Chapter XVII: Italy in the Eighteenth Century (3)

In the meantime, the new position of matters altered Bonaparte’s views as to the organisation of upper Italy. The inhabitants of the Cispadane Republic, whose constitution, though framed, had never been formally approved, were easily induced to accept a plan submitted to them, for uniting all the free provinces of the north into one powerful state; and, on the 30th of June, 1797, was announced the formation of the new commonwealth, which was named the Cisalpine Republic. A proclamation, signed by Bonaparte, declared that the French Republic had succeeded by conquest to the possession of that Italian territory formerly held by the house of Austria and other powers; but that, relinquishing its claims, it pronounced the new state independent, and, convinced equally of the blessings of liberty and the horrors of revolution, bestowed upon it its own constitution, “the fruit of the experience of the most enlightened nation in the world.” The prescribed polity accordingly bestowed the right of citizenship on all men born and residing in the state (except beggars or vagabonds), who should have attained the age of twenty-one, and demanded inscription on the roll. The active franchise was vested in assemblies elective and primary, the executive in a directory of five members, and the making of the laws, with other deliberative functions, in a legislative body and council of ancients--all in close imitation of the French constitution of 1795. Napoleon, as usual, reserved to himself the power of naming, for the first time, the members of the Directory and of both councils. That the choice of these bodies, as well as of such functionaries as were to be appointed by them, would fall on persons zealous in the republican cause, was a thing unavoidable as well as proper; but it was universally admitted that the selection was, with very few exceptions, exceedingly judicious. The president and first director was the ex-duke Serbelloni, who did not long remain in active life; and three of the other directors, men both able and honest, were Alessandri a nobleman of Bergamo, Moscati a physician, and Paradisi a distinguished mathematician. Count Porro of Milan was minister of police; Luosi, a lawyer of Mirandola, was minister of justice; and the secretary of the Directory was Sommariva, a retired advocate of Lodi, who has since been so well known in Paris for his patronage of the fine arts. In the committee who framed the constitution, we find the names of Mascheroni the poet and man of science, and of Melzi d’Eril, whose talents, integrity, and independence were afterwards well proved in a higher sphere. Melzi was a noble Milanese of Spanish extraction, and uncle to Palafox, the defender of Saragossa.

The republic at first embraced the Austrian duchy of Milan, the Venetian provinces of Bergamo, Brescia, and Polesine, the Modenese principalities of Modena, Reggio, Mirandola, and Massa-Carrara, and the three papal legations of Ferrara. Bologna, and Romagna. In the following autumn the province of Mantua was incorporated with it. About the same time the Alpine district of the Valtelline, including Chiavenna and Bormio, was claimed as a dependency by the Grisons, but denied its subjection. Bonaparte, chosen arbiter, adjudged all the disputed territories to be independent, upon which their inhabitants offered themselves, and were received, as members of the Cisalpine Republic.

[Sidenote: [1797-1798 A.D.]]

The aristocracy of Genoa did not long survive that of Venice. Internal factions were quieted by a convention in June, 1797, in which the principle of democracy was recognised, and a provisional government named by the French commander-in-chief. The defeated nobles, entering into alliance with a few unscrupulous ministers of the church, were able to convince the populace that their foreign friends wished to destroy the ancient faith; and it is said that, for the benefit of the better educated class, there was printed a falsified copy of the proposed constitution, containing an article which declared the Catholic religion to be abolished in the state. In September several thousand armed peasants attacked the city, but were beaten with great slaughter by General Duphot, at the head of the national guards and French troops; and, on the 2nd of December, there was publicly laid before the people, and approved, a constitution of the same sort as the Cisalpine, under which the Genoese state was styled the Ligurian Republic.

The fate of Venice had been already settled. Its interests formed no part of those difficulties which made the negotiations of the autumn so stormy; and on the 17th of October, 1797, the treaty of Campo-Formio established peace definitively between France and Austria, to which latter the island-city was given up without reserve or conditions. The fleets of the Directory seized the Ionian Islands, the Austrians occupied the mainland, and on the 18th of January, 1798, the French troops, in Venice since the preceding spring, evacuated it, and admitted the soldiers of the emperor.

Though Pius VI still retained his western and southeastern provinces, he was about to lose these also. His subjects were now universally infected with the prevalent love of change; Urbino, Macerata, and other places, repeatedly declared themselves republican and independent; and the Directory watched but for a plausible pretence to strike the last blow. In December, 1797, a quarrel between some of the French partisans in Rome and the papal soldiery produced a riot, in the course of which the democratic party fled for refuge to the Corsini palace, occupied by Joseph Bonaparte, the ambassador of France. The military pursued them, and in the confusion General Duphot was shot upon the staircase. The Parisian government exclaimed against this violation of public law, recapitulated all the offences already committed by the papal court, refused to accept its apologies, and in February, 1798, an army under Berthier occupied its capital. Their general demanded that the pope should resign his temporal sovereignty, retaining his universal bishopric, and receiving a large pension. Pius, obstinately refusing, was carried into Tuscany, and thence into France, where he died. The nobles and cardinals were plundered; and though the people at large were better treated, yet, with the characteristic fickleness of their race, they attempted in the Trastevere a revolt, which was not quelled without much bloodshed. The French soldiers and subalterns themselves, not only defrauded of their pay but disgusted by the rapine of the superior officers and commissaries, mutinied both in Rome and Mantua; and General Masséna, the worst offender, found it prudent to resign his command.

On the 20th of March, 1798, the constitution of the Roman or Tiberine Republic was formally proclaimed. Like the rest, it was a servile copy from that of the French, which, however, it was thought necessary in this instance to disguise under classical names. The state was at first composed of the Agro Romano, with the Patrimony (_Patrimonium Petri_), Sabina, Umbria, the territories of Orvieto, Perugia, Macerata, Camerino, and Fermo; but the March of Ancona, which had been temporarily formed into a separate commonwealth, was soon added to it.

_The Expulsion of the French from Italy (1798-1799 A.D.)_

[Sidenote: [1798-1799 A.D.]]

The years 1798 and 1799 formed a strong contrast to those which immediately preceded them. Within and without, in finance, in diplomacy, and in war, France was alike unfortunate. In the beginning of this period her champion Bonaparte sailed for Egypt with his Italian army; and the fields where these brave men had gained their laurels were now to be the scene of repeated and disastrous defeats, inflicted upon those who attempted to retain their conquests.

The French owed this result in some measure to their own misconduct; for, little as the Italians were able to influence permanently the destiny of their native land, the resentment which was kindled throughout the country by the behaviour of the foreigners, aided materially in precipitating their second change of masters. The policy pursued systematically by the French Republic towards those new commonwealths, which she professed to regard as her independent allies, would have been insufferably irritating even though it had been administered by agents prudent and honourable. Each state was obliged not only to receive a large body of French soldiers, but to defray the expenses of their subsistence. The Cisalpine Republic, by a treaty which its legislative councils long refused to ratify, was compelled to admit an army of twenty-five thousand men, and to pay annually for its support eighteen millions of francs; even its own native troops were placed under the command of the French generals; the members of its administration were forcibly displaced if, like Moscati and Paradisi, they refused to obey orders transmitted from Paris; and some of the most patriotic Lombards, such as Baron Custodi and the poet Fantoni, were imprisoned for that opposition which the foreign rulers called incivism. The constitution itself soon gave way; for, on the last day of August, 1798, an irregular meeting of the councils substituted for it a new one, dictated by Trouvé the French envoy at Milan; and his plan again made room for other changes, enforced by his successor the notorious Fouché, and by Fouché’s successor Rivaud. The opposition party in Paris remonstrated in vain; and the Lombards began to hate equally the French nation, and those of themselves who were unfortunate enough to hold places of authority. A few honest patriots, headed by General Lahoz of Mantua, and the Cremonese Birago, who had been minister at war, organised a secret society for establishing Italian independence; and in the Ligurian and Roman states a similar spirit was rapidly spreading, although it worked less strongly. There, indeed, the grievances were not of so outrageous a kind, and consisted mainly in the extortions and oppressions practised incessantly by the generals and agents of the Directory, than which no government on earth had ever servants more shamefully dishonest.

But the French Republic, before losing its hold of Italy, had the fortune for a short time to possess the whole peninsula. The sovereigns of continental Europe, having lost sight of Napoleon, began to recover courage; and no sooner did the intelligence arrive that Nelson had destroyed the enemy’s fleet at Abukir, than a new league was formed, in which Italy was made one of the principal objects. The first move was made, imprudently and prematurely, by the king of Naples, or rather by his queen and her advisers, who, raising an army of eighty thousand men, invaded the Roman territories. In November, 1798, they seized the capital, where their soldiers behaved with an insolent cruelty which made the citizens, although heartily sick of the French, wish fervently to have them back again. The Austrian general Mack, who had been placed at the head of the Neapolitan troops, showed on a small scale that incapacity which afterwards more signally disgraced him; his soldiers were undisciplined, indolent, and lukewarm; and Championnet, reconquering the papal provinces with a French army not half so large as that of his adversary, pursued him southward, and, almost without striking a blow, became master of the kingdom of Naples.

The only resistance really formidable was offered when the republican troops approached the metropolis. The weak king had already fled, and, embarking on board the English fleet, crossed into Sicily. The peasantry hung on the rear of the invaders, and massacred stragglers; and the _lazzaroni_, that wild race who formed in those days so large a proportion of the populace, rose in fury on the report that a convention was concluded by the governor Prince Pignatelli. The fierce rabble filled the streets, howling acclamations to the king, the holy Catholic faith, and their tutelary saint Januarius; they drove out the regency, butchered the suspected democrats, and, with arms, though without either discipline or officers, poured out to meet the enemy on the plains. The French cannon mowed them down like grass; but for three whole days they again and again returned to meet the charge, and several thousands of them fell before they gave way. The wrecks of this irrationally brave multitude next defended the city, which the assailants had to gain street by street. Championnet, accompanied by Faypoult, the commissioner of the Directory, took formal possession of Naples, divided all the mainland provinces into departments, and formed them into one state, called the Parthenopean Republic. A commission of citizens was appointed to prepare a constitution, in which the chief part of the task was performed by Mario Pagano. The plan which was finally approved was in substance the same as the other Italian charters; but its author had added to the ordinary features two original ones--a tribunal of five censors, whose functions as correctors of vice were not likely to do much good, and an ephorate or court of supreme revision for laws and magistracies, which promised better fruits.

The nobles in the provinces were much divided in their opinions; but many of them still fondly remembered the lessons which they had learned from Filangieri and his scholars; and the middle classes, having yet experienced no evils but those of absolute and feudal monarchy, listened with eagerness to the promises held out by the republicans. In the huge metropolis the adherents of the king were powerless; many were willing, from the usual motives, to worship the rising sun; a few lettered enthusiasts were sincere in their hopes of witnessing at length that regeneration which their country so greatly needed; and the lazzaroni themselves became submissive and well-disposed, as soon as the saints, through the agency of their accredited servants, had declared in favour of freedom and democracy.

Says Botta:[i] “Championnet understood perfectly the importance which those fiery spirits attached to their religious belief. Accordingly he placed a guard of honour at the church of St. Januarius, and sent to those who had charge of it a polite message, intimating that he should be particularly obliged if the saint would perform the usual miracle of the liquefaction of his blood. The saint did perform the miracle; and the lazzaroni hailed it with loud applause, exclaiming, that after all it was not true that the French were a godless race, as the court had wished them to think; and that now nothing should ever make them believe but that it was the will of heaven that the French should possess Naples, since in their presence the blood of the saint had melted.”

Piedmont had already fallen. Ginguené, who afterwards wrote the history of Italian literature, had failed, as ambassador at Turin, in executing with proper cunning the plans of Talleyrand; but his successor soon contrived to irritate into open resistance the new prince Charles Emmanuel, a weak, bigoted, conscientious man. General Joubert seized the province and citadel of Turin; and the king, executing on the 9th of December, 1798, a formal act of abdication of his sovereignty over the mainland, was allowed to retire into Sardinia. The provisional government named for Piedmont, among whom was the historian Botta, found it impossible to rule the impoverished and distracted country; repose was the universal wish, and a union with the all-powerful neighbour seemed the only probable means of obtaining it. Early in the ensuing spring Piedmont was organised on the model of the French Republic, as the last step but one towards a final incorporation.

There remained to be destroyed no more than two of the old Italian governments. In January, 1799, Lucca, then occupied by French troops under General Miollis, abolished its oligarchy, and assumed a directorial and democratic constitution, after the fashionable example. In March, the Directory, now assured of a fresh war with Austria, seized all the large towns in Tuscany, placed the duchy under the protection of a French commissioner, and allowed the grand-duke Ferdinand to retire to Vienna with a part of his personal property.

But a storm was now about to break upon the heads of the French in every quarter of Italy; and the year 1799 became for the grim Suvaroff that which 1796 had been for Bonaparte. In the end of March the Austrian general Bellegarde crossed the Alps, beat back the republican forces in the north, and joined the Russians, raising the allied army to a strength of sixty thousand, while its opponents in the peninsula did not amount to a third of the number. The gallant Moreau, the French commander-in-chief, had the hard task of fighting for the honour of his nation without a chance of victory; and Macdonald, the new commandant of Naples, was ordered to cut his way to his superior through the whole length of Italy; an undertaking which he accomplished with great loss but signal bravery. The allies overran the Milanese and Piedmont; and the Directory sent two new armies under Championnet and Joubert, both of which were defeated. Most of those Italians who had taken a lead in the republican governments fled into France, and those who remained behind were imprisoned and otherwise punished. The peasantry in almost every province rose and aided the allies. Naples was lost in June, and Rome immediately followed. Ancona, desperately defended by General Monnier, capitulated in October; and at the end of the year Masséna commanded, within the walls of Genoa, besieged, famished, and about to surrender, the only French troops that were left in Italy.

Although the military events of this year do not possess such importance as to deserve minute recital, yet one chapter of its history, embracing the horrible fate which befell Naples, is both painfully interesting in itself, and strikingly illustrative of the disorganised state of society in that quarter. The spectacle which was exhibited in the overgrown metropolis of that kingdom was indeed so unlike anything we should expect to witness in modern times that we endeavour to find a partial solution of the problem in the moral and statistical position of the city. We can find no parallel without reverting to the period of the Roman Empire.

The municipal constitution of Naples, whose main features have already been incidentally described, was the model for all the cities in the kingdom, except Aquila, whose polity was copied from Rome. Thefts and robberies were rare, the homicides were estimated at about forty annually, and some vices the government chose to overlook. The municipal administration, with a jurisdiction extending only over the markets and the university, belonged to the _eletti_ or representatives of the _piazze_, _seggi_, or _sedili_, of which there were six, composed exclusively of nobles. These patricians, meeting in open porticoes, several of which may still be seen in ruins, chose annually deputies in each piazza, and the deputies chose the _eletto_. A seventh piazza was formed for the _popolo_ or plebeian burghers; but care was taken that this class should have no real power. They were divided locally into twenty-nine wards, for each of which the king every year named a capitano; and the twenty-nine captains, who were held to compose the piazza of the people, appointed as the _eletto del popolo_ a citizen, not noble, suggested by the crown. The seven _eletti_, with a _syndic_ chosen by the six noble _eletti_, formed the municipal council, and met twice a week in a convent, from which the board derived its usual name of the tribunal of San Lorenzo. Many functions of the municipality were devolved upon nine deputations of citizens, chosen periodically by the patrician _piazze_.

But of the _popolo_, a very large number, said to have amounted in the end of the eighteenth century to thirty thousand or more, were known in ordinary language by the name of _lazzari_ or _lazzaroni_. These were the lowest of the inhabitants, including, of course, many who had no honest means of livelihood, but consisting mainly of those who, though they gained their bread by their labour, did not practise any sort of skilled industry. Their distinctive character, as compared with the populace of other great cities, lay in two points. First, the usual cheapness of fruits and other vegetables enabled them to subsist on the very smallest earnings; while the mildness of the climate made them, during the greater part of the year, nearly independent both of clothing and shelter. Accordingly, many of them were literally homeless, spending the day in the streets as errand-porters, fruit-sellers, day-labourers, or mere idlers, and sleeping by night on the steps of churches or beneath archways; while all of them were for a great part of their time unemployed. These circumstances produced their second peculiarity, that strong spirit of union which had at one time extended to a regular organisation. They were the only class in Italy whom the Spaniards feared; the viceroys named them in their edicts with deference, and received deputations from them to complain of grievances; and in the seventeenth century they were even allowed to meet tumultuously once a year in the piazza del Mercato, and name by acclamation their temporary chief or _capo-lazzaro_. Since the accession of the Bourbons, it is true, they were less closely banded together, and their custom of electing an annual head seems to have fallen into disuse; but we have already seen, and shall immediately discover still more dreadful proofs, that the ancient temper was not yet extinct.

We cannot fail to be struck with the likeness which this unwieldy and dangerous commonalty bore to the populace of imperial Rome; and the system which was pursued for furnishing the city with provisions was another point of close resemblance. During four hundred years every conceivable plan for preventing scarcity by restrictive laws had been tried without effect. An assize of bread and flour, fixed in 1401, was followed in 1496 by the building of public magazines, in which the _eletti_ kept a large stock of grain; and at the same time there was established a strict monopoly in favour of a prescribed number of flour-merchants and bakers. The municipality lost enormously by this system; for dearths became frequent, and the corporation then, exactly like the Roman senate and emperors, sold their corn at a heavy loss, and lowered the price of the bread. Since 1764 the city had been supplied by eighteen privileged bakers, by the macaroni-makers, and one or two subordinate crafts; these tradesmen paid rent to the government for their shops; and not only were they obliged to buy the greater part of their flour from the public granaries, but had to deposit corn of their own in large quantities, as a security for their engagements, being bound likewise to purchase this grain from the distant provinces. In the year 1782 it was ascertained from official returns that, in the nineteen years preceding, the corporation had lost 2,632,645 ducats, or about £436,000. They had spent this money without earning so much as thanks; for there was a general prejudice against their establishments, and, both at Naples and at Palermo, where there was a similar system, more than two-thirds of the people made their own bread at home, except when the price of grain rose, on which everyone flocked to the public bakehouses.

Such was the scene, and such were the principal actors, in that fearful tragedy of which we are now to be spectators.

Scarcely had the Parthenopean Republic been proclaimed when the ferocious cardinal Ruffo landed at Reggio, bringing with him from Sicily a patent as royal vicar. In Calabria, and the other southern provinces, he soon organised numerous tumultuary hordes, several of whose captains were the most practised robbers, a few bands being commanded by military subalterns, and some by parish priests. Proni, one of the leaders, was a convicted assassin; De’ Cesari was a notorious highwayman, as was Michele Pezzo, better known by the name of Fra Diavolo, or Friar Beelzebub; and Mammone Gaetano, a miller of Sora, was the worst monster of all. The brigands crowded to serve under their favourite captains; many old soldiers enlisted, and the peasants, aroused by their clergymen, joined in thousands, and quickly learned the trade of murder. The French despatched against them General Duhesme, who was accompanied by a young Neapolitan, Ettore Caraffa, count of Ruvo, a man every way worthy to be pitted against the cardinal and his associates. The two parties swept over the kingdom like a plague, from Reggio to the mountains of the ulterior Abruzzo; and the war, if it deserves the name, soon became on both sides a struggle of revenge and extermination. Prisoners were put to the torture; villages and towns were burned, and their inhabitants massacred; Caraffa had the barbarous satisfaction of exterminating his rebellious vassals; and Ruffo’s followers, enamoured of bloodshed and pillage, speedily ceased to ask whether their victims were republicans or royalists.

The cardinal, soon reducing the southern districts, advanced upon Naples; and the French, unable to cope with him, evacuated the city, leaving but weak garrisons in the three castles. The republican government lost authority at once, and the legislative councils were insulted in their halls by bands of armed ruffians. No plan of defence seems to have been matured, although the leading men did all they could to inspirit the people. In the theatres, which continued open, Alfieri’s tragedies were received with shouts, and interrupted by vehement addresses from persons in the crowd; friars preached freedom and resistance in the churches and on the streets; and the superstitious _lazzaroni_ were for a time kept in check, by seeing the saints anew manifest their favour to the revolution.[22] The few native troops which still were under arms were sent out and defeated in the plain; and, when the royalists approached, abject terror alternated with the resolution of despair. Most members of the councils and administration retired into the lower forts, the Castel dell’Ovo and Castelnuovo.

There were in Naples about two thousand Calabrese, men of all ranks, nobles, priests, and peasants, driven from their homes by Ruffo’s hordes. They alone were firm. A part of them took up their post in the city; the rest, unprovided with artillery, marched out and garrisoned the castle of Viviena, beyond the bridge of the Maddalena. The royalists surrounded them, their heavy guns battered down the walls of the fort, and the assailants entered by storm. The republicans fought like hungry tigers, not a man surrendered or fled; and, when all but a handful had fallen, Antonio Toscani, a priest of Cosenza, who commanded this little remnant, threw a match into the powder-magazine beside him, and perished in the common destruction of friends and enemies. The streets were for a time defended by the remaining Calabrese, while Prince Caraccioli, the king’s admiral, who had joined the popular party, kept up a fire on the royalists from a few small vessels in the harbour; but a body of the _lazzaroni_ suddenly attacked the republicans in the rear, their ranks were broken, and the city was lost. Ruffo took possession of it on the 14th of June, 1799.

Dark as are the crimes which stain the history of our race, humanity has seldom been disgraced by scenes so horrible as those which followed. Universal carnage was but one feature of the atrocity; the details are sickening, many of them utterly unfit to be told. Some republicans were strangled with designed protraction of agony; others were burned upon slow fires; the infuriated murderers danced and yelled round the piles on which their victims writhed; and it is even said that men were seen to snatch the flesh from the ashes, and greedily devour it. The _lazzaroni_, once more loyal subjects, eagerly assisted in hunting down the rebels; during two whole days the massacre was uninterrupted, and death without torture was accepted as mercy.

The two lower castles surrendered on a capitulation with the cardinal which stipulated that the republicans should, at their choice, remain unmolested in Naples or be conveyed to Toulon; and two prelates with two noblemen, who were prisoners in the forts, were consigned to Colonel Méjean, the French commandant of the Castel Sant’ Elmo, as hostages for the performance of the convention. The last incidents of this bloody tale cannot be told without extreme reluctance by any native of the British Empire; for they stain deeply one of the brightest names in the national history. While the persons protected by the treaty were preparing to embark, the English fleet under Nelson arrived, bringing the king, the minister Acton, and the ambassador Sir William Hamilton, with his wife, who was at once the queen’s confidante and the evil genius of the brave admiral. The French commandant, treacherous as well as cowardly, surrendered the castle, and gave up the hostages without making any conditions. The capitulation was declared null, although the cardinal indignantly remonstrated, and retired from the royal service on failing to procure its fulfilment. The republicans were searched for and imprisoned; and arbitrary commissions sat to try them. Under the sentences passed by such courts, in the metropolis and the provinces, four thousand persons died by the hand of the executioner.

Among them were some whose names appeared with distinction on the file of literature: Domenico Cirillo, the naturalist, who refused to beg his life; the eloquent and philosophical Mario Pagano; Lorenzo Baffi, the translator of some of the Herculanean manuscripts, who rejected poison offered to him by his friends in prison; Conforti, a learned canonist, and writer on ethics and history; Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, a woman of much talent, who had edited a democratic newspaper. Mantonè, an artillery officer, who had been the republican minister-at-war, made on his trial no defence but this, “I have capitulated.” On board one of the ships was executed the aged Admiral Caraccioli, with whose name we are but too well acquainted. Another victim, the count of Ruvo, does not inspire so much compassion, unless we are to believe, as his whole conduct leads one to suspect, that he was absolutely insane. Being sentenced to be beheaded, he insisted on dying with his eyes unbandaged, laid himself upon the block with his face uppermost, and watched steadily the descending axe. Superstitious folly closed scenes which had begun in treachery and revenge. St. Januarius, for having wrought republican miracles, was solemnly deposed by the _lazzaroni_, with the approval of the government; and in his place was substituted, as patron of the city, St. Anthony of Padua, who, through the agency of the church, had revealed a design said to have been formed by the advocates of democracy, for hanging all the loyal populace. The new protector, however, proved inefficient; and the old one was soon reinstated.

_Bonaparte Reconquers Italy_

[Sidenote: [1799-1801 A.D.]]

The fortunes of France, sunk to the lowest ebb, were about to swell again with a tide fuller than ever. While the restored sovereigns of Italy were busied in reorganising their states and punishing their revolted subjects, Paris saw the “heir of the Revolution” take possession of his inheritance. Bonaparte, having returned from the East, was master of France, and resolved to be master of Europe. He was nominated first consul under the constitution called that of the year Eight, which was proclaimed on the 26th day of December, 1799.

In May, 1800, the main body of the French army, led by Napoleon in person, effected its celebrated passage of the Great St. Bernard. The invaders, pouring from the highlands, overran Lombardy, and attacked Piedmont. The Austrian general Melas, with forty thousand men, was stationed near Alessandria, when the first consul, somewhat inferior in strength, advanced against him; and on the 14th of June the two hosts encountered each other on the bloody field of Marengo. In the evening, when the French had all but lost the battle, Desaix came up and achieved the victory at the cost of his life; the Austrians were signally defeated, and the reconquest of Italy, so far as it was judged prudent to attempt it, was already secured. Melas concluded an armistice which gave the enemy possession of Genoa, Savona, and Urbino, with all the strong places in Piedmont and Lombardy as far east as the Oglio. Napoleon reorganised the Cisalpine and Ligurian republics, created a provisional government in Piedmont, and returned to Paris.

Meanwhile, the old pope having died the preceding year, a conclave, which opened at Venice in March, 1800, had raised to the papal chair Cardinal Chiaramonti, a native of Cesena and bishop of Imola, who, since the annexation of his see to the Cisalpine commonwealth, had favoured liberal opinions in politics. He was allowed by all parties to return to Rome, and assume the government of the provinces which had formed the Tiberine Republic. The king of Naples was left unmolested, but Tuscany, at first given up to the Austrians, was seized in a short time by the French.

The negotiations for a lasting peace proved abortive, and a new war speedily commenced, which was chiefly waged on the northern side of the Alps, and ended in December, 1800, with Moreau’s victory over the Austrians at Hohenlinden. In the beginning of the following year, the Peace of Lunéville restored matters in northern Italy nearly to the same position which they had occupied under the Treaty of Campo-Formio; but Tuscany was erected into the kingdom of Etruria, and given to Louis, son of the duke of Parma, though the French were to retain Elba, Piombino, and the coast-garrisons. The new king’s father (whose duchy was given to France), and the grand duke of Tuscany, were to be compensated in Germany for the loss of their Italian states. The king of Naples, after invading the Roman provinces, and giving Murat the trouble of marching an army as far as Foligno to meet him, abandoned his engagements with England, and concluded an alliance with the French Republic.

Napoleon, restoring the Catholic religion in France, and endeavouring to maintain a good understanding with the court of Rome, proceeded to rearrange the republican states of Italy. According to his usual policy, however, he tried to make all his changes appear to have proceeded from the wish of the people themselves; and, through honest conviction in many cases, and selfish subserviency in many more, he was easily able to procure converts to his opinions.[f]

THE GROWING DESIRE FOR LIBERTY

If the great desire of Italy at the end of the eighteenth century was incontestably to become a nation, a desire all the more ardent because it was so recent, since it dated back only forty years, was she ready to take action and undertake her own government? It is doubtful. Not that the Italian middle-class educated in the school of French philosophers and convinced of the principles of ’89 was not thenceforth capable to assume the power, and even to obtain the adhesion of the rural masses to the new ideas, in spite of their ignorance and submission to the clergy; but because a nation cannot exist without a leader--and there was no leader. Under the successive domination of so many foreign tyrannies, all these noble towns, each of which had formerly been a small state and had astonished the world with its magnificence, had fallen, one after the other, to the rank of prefectures without moral authority and without credit. As she had borne the burden of her cosmopolitism for three centuries, Italy was now about to expiate, during a shorter period, but still severely, this hatred of all concentration which had been, since the fall of the Roman Empire, the strongest and most constant of her passions. The municipal spirit of antiquity, which had inspired all the towns of the peninsula during the whole of the Middle Ages, had been, even more than the Catholic and universal spirit of papacy, the rock on which the modern principle of national unity had been wrecked. The Ghibellines had incarnated this principle in the house of Hohenstaufen, and the Guelfs for many years in the house of Anjou, but it had been overthrown in Italy at the very moment when it was triumphing over all the rest of Europe. And hence it doubtless was that arose the incomparable lustre of Italian civilisation at the dawn of the Renaissance, that universal blossoming of literature and art even in the most humble towns where there was then more intellectual culture than in the greatest cities of Germany, of England, or even of France. But from the same cause also arose that marvellous and fruitful intensity of individual and municipal life, that phenomenon, almost unique in history, of a nation repulsing the idea of unity, similar to a nebula refusing to take form. The law of development carried into effect by the various states of Latin Europe had been the successive agglomeration of all the elements of the same or similar origin round a central nucleus, their crystallisation round a concrete sovereignty, and if the expression may be allowed, one soul in common. But Italy had systematically evaded this law of centralisation, a law not only historical but physical, which in politics as in nature is the indispensable condition of all progress. She was therefore at the end of the fifteenth century the hydra with a hundred heads. Then the hundred heads fell one after the other under the blows of the great French, German, and Spanish invasions; the nation itself had almost perished. And now that the nation had slowly formed again she sought for a head in vain. If she wished to live, and she wished it with invincible passion, she in turn must realise what all the other nations of Europe had accomplished so many centuries ago, and, forsaking her past, she must set to work to take a central sovereignty. Nationality is unity, and unity can only be formed round a common centre.[j]

FOOTNOTES

[21] Alcantarians, an order of Franciscan monks.

[22] “In the midst of this confusion, the customary annual procession of St. Januarius took place. Before it began, the democratic leaders sent to the keepers of the church, desiring them to pray heartily that the saint might perform the miracle. The keepers did pray heartily, and the blood bubbled up in less than two minutes. The lazzaroni shouted that St. Januarius had become a republican.”--BOTTA.[i]