Chapter XXII (2)

Rattazzi, during the six months that he had conducted affairs, had steered safely past some dangerous rocks; but he held the helm with an unsteady and untrusted hand, and he appears to have displayed an unworthy jealousy towards Cavour, who, while out of office, had not ceased to render what services he could to his country. Cavour resumed his post, with the resolve to defer no longer the annexation of Central Italy, but with the heavy consciousness that Napoleon would demand in return for his consent to this union the cession of Nice and Savoy. No Treaty entitled France to claim this reward, for the Austrians still held Venetia; but Napoleon's troops lay at Milan, and by a march southwards they could easily throw Italian affairs again into confusion, and undo all that the last six months had effected. Cavour would perhaps have lent himself to any European combination which, while directed against the extension, of France, would have secured the existence of the Italian Kingdom; but no such alternative to the French alliance proved possible; and the subsequent negotiations between Paris and Turin were intended only to vest with a certain diplomatic propriety the now inevitable transfer of territory from the weaker to the stronger State. A series of propositions made from London with the view of withdrawing from Italy both French and Austrian influence led the Austrian Court to acknowledge that its army would not be employed for the restoration of the sovereigns of Tuscany and Modena. Construing this statement as an admission that the stipulations of Villafranca and Zürich as to the return of the fugitive princes had become impracticable, Napoleon now suggested that Victor Emmanuel should annex Parma and Modena, and assume secular power in the Romagna as Vicar of the Pope, leaving Tuscany to form a separate Government. The establishment of so powerful a kingdom on the confines of France was, he added, not in accordance with the traditions of French foreign policy, and in self-defence France must rectify its military frontier by the acquisition of Nice and Savoy (Feb. 24th). Cavour well understood that the mention of Tuscan independence, and the qualified recognition of the Pope's rights in the Romagna, were no more than suggestions of the means of pressure by which France might enforce the cessions it required. He answered that, although Victor Emmanuel could not alienate any part of his dominions, his Government recognised the same popular rights in Savoy and Nice as in Central Italy; and accordingly that if the population of these districts declared in a legal form their desire to be incorporated with France, the King would not resist their will. Having thus consented to the necessary sacrifice, and ignoring Napoleon's reservations with regard to Tuscany and the Pope, Cavour gave orders that a popular vote should at once be taken in Tuscany, as well as in Parma, Modena, and the Romagna, on the question of union with Piedmont. The voting took place early in March, and gave an overwhelming majority in favour of union. The Pope issued the major excommunication against the authors, abettors, and agents in this work of sacrilege, and heaped curses on curses; but no one seemed the worse for them. Victor Emmanuel accepted the sovereignty that was offered to him, and on the 2nd of April the Parliament of the united kingdom assembled at Turin. It had already been announced to the inhabitants of Nice and Savoy that the King had consented to their union with France. The formality of a _plébiscite_ was enacted a few days later, and under the combined pressure of the French and Sardinian Governments the desired results were obtained. Not more than a few hundred persons protested by their vote against a transaction to which it was understood that the King had no choice but to submit. [496]

[Cavour on the cession of Nice and Savoy.]

That Victor Emmanuel had at one time been disposed to resist Cavour's surrender of the home of his race is well known. Above a year, however, had passed since the project had been accepted as the basis of the French alliance; and if, during the interval of suspense after Villafranca, the King had cherished a hope that the sacrifice might be avoided without prejudice either to the cause of Italy or to his own relations with Napoleon, Cavour had entertained no such illusions. He knew that the cession was an indispensable link in the chain of his own policy, that policy which had made it possible to defeat Austria, and which, he believed, would lead to the further consolidation of Italy. Looking to Rome, to Palermo, where the smouldering fire might at any moment blaze out, he could not yet dispense with the friendship of Napoleon, he could not provoke the one man powerful enough to shape the action of France in defiance of Clerical and of Legitimist aims. Rattazzi might claim credit for having brought Piedmont past the Treaty of Zürich without loss of territory; Cavour, in a far finer spirit, took upon himself the responsibility for the sacrifice made to France, and bade the Parliament of Italy pass judgment upon his act. The cession of the border-provinces overshadowed what would otherwise have been the brightest scene in Italian history for many generations, the meeting of the first North-Italian Parliament at Turin. Garibaldi, coming as deputy from his birthplace, Nice, uttered words of scorn and injustice against the man who had made him an alien in Italy, and quitted the Chamber. Bitterly as Cavour felt, both now and down to the end of his life, the reproaches that were levelled against him, he allowed no trace of wounded feeling, of impatience, of the sense of wrong, to escape him in the masterly speech in which he justified his policy and won for it the ratification of the Parliament. It was not until a year later, when the hand of death was almost upon him, that fierce words addressed to him face to face by Garibaldi wrung from him the impressive answer, "The act that has made this gulf between us was the most painful duty of my life. By what I have felt myself I know what Garibaldi must have felt. If he refuses me his forgiveness I cannot reproach him for it." [497]

[The cession in relation to Europe and Italy.]

The annexation of Nice and Savoy by Napoleon was seen with extreme displeasure in Europe generally, and most of all in England. It directly affected the history of Britain by the stimulus which it gave to the development of the Volunteer Forces. Owing their origin to certain demonstrations of hostility towards England made by the French army after Orsini's conspiracy and the acquittal of one of his confederates in London, the Volunteer Forces rose in the three months that followed the annexation of Nice and Savoy from seventy to a hundred and eighty thousand men. If viewed as an indication that the ruler of France would not be content with the frontiers of 1815, the acquisition of the Sub-Alpine provinces might with some reason excite alarm; on no other ground could their transfer be justly condemned. Geographical position, language, commercial interests, separated Savoy from Piedmont and connected it with France; and though in certain parts of the County of Nice the Italian character predominated, this district as a whole bore the stamp not of Piedmont or Liguria but of Provence. Since the separation from France in 1815 there had always been, both in Nice and Savoy, a considerable party which desired reunion with that country. The political and social order of the Sardinian Kingdom had from 1815 to 1848 been so backward, so reactionary, that the middle classes in the border-provinces looked wistfully to France as a land where their own grievances had been removed and their own ideals attained. The constitutional system of Victor Emmanuel, and the despotic system of Louis Napoleon had both been too recently introduced to reverse in the minds of the greater number the political tradition of the preceding thirty years. Thus if there were a few who, like Garibaldi, himself of Genoese descent though born at Nice, passionately resented separation from Italy, they found no considerable party either in Nice or in Savoy animated by the same feeling. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical sentiment of Savoy rendered its transfer to France an actual advantage to the Italian State. The Papacy had here a deeply-rooted influence. The reforms begun by Azeglio's Ministry had been steadily resisted by a Savoyard group of deputies in the interests of Rome. Cavour himself, in the prosecution of his larger plans, had always been exposed to the danger of a coalition between this ultra-Conservative party and his opponents of the other extreme. It was well that in the conflict with the Papacy, without which there could be no such thing as a Kingdom of United Italy, these influences of the Savoyard Church and Noblesse should be removed from the Parliament and the Throne. Honourable as the Savoyard party of resistance had proved themselves in Parliamentary life, loyal and faithful as they were to their sovereign, they were yet not a part of the Italian nation. Their interests were not bound up with the cause of Italian union; their leaders were not inspired with the ideal of Italian national life. The forces that threatened the future of the new State from within were too powerful for the surrender of a priest-governed and half-foreign element to be considered as a real loss.

[Naples.]

Nice and Savoy had hardly been handed over to Napoleon when Garibaldi set out from Genoa to effect the liberation of Sicily and Naples. King Ferdinand II., known to his subjects and to Western Europe as King Bomba, had died a few days before the battle of Magenta, leaving the throne to his son Francis II. In consequence of the friendship shown by Ferdinand to Russia during the Crimean War, and of his refusal to amend his tyrannical system of government, the Western Powers had in 1856 withdrawn their representatives from Naples. On the accession of Francis II. diplomatic intercourse was renewed, and Cavour, who had been at bitter enmity with Ferdinand, sought to establish relations of friendship with his son. In the war against Austria an alliance with Naples would have been of value to Sardinia as a counterpoise to Napoleon's influence, and this alliance Cavour attempted to obtain. He was, however, unsuccessful; and after the Peace of Villafranca the Neapolitan Court threw itself with ardour into schemes for the restoration of the fallen Governments and the overthrow of Piedmontese authority in the Romagna by means of a coalition with Austria and Spain and a counterrevolutionary movement in Italy itself. A rising on behalf of the fugitive Grand Duke of Tuscany was to give the signal for the march of the Neapolitan army northwards. This rising, however, was expected in vain, and the great Catholic design resulted in nothing. Baffled in its larger aims, the Bourbon Government proposed in the spring of 1860 to occupy Umbria and the Marches, in order to prevent the revolutionary movement from spreading farther into the Papal States. Against this Cavour protested, and King Francis yielded to his threat to withdraw the Sardinian ambassador from Naples. Knowing that a conspiracy existed for the restoration of the House of Murat to the Neapolitan throne, which would have given France the ascendency in Southern Italy, Cavour now renewed his demand that Francis II. should enter into alliance with Piedmont, accepting a constitutional system of government and the national Italian policy of Victor Emmanuel. But neither the summons from Turin, nor the agitation of the Muratists, nor the warnings of Great Britain that the Bourbon dynasty could only avert its fall by reform, produced any real change in the spirit of the Neapolitan Court. Ministers were removed, but the absolutist and anti-national system remained the same. Meanwhile Garibaldi was gathering his followers round him in Genoa. On the 15th of April Victor Emmanuel wrote to King Francis that unless his fatal system of policy was immediately abandoned the Piedmontese Government itself might shortly be forced to become the agent of his destruction. Even this menace proved fruitless; and after thus fairly exposing to the Court of Naples the consequence of its own stubbornness, Victor Emmanuel let loose against it the revolutionary forces of Garibaldi.

[Sicily.]

[Garibaldi starts for Sicily, May 5.]

[Garibaldi at Marsala, May 11.]

Since the campaign of 1859 insurrectionary committees had been active in the principal Sicilian towns. The old desire of the Sicilian Liberals for the independence of the island had given place, under the influence of the events of the past year, to the desire for Italian union. On the abandonment of Garibaldi's plan for the march on Rome in November, 1859, the liberation of Sicily had been suggested to him as a more feasible enterprise, and the general himself wavered in the spring of 1860 between the resumption of his Roman project and an attack upon the Bourbons of Naples from the south. The rumour spread through Sicily that Garibaldi would soon appear there at the head of his followers. On the 3rd of April an attempt at insurrection was made at Palermo. It was repressed without difficulty; and although disturbances broke out in other parts of the island, the reports which reached Garibaldi at Genoa as to the spirit and prospects of the Sicilians were so disheartening that for a while he seemed disposed to abandon the project of invasion as hopeless for the present. It was only when some of the Sicilian exiles declared that they would risk the enterprise without him that he resolved upon immediate action. On the night of the 5th of May two steamships lying in the harbour of Genoa were seized, and on these Garibaldi with his Thousand put to sea. Cavour, though he would have preferred that Sicily should remain unmolested until some progress had been made in the consolidation of the North Italian Kingdom, did not venture to restrain Garibaldi's movements, with which he was well acquainted. He required, however, that the expedition should not touch at the island of Sardinia, and gave ostensible orders to his admiral, Persano, to seize the ships of Garibaldi if they should put into any Sardinian port. Garibaldi, who had sheltered the Sardinian Government from responsibility at the outset by the fiction of a sudden capture of the two merchant-ships, continued to spare Victor Emmanuel unnecessary difficulties by avoiding the fleet which was supposed to be on the watch for him off Cagliari in Sardinia, and only interrupted his voyage by a landing at a desolate spot on the Tuscan coast in order to take up artillery and ammunition which were waiting for him there. On the 11th of May, having heard from some English merchantmen that there were no Neapolitan vessels of war at Marsala, he made for this harbour. The first of his two ships entered it in safety and disembarked her crew; the second, running on a rock, lay for some time within range of the guns of a Neapolitan war-steamer which was bearing up towards the port. But for some unknown reason the Neapolitan commander delayed opening fire, and the landing of Garibaldi's followers was during this interval completed without loss. [498]

[Garibaldi captures Palermo, May 26.]

On the following day the little army, attired in the red shirts which are worn by cattle-ranchers in South America, marched eastwards from Marsala. Bands of villagers joined them as they moved through the country, and many unexpected adherents were gained among the priests. On the third day's march Neapolitan troops were seen in position at Calatafimi. They were attacked by Garibaldi, and, though far superior in number, were put to the rout. The moral effects of this first victory were very great. The Neapolitan commander retired into Palermo, leaving Garibaldi master of the western portion of the island. Insurrection spread towards the interior; the revolutionary party at Palermo itself regained its courage and prepared to co-operate with Garibaldi on his approach. On nearing the city Garibaldi determined that he could not risk a direct assault upon the forces which occupied it. He resolved, if possible, to lure part of the defenders into the mountains, and during their absence to throw himself into the city and to trust to the energy of its inhabitants to maintain himself there. This strategy succeeded. While the officer in command of some of the Neapolitan battalions, tempted by an easy victory over the ill-disciplined Sicilian bands opposed to him, pursued his beaten enemy into the mountains, Garibaldi with the best of his troops fought his way into Palermo on the night of May 26th. Fighting continued in the streets during the next two days, and the cannon of the forts and of the Neapolitan vessels in harbour ineffectually bombarded the city. On the 30th, at the moment when the absent battalions were coming again into sight, an armistice was signed on board the British man-of-war _Hannibal_. The Neapolitan commander gave up to Garibaldi the bank and public buildings, and withdrew into the forts outside the town. But the Government at Naples was now becoming thoroughly alarmed; and considering Palermo as lost, it directed the troops to be shipped to Messina and to Naples itself. Garibaldi was thus left in undisputed possession of the Sicilian capital. He remained there for nearly two months, assuming the government of Sicily as Dictator in the name of Victor Emmanuel, appointing Ministers, and levying taxes. Heavy reinforcements reached him from Italy. The Neapolitans, driven from the interior as well as from the towns occupied by the invader, now held only the north-eastern extremity of the island. On the 20th of July Garibaldi, operating both by land and sea, attacked and defeated them at Milazzo on the northern coast. The result of this victory was that Messina itself, with the exception of the citadel, was evacuated by the Neapolitans without resistance. Garibaldi, whose troops now numbered eighteen thousand, was master of the island from sea to sea, and could with confidence look forward to the overthrow of Bourbon authority on the Italian mainland.

[The Party of Action.]

During Garibaldi's stay at Palermo the antagonism between the two political creeds which severed those whose devotion to Italy was the strongest came clearly into view. This antagonism stood embodied in its extreme form in the contrast between Mazzini and Cavour. Mazzini, handling moral and political conceptions with something of the independence of a mathematician, laid it down as the first duty of the Italian nation to possess itself of Rome and Venice, regardless of difficulties that might be raised from without. By conviction he desired that Italy should be a Republic, though under certain conditions he might be willing to tolerate the monarchy of Victor Emmanuel. Cavour, accurately observing the play of political forces in Europe, conscious above all of the strength of those ties which still bound Napoleon to the clerical cause, knew that there were limits which Italy could not at present pass without ruin. The centre of Mazzini's hopes, an advance upon Rome itself, he knew to be an act of self-destruction for Italy, and this advance he was resolved at all costs to prevent. Cavour had not hindered the expedition to Sicily; he had not considered it likely to embroil Italy with its ally; but neither had he been the author of this enterprise. The liberation of Sicily might be deemed the work rather of the school of Mazzini than of Cavour. Garibaldi indeed was personally loyal to Victor Emmanuel; but around him there were men who, if not Republicans, were at least disposed to make the grant of Sicily to Victor Emmanuel conditional upon the king's fulfilling the will of the so-called Party of Action, and consenting to an attack upon Rome. Under the influence of these politicians Garibaldi, in reply to a deputation expressing to him the desire of the Sicilians for union with the Kingdom of Victor Emmanuel, declared that he had come to fight not for Sicily alone but for all Italy, and that if the annexation of Sicily was to take place before the union of Italy was assured, he must withdraw his hand from the work and retire. The effect produced by these words of Garibaldi was so serious that the Ministers whom he had placed in office resigned. Garibaldi endeavoured to substitute for them men more agreeable to the Party of Action, but a demonstration in Palermo itself forced him to nominate Sicilians in favour of immediate annexation. The public opinion of the island was hostile to Republicanism and to the friends of Mazzini; nor could the prevailing anarchy long continue without danger of a reactionary movement. Garibaldi himself possessed no glimmer of administrative faculty. After weeks of confusion and misgovernment he saw the necessity of accepting direction from Turin, and consented to recognise as Pro-Dictator of the island a nominee of Cavour, the Piedmontese Depretis. Under the influence of Depretis a commencement was made in the work of political and social reorganisation. [499]

[Cavour's policy with regard to Naples.]

[Garibaldi crosses to the mainland, Aug. 19.]

Cavour, during Garibaldi's preparation for his descent upon Sicily and until the capture of Palermo, had affected to disavow and condemn the enterprise as one undertaken by individuals in spite of the Government, and at their own risk. The Piedmontese ambassador was still at Naples as the representative of a friendly Court; and in reply to the reproaches of Germany and Russia, Cavour alleged that the title of Dictator of Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel had been assumed by Garibaldi without the knowledge or consent of his sovereign. But whatever might be said to Foreign Powers, Cavour, from the time of the capture of Palermo, recognised that the hour had come for further steps towards Italian union; and, without committing himself to any definite line of action, he began already to contemplate the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty at Naples. It was in vain that King Francis now released his political prisoners, declared the Constitution of 1848 in force, and tendered to Piedmont the alliance which he had before refused. Cavour, in reply to his overtures, stated that he could not on his own authority pledge Piedmont to the support of a dynasty now almost in the agonies of dissolution, and that the matter must await the meeting of Parliament at Turin. Thus far the way had not been absolutely closed to a reconciliation between the two Courts; but after the victory of Garibaldi at Milazzo and the evacuation of Messina at the end of July Cavour cast aside all hesitation and reserve. He appears to have thought a renewal of the war with Austria probable, and now strained every nerve to become master of Naples and its fleet before Austria could take the field. He ordered Admiral Persano to leave two ships of war to cover Garibaldi's passage to the mainland, and with one ship to proceed to Naples himself, and there excite insurrection and win over the Neapolitan fleet to the flag of Victor Emmanuel. Persano reached Naples on the 3rd of August, and on the next day the negotiations between the two Courts were broken off. On the 19th Garibaldi crossed from Sicily to the mainland. His march upon the capital was one unbroken triumph.

[Persano and Villamarina at Naples.]

[Departure of King Francis, Sept. 6.]

[Garibaldi enters Naples, Sept. 7.]

It was the hope of Cavour that before Garibaldi could reach Naples a popular movement in the city itself would force the King to take flight, so that Garibaldi on his arrival would find the machinery of government, as well as the command of the fleet and the army, already in the hands of Victor Emmanuel's representatives. If war with Austria was really impending, incalculable mischief might be caused by the existence of a semi-independent Government at Naples, reckless, in its enthusiasm for the march on Rome, of the effect which its acts might produce on the French alliance. In any case the control of Italian affairs could but half belong to the King and his Minister if Garibaldi, in the full glory of his unparalleled exploits, should add the Dictatorship of Naples to the Dictatorship of Sicily. Accordingly Cavour plied every art to accelerate the inevitable revolution. Persano and the Sardinian ambassador, Villamarina, had their confederates in the Bourbon Ministry and in the Royal Family itself. But their efforts to drive King Francis from Naples, and to establish the authority of Victor Emmanuel before Garibaldi's arrival, were baffled partly by the tenacity of the King and Queen, partly by the opposition of the committees of the Party of Action, who were determined that power should fall into no hands but those of Garibaldi himself. It was not till Garibaldi had reached Salerno, and the Bourbon generals had one after another declined to undertake the responsibility of command in a battle against him, that Francis resolved on flight. It was now feared that he might induce the fleet to sail with him, and even that he might hand it over to the Austrians. The crews, it was believed, were willing to follow the King; the officers, though inclined to the Italian cause, would be powerless to prevent them. There was not an hour to lose. On the night of September 5th, after the King's intention to quit the capital had become known, Persano and Villamarina disguised themselves, and in company with their partisans mingled with the crews of the fleet, whom they induced by bribes and persuasion to empty the boilers and to cripple the engines of their ships. When, on the 6th, King Francis, having announced his intention to spare the capital bloodshed, went on board a mail steamer and quitted the harbour, accompanied by the ambassadors of Austria, Prussia, and Spain, only one vessel of the fleet of followed him. An urgent summons was sent to Garibaldi, whose presence was now desired by all parties alike in order to prevent the outbreak of disorders. Leaving his troops at Salerno, Garibaldi came by railroad to Naples on the morning of the 7th, escorted only by some of his staff. The forts were still garrisoned by eight thousand of the Bourbon troops, but all idea of resistance had been abandoned, and Garibaldi drove fearlessly through the city in the midst of joyous crowds. His first act as Dictator was to declare the ships of war belonging to the State of the Two Sicilies united to those of King Victor Emmanuel under Admiral Persano's command. Before sunset the flag of Italy was hoisted by the Neapolitan fleet. The army was not to be so easily incorporated with the national forces. King Francis, after abandoning the idea of a battle between Naples and Salerno, had ordered the mass of his troops to retire upon Capua in order to make a final struggle on the line of the Volturno, and this order had been obeyed. [500]

[The Piedmontese army enters Umbria and the Marches. Sept. 11.]

[Fall of Ancona, Sept. 25.]

As soon as it had become evident that the entry of Garibaldi into Naples could not be anticipated by the establishment of Victor Emmanuel's own authority, Cavour recognised that bold and aggressive action on the part of the National Government was now necessity. Garibaldi made no secret or his intention to carry the Italian arms to Rome. The time was past when the national movement could be checked at the frontiers of Naples and Tuscany. It remained only for Cavour to throw the King's own troops into the Papal States before Garibaldi could move from Naples, and, while winning for Italy the last foot of ground that could be won without an actual conflict with France, to stop short at those limits where the soldiers of Napoleon would certainly meet an invader with their fire. The Pope was still in possession of the Marches, of Umbria, and of the territory between the Apennines and the coast from Orvieto to Terracina. Cavour had good reason to believe that Napoleon would not strike on behalf of the Temporal Power until this last narrow district was menaced. He resolved to seize upon the Marches and Umbria, and to brave the consequences. On the day of Garibaldi's entry into Naples a despatch was sent by Cavour to the Papal Government requiring, in the name of Victor Emmanuel, the disbandment of the foreign mercenaries who in the previous spring had plundered Perugia, and whose presence was a continued menace to the peace of Italy. The announcement now made by Napoleon that he must break off diplomatic relations with the Sardinian Government in case of the invasion of the Papal States produced no effect. Cavour replied that by no other means could he prevent revolution from mastering all Italy, and on the 10th of September the French ambassador quitted Turin. Without waiting for Antonelli's answer to his ultimatum, Cavour ordered the King's troops to cross the frontier. The Papal army was commanded by Lamoricière, a French general who had gained some reputation in Algiers; but the resistance offered to the Piedmontese was unexpectedly feeble. The column which entered Umbria reached the southern limit without encountering any serious opposition except from the Irish garrison of Spoleto. In the Marches, where Lamoricière had a considerable force at his disposal, the dispersion of the Papal troops and the incapacity shown in their command brought the campaign to a rapid and inglorious end. The main body of the defenders was routed on the Musone, near Loreto, on the 19th of September. Other divisions surrendered, and Ancona alone remained to Lamoricière. Vigorously attacked in this fortress both by land and sea, Lamoricière surrendered after a siege of eight days. Within three weeks from Garibaldi's entry into Naples the Piedmontese army had completed the task imposed upon it, and Victor Emmanuel was master of Italy as far as the Abruzzi.

[Cavour, Garibaldi, and the Party of Action.]

Cavour's successes had not come a day too soon, for Garibaldi, since his entry into Naples, was falling more and more into the hands of the Party of Action, and, while protesting his loyalty to Victor Emmanuel, was openly announcing that he would march the Party of on Rome whether the King's Government permitted it or no. In Sicily the officials appointed by this Party were proceeding with such violence that Depretis, unable to obtain troops from Cavour, resigned his post. Garibaldi suddenly appeared at Palermo on the 11th of September, appointed a new Pro-Dictator, and repeated to the Sicilians that their union with the Kingdom of Victor Emmanuel must be postponed until all members of the Italian family were free. But even the personal presence and the angry words of Garibaldi were powerless to check the strong expression of Sicilian opinion in favour of immediate and unconditional annexation. His visit to Palermo was answered by the appearance of a Sicilian deputation at Turin demanding immediate union, and complaining that the island was treated by Garibaldi's officers like a conquered province. At Naples the rash and violent utterances of the Dictator were equally condemned. The Ministers whom he had himself appointed resigned. Garibaldi replaced them by others who were almost Republicans, and sent a letter to Victor Emmanuel requesting him to consent to the march upon Rome and to dismiss Cavour. It was known in Turin that at this very moment Napoleon was taking steps to increase the French force in Rome, and to garrison the whole of the territory that still remained to the Pope. Victor Emmanuel understood how to reply to Garibaldi's letter. He remained true to his Minister, and sent orders to Villamarina at Naples in case Garibaldi should proclaim the Republic to break off all relations with him and to secure the fleet. The fall of Ancona on September 28th brought a timely accession of popularity and credit to Cavour. He made the Parliament which assembled at Turin four days later arbiter in the struggle between Garibaldi and himself, and received from it an almost unanimous vote of confidence. Garibaldi would perhaps have treated lightly any resolution of Parliament which conflicted with his own opinion: he shrank from a breach with the soldier of Novara and Solferino. Now, as at other moments of danger, the character and reputation of Victor Emmanuel stood Italy in good stead. In the enthusiasm which Garibaldi's services to Italy excited in every patriotic heart, there was room for thankfulness that Italy possessed a sovereign and a statesman strong enough even to withstand its hero when his heroism endangered the national cause. [501]

[The armies on the Volturno.]

[Meeting of Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, Oct. 26.]

[Fall of Gaeta, Feb. 14, 1861.]

The King of Naples had not yet abandoned the hope that one or more of the European Powers would intervene in his behalf. The trustworthy part of his army had gathered round the fortress of Capua on the Volturno, and there were indications that Garibaldi would here meet with far more serious resistance than he had yet encountered. While he was still in Naples, his troops, which had pushed northwards, sustained a repulse at Cajazzo. Emboldened by this success, the Neapolitan army at the beginning of October assumed the offensive. It was with difficulty that Garibaldi, placing himself again at the head of his forces, drove the enemy back to Capua. But the arms of Victor Emmanuel were now thrown into the scale. Crossing the Apennines, and driving before him the weak force that was intended to bar his way at Isernia, the King descended in the rear of the Neapolitan army. The Bourbon commander, warned of his approach, moved northwards on the line of the Garigliano, leaving a garrison to defend Capua. Garibaldi followed on his track, and in the neighbourhood of Teano met King Victor Emmanuel (October 26th). The meeting is said to have been cordial on the part of the King, reserved on the part of Garibaldi, who saw in the King's suite the men by whom he had been prevented from invading the Papal States in the previous year. In spite of their common patriotism the volunteers of Garibaldi and the army of Victor Emmanuel were rival bodies, and the relations between the chiefs of each camp were strained and difficult. Garibaldi himself returned to the siege of Capua, while the King marched northwards against the retreating Neapolitans. All that was great in Garibaldi's career was now in fact accomplished. The politicians about him had attempted at Naples, as in Sicily, to postpone the union with Victor Emmanuel's monarchy, and to convoke a Southern Parliament which should fix the conditions on which annexation would be permitted; but, after discrediting the General, they had been crushed by public opinion, and a popular vote which was taken at the end of October on the question of immediate union showed the majority in favour of this course to be overwhelming. After the surrender of Capua on the 2nd of November, Victor Emmanuel made his entry into Naples. Garibaldi, whose request for the Lieutenancy of Southern Italy for the space of a year with full powers was refused by the King, [502] declined all minor honours and rewards, and departed to his home, still filled with resentment against Cavour, and promising his soldiers that he would return in the spring and lead them to Rome and Venice. The reduction of Gaeta, where King Francis II. had taken refuge, and of the citadel of Messina, formed the last act of the war. The French fleet for some time prevented the Sardinians from operating against Gaeta from the sea, and the siege in consequence made slow progress. It was not until the middle of January, 1861, that Napoleon permitted the French admiral to quit his station. The bombardment was now opened both by land and sea, and after a brave resistance Gaeta surrendered on the 14th of February. King Francis and his young Queen, a sister of the Empress of Austria, were conveyed in a French steamer to the Papal States, and there began their life-long exile. The citadel of Messina, commanded by one of the few Neapolitan officers who showed any soldierly spirit, maintained its obstinate defence for a month after the Bourbon flag had disappeared from the mainland.

[Cavour's policy with regard to Rome and Venice.]

[The Free Church in the Free State.]

Thus in the spring of 1861, within two years from the outbreak of war with Austria, Italy with the exception of Rome and Venice was united under Victor Emmanuel. Of all the European Powers, Great Britain alone watched the creation of the new Italian Kingdom with complete sympathy and approval. Austria, though it had made peace at Zürich, declined to renew diplomatic intercourse with Sardinia, and protested against the assumption by Victor Emmanuel of the title of King of Italy. Russia, the ancient patron of the Neapolitan Bourbons, declared that geographical conditions alone prevented its intervention against their despoilers. Prussia, though under a new sovereign, had not yet completely severed the ties which bound it to Austria. Nevertheless, in spite of wide political ill-will, and of the passionate hostility of the clerical party throughout Europe, there was little probability that the work of the Italian people would be overthrown by external force. The problem which faced Victor Emmanuel's Government was not so much the frustration of reactionary designs from without as the determination of the true line of policy to be followed in regard to Rome and Venice. There were few who, like Azeglio, held that Rome might be permanently left outside the Italian Kingdom; there were none who held this of Venice. Garibaldi might be mad enough to hope for victory in a campaign against Austria and against France at the head of such a troop as he himself could muster; Cavour would have deserved ill of his country if he had for one moment countenanced the belief that the force which had overthrown the Neapolitan Bourbons could with success, or with impunity to Italy, measure itself against the defenders of Venetia or of Rome. Yet the mind of Cavour was not one which could rest in mere passive expectancy as to the future, or in mere condemnation of the unwise schemes of others. His intelligence, so luminous, so penetrating, that in its utterances we seem at times to be listening to the very spirit of the age, ranged over wide fields of moral and of spiritual interests in its forecast of the future of Italy, and spent its last force in one of those prophetic delineations whose breadth and power the world can feel, though a later time alone can judge of their correspondence with the destined course of history. Venice was less to Europe than Rome; its transfer to Italy would, Cavour believed, be effected either by arms or negotiations so soon as the German race should find a really national Government, and refuse the service which had hitherto been exacted from it for the maintenance of Austrian interests. It was to Prussia, as the representative of nationality in Germany, that Cavour looked as the natural ally of Italy in the vindication of that part of the national inheritance which still lay under the dominion of the Hapsburg. Rome, unlike Venice, was not only defended by foreign arms, it was the seat of a Power whose empire over the mind of man was not the sport of military or political vicissitudes. Circumstances might cause France to relax its grasp on Rome, but it was not to such an accident that Cavour looked for the incorporation of Rome with Italy. He conceived that the time would arrive when the Catholic world would recognise that the Church would best fulfil its task in complete separation from temporal power. Rome would then assume its natural position as the centre of the Italian State; the Church would be the noblest friend, not the misjudging enemy, of the Italian national monarchy. Cavour's own religious beliefs were perhaps less simple than he chose to represent them. Occupying himself, however, with institutions, not with dogmas, he regarded the Church in profound earnestness as a humanising and elevating power. He valued its independence so highly that even on the suppression of the Piedmontese monasteries he had refused to give to the State the administration of the revenue arising from the sale of their lands, and had formed this into a fund belonging to the Church itself, in order that the clergy might not become salaried officers of the State. Human freedom was the principle in which he trusted; and looking upon the Church as the greatest association formed by men, he believed that here too the rule of freedom, of the absence of State-regulation, would in the end best serve man's highest interests. With the passing away of the Pope's temporal power, Cavour imagined that the constitution of the Church itself would become more democratic, more responsive to the movement of the modern world. His own effort in ecclesiastical reform had been to improve the condition and to promote the independence of the lower clergy. He had hoped that each step in their moral and material progress would make them more national at heart; and though this hope had been but partially fulfilled, Cavour had never ceased to cherish the ideal of a national Church which, while recognising its Head in Rome, should cordially and without reserve accept the friendship of the Italian State. [503]

[Death of Cavour, June 6, 1861.]

[Free Church in Free State.]

It was in the exposition of these principles, in the enforcement of the common moral interest of Italian nationality and the Catholic Church, that Cavour gave his last counsels to the Italian Parliament. He was not himself to lead the nation farther towards the Promised Land. The immense exertions which he had maintained during the last three years, the indignation and anxiety caused to him by Garibaldi's attacks, produced an illness which Cavour's own careless habits of life and the unskilfulness of his doctors rendered fatal. With dying lips he repeated to those about him the words in which he had summed up his policy in the Italian Parliament: "A free Church in a free State." [504] Other Catholic lands had adjusted by Concordats with the Papacy the conflicting claims of temporal and spiritual authority in such matters as the appointment of bishops, the regulation of schools, the family-rights of persons married without ecclesiastical form. Cavour appears to have thought that in Italy, where the whole nation was in a sense Catholic, the Church might as safely and as easily be left to manage its own affairs as in the United States, where the Catholic community is only one among many religious societies. His optimism, his sanguine and large-hearted tolerance, was never more strikingly shown than in this fidelity to the principle of liberty, even in the case of those who for the time declined all reconciliation with the Italian State. Whether Cavour's ideal was an impracticable fancy a later age will decide. The ascendency within the Church of Rome would seem as yet to have rested with the elements most opposed to the spirit of the time, most obstinately bent on setting faith and reason in irreconcilable enmity. In place of that democratic movement within the hierarchy and the priesthood which Cavour anticipated, absolutism has won a new crown in the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. Catholic dogma has remained impervious to the solvents which during the last thirty years have operated with perceptible success on the theology of Protestant lands. Each conquest made in the world of thought and knowledge is still noted as the next appropriate object of denunciation by the Vatican. Nevertheless the cautious spirit will be slow to conclude that hopes like those of Cavour were wholly vain. A single generation may see but little of the seed-time, nothing of the harvests that are yet to enrich mankind. And even if all wider interests be left out of view, enough remains to justify Cavour's policy of respect for the independence of the Church in the fact that Italy during the thirty years succeeding the establishment of its union has remained free from civil war. Cavour was wont to refer to the Constitution which the French National Assembly imposed upon the clergy in 1790 as the type of erroneous legislation. Had his own policy and that of his successors not been animated by a wiser spirit; had the Government of Italy, after overthrowing the Pope's temporal sovereignty, sought enemies among the rural priesthood and their congregations, the provinces added to the Italian Kingdom by Garibaldi would hardly have been maintained by the House of Savoy without a second and severer struggle. Between the ideal Italy which filled the thoughts not only of Mazzini but of some of the best English minds of that time--the land of immemorial greatness, touched once more by the divine hand and advancing from strength to strength as the intellectual and moral pioneer among nations--between this ideal and the somewhat hard and commonplace realities of the Italy of to-day there is indeed little enough resemblance. Poverty, the pressure of inordinate taxation, the physical and moral habits inherited from centuries of evil government,--all these have darkened in no common measure the conditions from which Italian national life has to be built up. If in spite of overwhelming difficulties each crisis has hitherto been surmounted; if, with all that is faulty and infirm, the omens for the future of Italy are still favourable, one source of its good fortune has been the impress given to its ecclesiastical policy by the great statesman to whom above all other men it owes the accomplishment of its union, and who, while claiming for Italy the whole of its national inheritance, yet determined to inflict no needless wound upon the conscience of Rome.