silvio Pellico’s My Prisons to know what the leaders suffered.
Francis of Modena wreaked a savage vengeance. Ferdinand of Naples evaded Metternich’s order against persecution, public whippings shocked Naples, liberals were proscribed and fled to the hills, armed bands wandered about, assassinations and reprisals took place. Ferdinand was a superstitious brute, and when he died in 182.5 men hated the Bourbon name.
Exiles from Italy were scattered throughout England, France, and Spain. Santa Rosa, one of the heroes, taught languages in Nottingham. Piedmont pursued her liberals with as much vigour as did Austria or Naples.
So, in 1821, the Italian question began to trouble Europe, and the Carbonari made their first great failure. After this, repression was the order in all Italian states. Men were not to think. Above all, they were not to read seditious literature. The censorship on speech and books was more than severe.
Naples had its martyrs and its saints of liberty, men of high birth and understanding who rotted in horrible prisons, yet who would utter no word against their oppressors: pure spirit of love, that is all love, and chooses never to fight. In the South exists the old oriental spirit, all the old abandon to an impulse. The North is more qualified. If the first strange spirit of abandon came from the South, all the fight came from the North.
Piedmont was the one true Italian state, politically. Not that it was Italian by race. The nobles prided themselves on their old Proven£al blood, the races at the foot of the Alps claimed to be old Celts, and there was considerable German infusion. The language was not Italian even. But Piedmont had a spirit of independence which finally gathered Italy together.
The Counts of Savoy, lords of a few Burgundian fiefs, had for centuries been wedged in between the power of France and Austria. Fighters, and masters of a mountain people, they bad sold their help first to one side then to another, usually coming out with the winners. And so, bit by bit, they added to their territories, first on one side then on the other. Wary and sly, they were always good at a bargain. And thus they became Kings of Sardinia, and ruled after Waterloo from Nice to Lake Magiore, and southwards to the Apennines. Turin was the capital, a dull, unintellectual, provincial sort of town, with a people who spoke a half-comprehensible dialect, who despised books or art, scorned the Italians to the South, were cunning at getting their own advantage, and looked upon the King as a sort of military father. In some respects, Piedmont resembled Prussia. Trade and commerce were encouraged after 182
1, silk and wine and oil flourished, Genoa was a busy port. Piedmont knew how to look after himself.
The people, as in Prussia, were cowed and docile under their Savoy masters. But, subalpine, they were kept trained as soldiers, in all the manly fighting virtues so uncommon in Italy. The hate of Austria in Lombardy, and the uneasy fear of France in their rear alone made them Italian by policy.
But in Piedmont were born the four great heroes of the Risorgimento, as the uprising of Italy is called. In 1805 was born in Genoa a certain Giuseppe Mazzini, a doctor’s son. Two years later, not far away along the coast, at Nice, was born another Giuseppe, Giuseppe Garibaldi, son of a small sea captain. Mazzini, a thoughtful, quiet, solitary nature, played among the narrow alleys of the port of Genoa. Garibaldi, a robust fellow, led his companions in exploits by the sea.
Both grew up Piedmontese subjects. Mazzini read and brooded and thought, yearning over Italy, and hard against autocrats. He saw the failure of Carbonari revolutions, and his more northern soul resolved itself. His writings, full of passion on behalf of the oppressed, had a hard hostility to tyranny which the South could never show. He was determined that the meek should inherit the earth — in Italy at least — and he had all the indomitable persistence of the meek. His words and his spirit flew through the peninsula, as the Carbonari spirit had flown. But Mazzini’s was no secret doctrine. Mystery and secret power, dear to southern hearts, were left out. All was plain and open and ideal, purely ideal. Once more politics and liberty became a religion, a self-sacrificing religion of abstract ideals.
Round Mazzini’s writings gradually gathered the Young Italy party, vowed to unite Italy into one free republic. The second important Carbonari risings took place in Central Italy in 1831. Young Louis Napoleon, nephew of the great Napoleon, having joined the Carbonari, breathed fire against the Pope in Rome. At the same time Mazzini published his Young Italy Manifesto. A real Italy was to be founded on independence, unity, and liberty. Austria must go, autocrats must be deposed, the various small states must be united in one, under a democratic government. Here was a definite programme, no Carbonarist vagueness any more. It seemed like an absurd dream at the time, none the less.
The risings had a brief success, then failed. Rigorous repression followed, for there had been a scare. The brave Menotti was hanged. Mazzini found himself in prison, and then exiled from Piedmont. He took himself to Marseilles, busily continuing his work, issuing pamphlets and addresses which were secretly circulated, at the peril of those who touched them.
Meanwhile Garibaldi, a young sea captain, carrying on his life rather aimlessly, met in the Black Sea in 1833 a certain Cuneo, a patriot. Cuneo told Garibaldi all about Young Italy, and a light seemed to enter the young captain’s soul. ‘ Columbus,’ he said, ‘ was not as happy at discovering America as I was when I found a man actually engaged in the redemption of our country.’ Garibaldi’s passion was now fixed. The new pseudo- religion had fired his soul. Returning home, he went to Mazzini at Marseilles, and joined the Young Italy Society, under the brotherhood name of Borel. The two young men enhanced the enthusiasm in each other.
Piedmont was harshly anti-liberal at this time, so the Young Italy workers turned their activity against their oppressor. Conspiracies in 1833 were followed by torture and executions. Garibaldi and Mazzini tried to raise an insurrection: failed, and fled. On reaching Marseilles, Garibaldi saw his name for the first time in print — in the newspaper, announcing that the Piedmont Government at Turin had condemned him to death.
For a time Garibaldi went to South America, lived a free life on the pampas, fought for the republics and became famous as a guerrilla chief out there. Mazzini kept his fame alive in Italy, and the national feeling fanned gradually up.
The year 1848 was the meteor year of revolution on the continent of Europe. As before, the fire appeared first in the South — in Sicily. It spread up the mainland. Ferdinand ir. of Naples was forced to grant a constitution. On January 27 he rode through the streets of his capital swearing fidelity to the statute, and being hailed as the darling of the people. On February 8 Charles Albert of Piedmont promised a charter. On February 11 the Grand Duke of Tuscany granted a constitution. The Pope granted a charter to Rome.
In the North the flame flew fiercer. Bohemia and Hungary under Kossuth rose against Austria, demanding independence. The Viennese were even turning upon their adored Hapsburgs. Berlin was barricaded, the Prussian king was yielding.
The French Revolution of 1848 changed the face of European diplomacy. Again France was a republic, the Bourbon power expelled for ever. Again the Napoleonic tradition revived the terror of Europe.
Italy was trembling with rage against her tyrants, Piedmont expelled the Jesuits, the Fathers fled for the time from Naples, the Roman crowd demanded the expulsion of the order from their city. In vain the Jesuits hoisted the red-white-and-green tricolour which the Young Italy had chosen as the flag of Italy United. In vain the Pope tried to protect these creatures and their agents. The College of Jesuits had to be closed.
On March 17 the news of the Hungarian revolt and the Insurrection of Vienna reached Milan, where the Austrians with their white-coat soldiers swaggered in the Lombard capital. All at once arose a tremendous insurrection of almost unarmed citizens. The veteran old tyrant, General Radctzky, had 20,000 Austrian and Hungarian troops with him in the city. But such was the passion and determination of the citizens, that after five days of the most intense and awful struggle in streets and squares, Radetzkv was forced to evacuate the vast castle, and retreat from the victorious city. The young hero, Manara, remained leader of a dazed populace.
The news of the famous Five Days of Milan thrilled every Italian nerve. Venice rang the tocsin from St. Mark’s, hoisted the red-white-and-green tricolour from the two immense flag-poles in front of the cathedral, and cut the cords so that the Austrians could not get the colours down. Venetian citizens too were beyond themselves. In an almost inspired hour Manin got rid of the Austrians, garrison and all, out of Venice. There was a rising everywhere against the hated white-coats, till at last nothing Austrian remained in Italy but the Quadrilateral, and Radetzky slowly dragging his way there over the Lombard roads, with his army.
The feeling against Austria was intense. Austrian rule in Lombardy-Venetia was probably the best in Italy, the most free, the most prosperous. But it was foreign, and it was powerful, and men were beginning to feel they would die rather than live under foreign domination. And, moreover, the Austrian white-coats had all the northern and Hungarian Magyar insolence, all the northern contempt for the southern Italian race.
Charles Albert of Piedmont now declared war on Austria, wrapped himself in the tricolour and offered his help, in the name of God and the Pope, to the peoples of Lombardy and Venetia. But when kings fight against emperors in the name of the people, crowns are bound to tumble. So Charles Albert went very half-heartedly. He was not at all fond of that red-white-and-grecn tricolour. He knew the Young Italy wanted a republic. They might use him, Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, military lord of Piedmont, as a leader, and then drag his throne from underneath him when he was going to sit down again. Emperors are not such enemies to a king as republican peoples are. So he went half-heartedly, whilst Radetzky had time to reach the famous Quadrilateral, the four massive forts of Verona, Mantua, Peschiera, and Legnano that guard the entrance of the ancient imperial road where it debouches from the Brenner Pass on to the Italian plain. The Quadrilateral formed the four great Austrian gateposts in Italy.
Meanwhile volunteers flocked from Naples, Tuscany, Modena to the Piedmontese standard. The white cross of Savoy waved beside the tricolour. Now it waves in the centre of the tricolour.
Garibaldi arrived from Monte Video and offered his sword to Charles Albert, and was refused. He took service with the provisional government of Milan.
Meanwhile news flew in from outside. The French Republic stood firm. The hated Metternich had fallen. Viennese students were driving the Imperial C
ourt from Vienna (May 17). Hungary and Bohemia had won a short-lived triumph; the German National Assembly was meeting on May 18. Never had the cause of liberty looked so flourishing in Europe. Yet the unhappy Charles Albert hesitated and floundered, could not gather his resolution.
So Radetzky marched out against him from Verona and defeated the Italian army cruelly at Custozza on July 25. Blunders of king and generals lost the battle, notwithstanding the magnificent courage of the troops. The royal forces were driven back into Milan. The frantic people, beside themselves, besieged the unhappy Charles Albert in the Greppi Palace. ‘ Ah, what a day, what a day! ‘ he said, wringing his hands. On August 5 he was forced to yield Milan back to the Austrians, for there was no food. He agreed to an armistice.
So Austria recovered all in Lombardy, and prepared to besiege Manin in Venice. Men were beside themselves with anger against Charles Albert. He had saved his crown and betrayed the people, they said. Mazzini and Garibaldi hoisted a republican banner, ‘ Dio e Popolo,’ ‘ God and the People.’
And thus the defeated Italians hated Austria all the more.
The next events took place in Rome, in this wild year of ‘48. Garibaldi had moved into the Romagna to gather to himself the fierce spirits that still held out as Car- bonarists against the spying priests and the Pope’s vicious, secret, police-cruel rule. Bologna and Ravenna were centres of revolt then as they are centres of rebellious Socialism now. So from the Romagnese Garibaldi formed his first legion to fight for free Italy.
Whilst in the Romagna he heard the startling news that Rossi, the Pope’s minister, was murdered by the democrat agents in Rome. The people of Rome were enraged because the Pope had refused to have any fighting against Austria, had even issued his censure against Catholics who took part in the struggle. Roused by liberal street orators, inflamed after the murder of Rossi, the angry Romans marched to demonstrate against their Sacred Master before his palace of the Quirinal on November 16, firing on his Swiss guard, and behaving very much as the crowd had behaved outside the Tuileries on June 2, 1792. But Pope Pio Nono, Pius ix., did not stand it out as Louis xvi. had done. On November 24 he fled, disguised as a simple monk, across the Neapolitan border to his friend King Ferdinand, called Bomba, because he had bombarded his own subjects in Messina.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 918