When the Romans learned that their Pope had gone they felt as if the sun had fallen out of heaven. They were all uneasy, and did not know what to do. Republican feeling gradually became stronger, and in February 1849 the Roman Republic was proclaimed. Mazzini arrived in March, and was received rather timidly as Rome’s last and greatest citizen.
Meanwhile in the North Charles Albert, a haunted man, in bitterness ‘ eating Austria in his bread ‘ broke off the armistice, marched over the Lombard border, and was defeated by Radetzky on March 23 at Novara. Heartbroken, having in vain sought death in the battle, he abdicated, rode away in disguise, and died in a few months’ time in a Portuguese convent. Victor Emmanuel, his son, came to the throne, and confirmed the liberal charter.
Hearing of Novara, the Roman Republic immediately formed a Triumvirate or Rule of Three Men — Mazzini, Saffi, Armellini. Mazzini had much the same powers that Napoleon had when First Consul. But Mazzini tried to rule Rome according to the ideal of abstract righteousness, in purity, forgiveness, gentleness, and complete liberty. That was his will. Such a rule was successful enough in many ways, the city was quiet and good. But it is no use turning the other cheek when men come with cannon. Rome, the Roman Republic, must fight for its existence. And there was no money, no military equipment, no powerful authority.
Garibaldi, with his wild-looking legion, had ridden into Rome, received with suspicion at first, afterwards with enthusiasm. Those were wonderful days in Rome, when men were inspired to be good, freed from real authority, exalted by the unchangeable idealist simplicity of the first citizen, Mazzini. Picturesque troops bivouacked in the convent yards and the squares, everybody talked in excitement.
But it could not continue. Interference was bound to come. It came from the new French Republic. The French had chosen the young Louis Napoleon for their president. And though Louis Napoleon had been an old Carbonaro, he now depended on the strong Catholic party in France to keep him in his conspicuous position. Also he was posing as the saviour of Europe against Socialism. Hence he must rescue the Holy Father, and nip the Roman Republic in the bud. Troops were dispatched under General Oudinot.
Garibaldi was recalled into Rome from keeping his eye on the Pope. In his red shirt he was seen galloping through the city streets, preparing defences. The citizens digged and slaved at the entrenchments, fearless and full of inspiration for the moment. The French were driven off from the first attack on the city, with shame, and Louis Napoleon had a blot to wipe off the French military honour.
More forces were sent from France. Rome, isolated, fell. On July 2 Garibaldi marched out at night, slipped past the French, and escaped into the mountains. Finally he escaped to Piedmont, was moved on, and at last went to America, where he worked as a journeyman candle- maker, then as a sea captain, then a farmer. Mazzini wandered about the streets of Rome for a few days, and the French dared not touch him, for fear of the people. Then he, too, fled, made his way to England, his home by choice. ‘ Italy is my country, but England is my home, if I have any,’ he said. He worked and waited, sending out his threads of conspiracy from London.
The Pope came back, all the old secrecy and spying, police terror, prisons, and galleys. The papal government was as ruinous to land and people as it well could be.
Meanwhile a new phase was starting. Victor Emmanuel, a plucky little king, was on the throne in Turin. Count Cavour, his minister, was as clever a statesman as Europe has seen. Profoundly intelligent politically, a man of understanding and of liberal tendency, of great subtlety and of slippery obstinacy, Cavour was determined to have his own way, to make an united Italy by uniting all under the House of Savoy. It was bis great scheme, and he carried it out. On the one side we have the political- religious passion of the idealists like Mazzini and Garibaldi, on the other the vigorous, scheming determination to make a big united power out of a small, divided power, the determination which filled the breasts of Victor Emmanuel and of Cavour. Piedmont should become Italy.
Europe at that time w as wobbling about in the nervous balance of power. Britain was rather afraid of France: France was jealous of Austria, and was keeping her eye on Prussia: Prussia was looking askance first at Russia, then at Austria, then at Francc. Everybody was wanting to keep his own end up, and afraid lest anybody else should get his end up too high. So it was a game of beggar-my- neighbour. Piedmont, sharp as usual, made a great win in the South, Prussia in the North. Little Piedmont stroked and soothed the mane of the variable Louis Napoleon, become Napoleon in., Lion of Europe for the moment. Little Piedmont had a big bone to pick with Austria. Cavour looked imploringly to Britain, whose mighty navy patrolled the seas, to throw the shadow of her liberal wing over him.
Now Cavour wanted a war with Austria, and he wanted Napoleon hi. to help him, for he was not half strong enough alone. But the big powers did not want war: they were afraid of that shaky balance of power. So it was a great day for Cavour when he had cajoled Napoleon into friendship and taunted unwary Austria into an attack on Piedmont in April 1859. Napoleon marchcd over the Alps, joined the Picdmontese, won the battle of Magenta in Lombardy, and after this, with Victor Emmanuel, the bigger battle of Solferino: where the dear emperor wept, seeing the carnage. Now Napoleon felt he had done enough. Half a loaf must be better than no bread for Piedmont. He made peace with the Austrians — who had evacuated Milan and Lombardy — and retired into the Quadrilateral.
During the struggle the smaller states of Italy seized their opportunity. Austrian armies once withdrawn from their cities and borders, Tuscany, Romagna, and Modena suddenly declared themselves free Italian republics, and drove out their rulers. But then came the news of Napoleon’s Peace Treaty at Villafranca. Piedmont was to have Lombardy, but Austria was to keep her hold on Venetia, and the old rulers were to go back into the other states. Cavour cried with rage and disappointment, threw up his post and went to sulk in Geneva, when he heard the news. But Victor Emmanuel had nothing to do but sign. Piedmont was only the mountain cat between the two lions.
At this moment came Britain’s turn. ‘ The policy of Her Majesty’s Government,’ declared Lord John Russell, ‘ is not to interfere at all, but to let the Italian people settle their own affairs.’ Which was as good as saying that the policy of Her Majesty’s Government was to oppose any one else’s interfering in the affairs of the Italian people. Italian people meant, not Piedmont, but the new republics. And so the old rulers did not come back. Tuscany, Modena, and the Romagna united as the free Italian States of Central Italy, soon asking to be united with Piedmont, for safety’s sake, since Piedmont was the fighting power and Austria kept Venetia. But Piedmont was not so badly off after all.
The eyes of Europe were also on Naples. Mr. Gladstone had been in the southern city in 1850, for his daughter’s health. He had seen the horrors of King Bomba’s vile nde, his injustice, and his ghastly prisons for political offenders. All these horrors Mr. Gladstone told to the world in his Letters to Lord Aberdeen, in 1851. Naples became the disgraced state in the eyes of Europe, the pariah among the kingdoms.
In January 1860 Cavour came back into office in Turin. Tuscany, Modena, and the Romagna were annexed to Turin, and Savoy, with Nice and the strip of the present French Riviera, was ceded to Napoleon. Piedmont gave an acre and got a mile. But Britain was displeased at France’s increase, and Garibaldi enraged at the loss of his home-place, Nice. Victor Emmanuel had forfeited his ancestral territory of Savoy. But it was a sprat compared to the mackerel he was catching.
What was the next step? There remained Venice, the Pope, and Naples — or the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to be exact. Venice was too far off for the moment, a second attack on Austria not possible. Quite impossible also to attack the Holy Father in the papal states, because he was still under Napoleon’s wing, and the French troops were guarding him safely. What about the Bourbon in Naples?
Cavour dared not send an army to the South, because Napoleon would not have it, Austria would not have it, the Pope would not have
it, and Britain would not quite consent. It would look too much like grabbing. Only, if the Southerners would rise in revolt, then the Italian people would be deciding their own affairs, according to Lord John, and Piedmont could help them in the decision. At least she could send volunteers, who would count as Italian people. Piedmont as a state dared not interfere.
Cavour worked and worked for a Neapolitan revolution: without result. But there was trouble in Sicily. The Sicilians invited Garibaldi: Cavour dared not send Garibaldi openly. He let the lion-faced general know that whatever was done, Piedmont could not have any part in it — for fear of offending the other powers. None the less Garibaldi gathered his famous Thousand from the northern cities, took two steamers from Genoa port, and sailed for Sicily. The troops embarked on the night of May 5, 1860. Cavour knew. But he kept his public eye shut, and pretended he did not know at all.
This was Italy’s great year. And perhaps the wonderful adventure of Garibaldi and the Thousand in Sicily is the most moving event of the year. With a thousand untrained volunteers armed with wretched old muskets, and dressed in the civilian clothes in which they had left their offices, their studios, their work-benches, the general captured a great island and expelled a great army of regular troops, complete with arms and ammunition. On the morning of June 7, 1860, the British admiral and his captains watchcd from their ships two long columns of red-and-blue Neapolitan soldiers file along the esplanade of Palermo, past the ragged red-shi rted officers of the remnant of the ragged Thousand; twenty thousand regulars with all their equipment capitulating and evacuating the capital, leaving the island in the hands of the few hundred worn men of Garibaldi. In amusement and contempt the British watched this spectacle from the bay. Bomba had said of his soldiers, ‘ You may drill them as you like, they will run away just the same.’
And it seemed like it. Yet the troops were not really such cowards. There was room rather for wonder than contempt. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, said the Romans. And so it was with the Neapolitans — they acted as if they were mad. But in truth they were sensitive Southerners. Somewhere in their souls they felt that life was against them, their position was hopeless, obsolete. Bewildered, therefore, they were huddled about in masses like sheep, their will and their integrity gone.
Europe was amazed, shocked, and delighted as may be, when the news of the fall of Palermo ran through the world. Now Cavour was free to act. Now the Italian people of Lord John’s declaration had started their own affair in the South, and Piedmont could come in. Cavour sent 20,000 volunteers to Garibaldi.
Foliowed the next great adventure, Garibaldi crossing the Straits of Messina, dodging the enemy’s fleet, defeating one army after another as by magic, driving the huddled thousands northwards to Naples. On the night of September 6 the young King Francis of Naples, son of Bomba, and his Queen fled by ship from their capital to Gaeta. Their admiral signalled to his fleet to follow. The fleet did not move, but remained lying in Naples bay. When next day Garibaldi arrived, and the city received him with frenzy of joy, the Neapolitan fleet came over to him and the Italian cause. Garibaldi handed the fleet to Victor Emmanuel, to the command of the Piedmontese Admiral Persano.
Cavour was delighted but uneasy. Garibaldi was too wonderful, too successful, too much beloved. He might want after all to establish himself as Dictator of a new Italy, work into the hands of the republican Mazzinians. This would not suit Cavour and Victor Emmanuel at all.
Meanwhile Garibaldi was in a fever to march on Rome, the capital, the heart of Italy. But the Neapolitan troops would not desert to his side. They retired northwards towards their king, and blocked the way effectively at Capua, at the river Volturno. The great Vauban had fortified Capua. The royal soldiers were determined. They had their king amongst them, and would stand by him. Garibaldi and his red-shirts and his volunteers from the North could do nothing but face the enemy. It was a deadlock. Out of her half million inhabitants Naples sent eighty to help Garibaldi. His dream of a united Italian people, inspired with one free spirit, was broken for ever. The South could never be as the North.
All this was lucky for Cavour. The Pope was the one enemy left, and fortunately Garibaldi could not get at him. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. It was the Pope’s turn. And so Pio Nono proceeded in pure madness to offend and insult Napoleon III. and to cast slights on the French honour. Napoleon was the one protector of the Papacy, and Pius ix. insisted on regarding him as a wolf and kingdom-breaker, a vile Bonapartist. So that when Cavour cajoled Napoleon to allow an invasion of the papal states, Napoleon consented, so long as Rome itself was not attacked. ‘ And be quick,’ said the Emperor of the French.
Cavour was quick. He had Austria to fear. And Austria had to fear Cavour’s plots with Kossuth and the Hungarians. Flying in the face of all the powers except Britain, Cavour marched the Piedmontese troops across the Papal frontier on September 11. They wrere to take Ancona, the port on the Adriatic at which Austria usually entered Central Italy.
On September 16 the Piedmontese met the Pope’s army of Crusaders — Italian, French, Austrian, Swiss, Belgian, Irish — at Castelfidardo, near Loreto. The papal forces were scattered. Ten days later the Piedmontese captured Ancona. Austria could not move. The Pope was confined to Rome and his small province around Rome.
Meanwhile Garibaldi was fixed in the South before Capua, craving to get to Rome. On October 1 the Neapolitan Royalist troops marched out against him, over the Volturno. After twelve hours of tremendous fighting, Garibaldi beat back the enemy. They retired into Capua, and the position was unchanged. The Bourbon army still held up Garibaldi.
Cavour must now be quick. Italy was in his grasp. The white cross of Savoy was to stand in the centre of the tricolour. He persuaded Garibaldi, for the sake of Italy, to invite Victor Emmanuel and the troops of Ancona to join him in Naples. It meant yielding all to the King; but the Italian people wanted it. They wanted a king. ‘ Victor Emmanuel should be our Garibaldi,’ they began to say.
A plebiscite was taken in Naples and Sicily. Should Naples and Sicily be annexed to Piedmont, or not? The result was, on the mainland 1,302,064 votes for, 10,312 against annexation: Sicily, 432,053 for, 667 against. That was an end of Dictators or Mazzini republics: even of Garibaldi.
On October 26 Garibaldi advanced to meet the King, across the Volturno. Victor Emmanuel was a little, strutting man with huge moustaches. Garibaldi had a lion face — stupid, Mazzini called it — and a blond beard, bis head bound in a silk kerchief, southern fashion, under his hat. He wore his red shirt.
‘ I greet the first King of Italy,’ he cried, saluting Victor Emmanuel, and hinting that he not only greeted but created the first King of Italy.
‘ How are you, dear Garibaldi? ‘
‘ Well, your Majesty. And you? ‘
‘ First class.’
The two shook hands. But they no longer loved each other.
The King treated the Garibaldini shabbily enough, though he was ready to give money and such stuff, which they did not want. ‘ I am squeezed like an orange and thrown into a corner,’ said Garibaldi. The King said he did not want the Garibaldi volunteers in the army; they were to be disbanded.
So, in pouring rain, Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel rode into Naples side by side, both in bad tempers. They got on each other’s nerves, but the loudest cheering was for Garibaldi, which annoyed Victor Emmanuel.
Next day, rather wistful, Garibaldi left for his little island farm on Caprera, a poor man, choosing to be poor. The King and his party were not sorry he was gone. After all, such a man was a threat to their class privileges, by his very existence, and a thorn in the flesh of royal importance.
Francis of Naples was besieged in Gaeta, and yielded at last on February 13, 1861, to the Piedmontese. The Citadel of Messina capitulated in March, and Bourbon power was extinct.
Italy was now united, she entered the ranks of the great states of Europe, under her king, Victor Emmanuel. Probably it was best: c
ertainly it was safest so. An Italian republic would hardly have held together, and would certainly never have been safe from the lions of the day.
Cavour died in 1861, a great loss to the young kingdom. His last cry was for a free Church in a free State. His last words: ‘ Italy is made, all is safe.’
But the Pope was in Rome, a serpent in the heart of the kingdom. Francis of Naples was with him, encouraging brigandage in the South. Austria still held Venetia and the Trentino. It was no rosy task, ruling Italy.
The great craving was to take Rome, without incurring war with the great Catholic powers, particularly France. In 1862 Garibaldi and his volunteers landed again in the extreme South, to march on the Eternal City. But the King’s government forbade it. Victor Emmanuel’s troops met the Garibaldians on Aspromonte, down in the toe of Italy, and fired on the men. Garibaldi was wounded in the foot. But he had set his face against civil war. He would not fire back, but withdrew.
In 1866 Italy joined Prussia against Austria, and though she failed before the Quadrilateral, she received Venice when Prussia made peace after her great victory of Koniggriitz.
Remained now only Rome. Italy needed Rome. Milan, Turin, Florence quarrelled as to which should be capital of the kingdom, there was great jealousy among the old states. Italy must have Rome. But France and the Catholic powers forbade it.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 919