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 Italy and the Unholy alliance. 
 
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Record Press. 
 
 KING VICTOR EMMANUEL. 
 
ITALY 
 
 AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 By 
 W. O. PITT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 
 LONDON: ANDREW MELROSE (LTD.) 
 
-^T3T-.C^ 
 
 !\,s-^1\^^ 
 
 j^ cF* 
 
 ^: 
 
 r 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Introductory 9 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Italy and Austria 21 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Holy Alliance 33 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Papal States 45 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Grandeur of Defeat . • . • 55 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Mazzini 65 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Garibaldi 79 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Cavour 93 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Victor Emmanuel II 105 
 
 5 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Italy and France 117 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 The Story of the Thousand. . . . 131 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 Rome at Last 145 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Italy and Great Britain . . . 157 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 The Unholy Alliance 171 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 An Industrial Revival i8r 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 Italy's Colonial Policy . . .191 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 The War in Tripoli 2o3 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 Why Italy went to War . . . 213 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 NOT long ago an American journalist 
 wrote that it was high time the 
 nations of Europe ceased disputing as to 
 who caused the war ; the thing sensible 
 people wanted to know was, who was going 
 to end it. The common sense of the obser- 
 vation does not redeem it from cynical 
 flippancy and untruth. From time imme- 
 morial the human heart has cherished the 
 belief that the just cause will eventually 
 triumph. The ideal underlying the old 
 system of trial by combat still exists to-day. 
 As a nation we rightly lay stress on the fact 
 that we have gone to war with clean hands, 
 in support of our promise to a small and 
 struggling nation oppressed by a big and 
 powerful one. We claim that our righteous 
 cause is a buckler for each of our soldiers, 
 and a comfort to those who mourn their 
 
 9 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 heroic dead. The same claim is made by 
 the nations that are fighting side by side 
 with us; they fight for the weak against 
 the insolently strong, for the side of right 
 against armed might. 
 
 The intervention of Italy into the con- 
 flict is obviously a potent factor — ^it may 
 well be a deciding factor — ^in the Great 
 War. 
 
 The war strength of the ItaUan Army is 
 estimated at 1,200,000 men of the first line ; 
 700,000 of the standing army, and 500,000 
 fully trained reserves. The second line, 
 known as the mobile militia, consists of 
 250,000 partially trained men of active 
 age, ranging from twenty-nine to thirty- 
 three. The territorial militia, corresponding 
 to the German Landsturm, contains roughly 
 2,000,000 men, the majority of whom have 
 been subjected to military training, and 
 who constitute a highly efficient force for 
 all purposes of home defence, guarding com- 
 munications, etc. The Italian soldiers are 
 armed with a new pattern of rifle known 
 as the Mannlicher Carcano, of -256 inch 
 calibre, with a magazine containing six 
 rounds. The approved pattern of field gun 
 is of the same type as that of France, of 
 
 10 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 75 mm. bore, quick firing, and known as 
 the Deport. 
 
 For the nine months following the out- 
 break of war every nerve was strained to 
 bring this force up to the maximum of 
 efficiency and equipment, the training and 
 organization being supervised by General 
 Cadoma, the Italian Commander-in-Chief ; 
 and also receiving the personal attention of 
 the King himself. As they recently proved 
 in the Tripohtan war, the troops of the new 
 Italian army fight with great dash and 
 precision ; and their cavalry is estimated 
 by experts to have no superior in the world. 
 
 The principal ships of the battle fleet 
 were : — 
 
 Battleships. 
 
 Com- Main 
 
 pleted; Name: Tonnage. Armour Guns; 
 
 (™-) f 12 l2-in. 
 
 1912 Dante Alighieri* 19,400 10 j^o 47-in. Q. 
 
 1914 Conte di Cavour*\ 
 
 1913 Leonardo-da- I fiS 12-in. 
 
 Vinci* h2'340 10 ii8 4.7-in.Q. 
 1 913 Giulio Cesare* .-' 
 
 1915 CaioDuilio*. .122^40 10 f 13 12-in. 
 1915 Andrea Doria* J^^'^^" ti6 6-in. Q. 
 1904 Benedetto Brin.^l ^4 12-in. 
 1904 Regina [13.214 6 j 4 8-in. Q. 
 
 Margherita ) U2 6-in. Q. 
 
 * Dreadnoughts. 
 II 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 f 2 i2-in. 
 12,425 10 |j2 8-in.Q. 
 
 1907 Regina Elena 
 
 1908 Vittorio 
 
 Emanuele 
 
 1908 Napoli . 
 
 1909 Roma 
 
 1901 A. di St. Bon .1 Mio-in. 
 
 1902 Emanuele . . V 9,645 9I ] 8 6-in. Q. 
 
 FilibertoJ t8 4.7-in. Q. 
 
 Armoured Cruisers. 
 
 1897 VettorPisani Og^QS 41-6/^^ ^"*"- Q" 
 
 1898 Carlo Alberto . J ""'^^^ *^ \6 47-in. Q. 
 
 1900 Varese . . .\ 
 
 1901 Giuseppe /i lo-in. Q. 
 
 Garibaldi > 7,294 6 j 2 8-in. Q. 
 
 1904 Francesco I [,14 6-in. Q. 
 
 Femiccio / 
 
 1909 Pisa . . . .j g^ggS .^ 
 
 1909 Amalfi . . J I f4io-in. 
 
 1910 San Giorgio .1 ( ^ 18 7.5-in. Q. 
 1910 San Marco , . I 9.»32 J 
 
 These vessels were distributed as follows : — 
 
 First Fleet. 
 Battleships. — Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, 
 
 G. Cesare. 
 Cruisers. — Garibaldi, Verese, Pemiccio. 
 Gunboats. — N. Bixio, Agordat, Coatit. 
 Torpedo-boat Destroyers. — Eight. 
 
 Second Fleet. 
 
 Battleships. — Regina Elena, V. Emanuele, Roma, 
 
 Napoli. 
 Cruisers. — ^Amalfi, San Giorgio. 
 
 12 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 Light Cruisers. — Liguria, Quarto, Marsala. 
 Torpedo-boat Destroyers. — Eight. 
 
 Torpedo Flotillas. 
 Torpedo-boat Destroyers. — Twenty. 
 High Sea Torpedo-boats. — ^Twenty-eight, with the 
 parent cruiser, Vettor Pissani. 
 
 Training Squadron. 
 Battleships. — Regina Margherita, B. Brin, E. Filiberto. 
 Cruisers. — San Marco, C. Alberto. 
 Light Cruiser. — ^Liguria. 
 
 In Reserve. 
 
 Battleship. — St. Bon. 
 
 Minelayers. — Six, 
 
 Cruiser. — ^Lombardia. 
 
 Coastal Torpedo-boats. — Fifty-six. 
 
 Submarines. — Eighteen. 
 
 Italy also maintained ships in foreign waters : The 
 cruiser Marco Polo and a gunboat in China Seas ; 
 a gunboat on the American coast ; and the cruiser 
 Piemonte and a gunboat in the Indian Ocean. 
 
 These are enormous material considera- 
 tions ; the moral consideration of Italy's 
 support is no less. Italy at first withheld 
 from a conflict in which she was bound by 
 treaty to take part with Germany and 
 Austria, had those powers been the subject 
 of armed aggression. Her preservation of 
 neutrality was, in the j&rst place, a damning 
 if silent criticism of the part played by 
 Austria and Germany in breaking the world's 
 
 13 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 peace. From neutrality Italy has passed 
 to intervention, taking up arms against 
 her former allies. It might be contended, 
 with much force, that not even a promise 
 had power to bind Italy to so monstrous a 
 cause as that adopted by the two nations 
 of Central Europe. 
 
 At the very outset of the war, however, 
 Italy laid down, with the utmost frankness, 
 the considerations upon which her actions 
 in this great world emergency would be 
 based. Her statesmen declared that all 
 their energies would be expended in con- 
 serving Italian interests, that Italy's neu- 
 trality would be preserved unless the 
 interests of Italy herself called for armed 
 intervention. 
 
 The history of Italy during the last cen- 
 tury, in which she struggled to a place 
 among the Great Powers of Europe, will 
 afford excellent reasons for this decision. 
 The people of Italy were possessed with 
 the most ardent desire for national existence 
 and constitutional government when Italy 
 was a collection of petty kingdoms and 
 duchies governed by foreign princehngs, 
 kept on their thrones by the armed tyranny 
 of an aggressive foreign power. No friendly 
 
 14 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 power actively intervened to help the ItaUan 
 people in their great struggle for unity against 
 overwhelming odds, except for its own great 
 material advantage. It stands to the credit 
 of our own coimtry that the strong moral 
 support of Great Britain was the one rock 
 upon which Italy could rest in her worst 
 time of trial ; but it was only moral support 
 and sympathy. 
 
 The genius and audacity of her great 
 statesman Cavour, who sent Italian soldiers 
 to fight side by side with French and British 
 in the Crimea, won from the powers a care- 
 less consideration of Italy's wrongs. Her 
 subsequent treatment may be gathered from 
 the pages of this book. She saw her own 
 long seaboard menaced on all sides by the 
 gradual encroachment of other nations, and 
 was powerless to resist. At last Italy was 
 driven into an alliance with her ancient and 
 natural enemy, an aUiance repugnant to 
 the sentiment and racial impulse of the 
 Italian people. Only by this method could 
 the country gain the breathing space re- 
 quired for legitimate national expansion. 
 
 That Alliance was faithfully observed in 
 all its terms by Italy, to her own disadvan- 
 tage, as shall be shown. An equally faithful 
 
 15 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 observance of its terms was demanded from 
 the other contracting parties, and it was 
 found impossible to obtain such observance. 
 The interests of Italy finally required that 
 observance of the treaty should be enforced 
 by an appeal to arms, and, on May 24, 1915, 
 Italy declared war on Austro-Hungary. It 
 was then that her frank declaration was- 
 seized upon by her quondam allies and 
 twisted into a confession of venality ; that 
 Italy was taunted with the treachery of 
 departing from her pledged word and selling 
 herself to the highest bidder. 
 
 These accusations and insults have been 
 followed by the publication of documen- 
 tary evidence, including the hitherto secret 
 clauses of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance, 
 so that the world may judge on which side 
 truth and right rest. It is shown that 
 Austria, equally with Germany, has been 
 false to her Treaty obligations, and that 
 the whole onus of blame for the breach of 
 the Triple Alliance rests with her. The 
 Italian Green Book is, in its way, as merciless 
 an exposure of Teuton trickery and bad 
 faith as our own White Book. Self-protec- 
 tion forced Italy into a war to which she 
 was impelled by sentiment, and into which 
 
 16 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 she enters with hands as clean as those of 
 the nations by the side of which she is now 
 ranged. 
 
 Italy's quarrel is with Austria, and it 
 is a quarrel that extends over a century. 
 Not a year of those hundred has not given 
 Italy some strong reason for just resent- 
 ment against Austria. For the first half 
 of the hundred years Austrian troops held 
 Italy in bondage to the worst form of tyran- 
 nical misgovernment that disfigured Europe 
 during the nineteenth century, by cruelties 
 almost too hideous for reahzation. Through- 
 out the second part of the hundred years, 
 Austria has ruled a province of Italy with 
 an iron hand, maintaining it by armed force 
 as a constant menace to the peace of Italy. 
 Italy has been made the plaything of the 
 Powers, forced in sheer self-protection into 
 an unnatural alliance with her most bitter 
 foe, and threatened on all sides by the 
 stealthy approach of her rivals to her long, 
 defenceless seaboard. 
 
 Throughout her struggle for very exist- 
 ence, Italy has been loyal to her friends, 
 wherever she could find them. She has 
 fought her way to national existence, and 
 to something like national prosperity, 
 
 17 B 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 through unexampled difficulties. Now, freed 
 from her unnatural alliance, and mindful 
 of her ancient and glorious heritage, she 
 has cast in her lot with those who are fight- 
 ing for freedom. Her first battlefield is 
 in the still unredeemed provinces of Italy, 
 her first enemy her ancient oppressor, 
 Austria. 
 
 i8 
 
ITALY AND AUSTRIA 
 
CHAPTER II 
 ITALY AND AUSTRIA 
 
 WHEN Napoleon "freed" Italy — his 
 own expression — ^he swept away a 
 whole host of little Austrian princelets to 
 the fastnesses of Central Europe. He created 
 an era of wild disturbance for the Italians, 
 erecting repubhcs, and then blotting them 
 out of existence to substitute monarchies in 
 their stead. He estabUshed the Pope more 
 firmly in his temporal power, and afterwards 
 reversed the process by aimexing the Papal 
 States and carrying off their ruler, a prisoner, 
 to Fontainebleau. He crowned himself King 
 of Italy with the iron crown of the Lom- 
 bards ; he set up first his brother, then Murat, 
 as King of Naples. 
 
 The Italians groaned at the heavy taxa- 
 tion he imposed, at the introduction of 
 French law, at the cost of the public works 
 he undertook. When he fell Italy rejoiced 
 no less than the rest of Europe, lighting bon- 
 
 21 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 fires and ringing bells to celebrate the down- 
 fall of the t37rant. There was talk of freedom 
 throughout the peninsula — ^until after the 
 Vienna Congress. Mettemich summarized 
 his work at that gathering by saying that 
 Italy was reduced to " a geographical expres- 
 sion " ; and the description was an accurate 
 one. After this lapse of time it is difficult 
 to imagine what Italy expected ; it is pain- 
 fully easy to outline what Italy got. 
 
 The Vienna Congress delivered her over 
 to Austria bound hand and foot for Austria 
 to use as she might please. Even before 
 the Congress, the procession back to Italy 
 of the dispossessed began. In 1814 the Pope 
 returned from Fontainebleau to Rome ; that 
 Pope Pius VII who had said to the Doge of 
 Venice, " There is nothing Italian left in 
 Italy except my tiara and your ducal hat." 
 He was followed by many princes, Austrians 
 and Bourbons, as soon as the Congress had 
 concluded. 
 
 Victor Emmanuel returned from Sardinia 
 to Piedmont, and added the old Republic 
 of Genoa to his kingdom. From his hiding- 
 place at Wurzburg, Ferdinand of Tuscany 
 crept back to Florence, and Francis IV re- 
 appeared at Modena. Parma was reserved 
 
 22 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 for the Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise, 
 a former consort of Napoleon. Austria had 
 reserved for herself Lombardy and Venetia, 
 two rich prizes cut out of the most fertile 
 part of Italy. 
 
 In Naples Murat, who had betrayed his 
 former master, made a stand for Italian 
 nationalism. An Austrian army was sent 
 to support Ferdinand of Bourbon, and 
 against its power he could make no stand ; 
 eventually he was captured and shot. A 
 draft of German troops was sent to help 
 Ferdinand hold his kingdom, and Austrian 
 garrisons were admitted to the strong towns 
 of the Neapolitan kingdom. 
 
 Before two years had passed Italy was 
 bitterly regretting the old French rule, with 
 its equal justice for all. The princelets 
 were mere puppets, and Metternich pulled 
 the strings that moved them from his cham- 
 ber in Vienna. The French had given as 
 well as taken ; the Austrians only existed 
 in order to exact. 
 
 Indeed, Italy had gained more from Na- 
 poleon than either the Italians or the French 
 had dreamed at the time. He had found 
 it a meek collection of fifteen small king- 
 doms, and had reduced the number to 
 
 23 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 three ; by this single act implanting in the 
 Italians the instinct for Unity. He had built 
 excellent roads and bridges, and so had 
 bridged more than rivers, for he had estab- 
 lished closer connection between men of 
 the same race who served different rulers. 
 He had swept away the complicated, unjust, 
 and varying Italian legal procedure, and 
 substituted the French code with its equal 
 justice for all, rich and poor ahke. He 
 had imposed heavy taxes, it is true, but 
 the incidence of taxation was spread equitably 
 over the whole community. He had taken 
 education out of the hands of the clerics, 
 and introduced reasonable and enlightened 
 teaching. 
 
 He was overthrown, but he left behind 
 him in Italy the germinating seeds of free- 
 dom. The leaven had begun to work in 
 Italy long before the French were driven 
 out. Men had begun to meet secretly, and 
 ask why they should submit to the rule of 
 the foreigner. They murmured at the 
 street corners of the cities of the taxes they 
 had to pay, of the wrong it was that one 
 of the oldest nations of the world should 
 so be held in thraldom. Their secret meet- 
 ings resulted in the establishment of a secret 
 
 24 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 society, the members of which called them- 
 selves the Carbonari — ^the Charcoal-burners. 
 The name and the ritual they claimed to 
 have derived from a very ancient German 
 society of Kohlen-brenner, a society with 
 poUtical aims that had existed in the eleventh 
 century. 
 
 The Carbonari first made their existence 
 known in Naples, where the protection of 
 Malghella, Murat's Minister of Police, gave 
 them a strong place. They rehed upon 
 such ceremonies as were calculated to 
 impress the superstitious and ignorant ; 
 midnight initiations with fearful oaths, and 
 a hideous symbolism of axes and blocks. 
 Their avowed object was the freedom and 
 independence of Italy ; they sought to 
 compass it by ill-concerted action on their 
 own part, and by exercising terrorism on 
 persons who were not members of their 
 society. 
 
 Austrian methods of government were 
 well calculated to encourage such con- 
 spiracy and secret plotting. Austria had 
 but one method ; the method of repression. 
 It was soon established in all parts of 
 Italy. All educated and hberal-minded men 
 were suspect for the very reason of their 
 
 25 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 qualities, and therefore were spipd upon 
 incessantly. A stringent passport system 
 was instituted everywhere, and the Press 
 was deprived of all semblance of free ex- 
 pression of opinion. The right of public 
 gathering was restricted to the very utmost 
 limit, the right of unfettered speech did 
 not exist, even in private. 
 
 The cities swarmed with police spies, 
 men of the lowest class and armed with 
 undefined powers. To counter the Car- 
 bonari, secret societies were instituted such 
 as that of the Calderai del Contrapeso — 
 Braziers of the Counterpoise. Their mem- 
 bers were the veriest assassins and robbers ; 
 the object of the society was to exterminate 
 the Carbonari by any means, murder not 
 being barred. Excesses were committed on 
 both sides, but the protection of the Courts 
 was only exercised to the detriment of the 
 Carbonari. In spite of the restrictions 
 placed upon their meetings and upon their 
 very existence, the Carbonari increased 
 surprisingly in numbers, and at the zenith 
 of the Society's power it was estimated that 
 it counted its members by hundreds of 
 thousands. 
 'Among them were many well-educated 
 26 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 men in gpod positions, who sincerely sought 
 an improvement in the government of the 
 country, and nothing else. They looked 
 across to Spain^ where a revolution in 1819 
 had been followed by the grant of a con- 
 stitution. Drawing inspiration from this 
 example, the people of Naples also demanded 
 a constitution, and backed it by a revolt, 
 in which the army joined, led by the veteran 
 General Pepe. Ferdinand of Bourbon could 
 do nothing but submit, and with apparent 
 willingness granted a constitution on the 
 Spanish lines. His ireadiness to meet the 
 wishes of his subjects he affirmed with an 
 oath, taken solemnly g.nd in public. It 
 ran : — 
 
 " Omnipotent God, who with infinite pene- 
 tration lookest into the heart and the future, 
 if I he, or if one day I should be faithless 
 to my oath, do thou at this moment anni- 
 hilate me." Within a few months he was 
 protesting before the monarchs of Austria, 
 Russia and Prussia that • the constitution 
 had been exacted from him by force, and 
 that the grant was on that account null 
 and void. 
 
 For Austria regarded the desire for a 
 constitution as the most heinous of crimes, 
 
 27 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 and a matter that demanded the instant 
 attention of the great Powers of Europe. 
 Austria made the question a pressing one, 
 because the Uberals of Piedmont, encour- 
 aged by the successes achieved in Spain 
 and Naples, were seeking a constitution in 
 the same manner. She called upon the 
 monarchs of Europe, using the curious pact 
 of the Holy Alliance, to meet and repress 
 this ItaUan striving after a measure of self- 
 government. Austrian troops were sent to 
 Naples to suppress the movement, the in- 
 famous Prince Canosa acting as agent in 
 the tyrannous work. 
 
 The first Parliament under the new Con- 
 stitution had met at Naples in 1820, and 
 on the names of those present at that meeting 
 were founded proscription lists, which ulti- 
 mately contained over 4,000 names. The 
 veriest semblance of justice now disappeared 
 from the unhappy kingdom. Men were 
 imprisoned and even executed without trial. 
 Houses were searched, and wholesale arrests 
 made without any warrant ; the right of 
 assembling was totally denied. All the 
 educational institutions were closed, and 
 terror reigned through Naples and Sicily. 
 Then Ferdinand came back to Naples, 
 
 28 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 which for the next forty years was governed 
 by police officials backed by Austrian soldiers- 
 
 In Piedmont the constitutionalists fared 
 no better. Their demand had so alarmed 
 King Victor Emmanuel that he abdicated 
 in favour of his cousin Charles Felix, who 
 appointed Charles Albert as regent in his 
 own absence. The Regent, who sympa- 
 thized with the demand of the revolting 
 army, granted a constitution, thinking that 
 the King would acquiesce. This he was far 
 from doing ; and as the Austrians were 
 already on the move, backed by an army 
 of 100,000 Russians, Charles Albert fled 
 from the kingdom, after resigning his 
 regency. The rebels were defeated at 
 Novara, and Austrian garrisons occupied 
 the fortresses of Piedmont. 
 
 Punishment followed as in Naples, though 
 not on so extended a scale . More than seventy 
 of the rebels were condemned to death, 
 but as they had all fled, the Austrians had 
 to be content with executing them in effigy. 
 Over a hundred officers were condemned 
 to the galleys, and restrictions on personal 
 liberty were intensified in Piedmont, as in 
 Naples. 
 
 So ended Italy's first bid for constitutional 
 29 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 government ; the patriots being unable to 
 make headway against the combined forces 
 of absolutism in Europe. It is necessary, 
 in order that the nature of the obstacles 
 encountered by Italian patriots may be 
 understood, to explain the nature of the 
 tie which, with the support of the Catholic 
 Church, enabled the absolute monarchs 
 of Europe to combine so readily against 
 Italian freedom. 
 
 30 
 
THE HOLY ALLIANCE 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE HOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 THE long anguish of Europe, which 
 ended with the downfall of Napoleon 
 in 1815, may fairly be regarded as the 
 century-old counterpart of the struggle in 
 which the world is now engaged. Its con- 
 clusion found many men with the belief 
 that Armageddon had been fought and the 
 era of everlasting peace was about to begin. 
 Philosophers and prelates were casting about 
 for means to ensure this desirable conclusion 
 to an exhausting series of wars, and a large 
 number of such thinkers found a cause for 
 them in the spirit of revolt which had found 
 its chief expression in the French Revolution. 
 They were confronted in their specula- 
 tions by the undeniable fact that this spirit, 
 far from waning, existed more actively and 
 was wider spread with each succeeding year. 
 They noted with dismay that it was accom- 
 panied in many of its manifestations by an 
 
 33 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 absolute negation of religious belief. The 
 avowed desire to cast off clericalism with 
 absolutism led many of its adherents into 
 extremes which have always been encoun- 
 tered, and may still be encountered, where 
 very advanced views are strongly held. 
 
 Among the many schemes propounded 
 to subdue this spirit, and so to ensure the 
 future peace of the world, the most note- 
 worthy emanated from the Czar of Russia. 
 Alexander was a strange being, almost 
 wholly compounded of absolutism and mystic 
 religious fervour . He had but recently come 
 under the influence of the notorious Baroness 
 de Krudener, who, after conversation ex- 
 tending over two hours, had converted him 
 to the mystic tenets of " chiliasm " of which 
 she was the first living exponent. He was 
 under the influence of this strange woman 
 and her associates when he visited Paris 
 in 1815, and after long consultations with 
 these advisers he propounded to his fellow 
 monarchs for signature a mysterious docu- 
 ment, couched in the following terms : — 
 
 " Art. I. Conformably to the words of 
 the Holy Scriptures, which command all 
 men to consider each other as brethren, the 
 three contracting Monarchs will remain 
 
 34 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 united by the bonds of a true and indis- 
 soluble fraternity, and considering each 
 other as fellow countrymen, they will, on 
 all occasions and in all places, lend each 
 other aid and assistance : and regarding 
 themselves towards their subjects and armies 
 as fathers in the same spirit of fraternity 
 with which .they are animated to protect 
 Religion, Peace and Justice. 
 
 " Art. II. In consequence, the sole prin- 
 ciple of Force, whether between the said 
 Governments or between their subjects, shall 
 be that of doing each other reciprocal service, 
 and of testifying by unalterable goodwill 
 the mutual affection with which they ought 
 to be animated, to consider themselves all 
 as members of one and the same Christian 
 Nation ; the three allied Princes looking on 
 themselves as merely delegated by Pro- 
 vidence to govern three branches of the 
 one family, Austria, Prussia and Russia, 
 thus confessing that the Christian world, 
 of which they and their people form a part, 
 has in reality no other Sovereign than Him 
 to whom alone Power really belongs, because 
 in Him alone are found all the treasures of 
 love, science and infinite wisdom, that is 
 to say God, our divine Saviour, the Word 
 
 33 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 of the Most High, the Word of Life. Their 
 Majesties consequently recommend to their 
 people, with the most tender solicitude, as 
 the sole means of enjoying that peace which 
 arises from a good conscience, and which 
 alone is durable, to strengthen themselves 
 every day more and more in the principles 
 and exercise of the duties which the Divine 
 Saviour has taught to mankind. 
 
 " Art. III. All the Powers which shall 
 choose solemnly to avow the sacred prin- 
 ciples which have dictated the present Act, 
 and shall acknowledge how important it 
 is for the happiness of nations, too long 
 agitated, that these truths shoiold hence- 
 forth exercise over the destinies of mankind 
 all the influence which belongs to them, will 
 be received with equal ardour and affection 
 into this Holy Alliance." 
 
 This curious document meant nothing at 
 the time to anybody but its originator. 
 The King of Prussia, who was extremely 
 anxious to maintain the closest friendship 
 with the Czar, signed it with a ready com- 
 plaisance, feeling that he was binding him- 
 self to nothing in particular. The Emperor 
 of Austria, who never moved without con- 
 sulting Count Metternich, made the char- 
 
 36 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 acteristic comment that if it was a political 
 secret, he must tell it to Metternich ; if a 
 religious secret, he must tell it to his con- 
 fessor. Metternich pronounced it " mere 
 empty words." In this spirit the three 
 original signatures were appended to the 
 Treaty. 
 
 How it fared with other European Powers 
 is told by Mrs. Venturi, who writes in her 
 biography of Mazzini: 
 
 " The Treaty of the Holy Alliance was 
 not graced with the name of the Prince 
 Regent (of Great Britain), but the Czar 
 received a letter declaring that his principles 
 had the approval of this great authority on 
 religion and morality. The Kings of Naples 
 and Sardinia were the next to subscribe, 
 and in due time the names of the witty 
 glutton Louis XVIII and of the abject 
 Ferdinand of Spain were subscribed." 
 
 The Treaty was endorsed by the Nether- 
 lands and Wurtemburg in 1816 and by 
 Saxony,| Switzerland and the Hansa towns 
 in the following year. Such was the origin 
 of fan undertaking which, meaning nothing 
 at the time, except to its mystic composer, 
 was afterwards used as an instrument to 
 crush the growing spirit of Italian freedom. 
 
 37 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Nor was the occasion long in arriving. 
 In 1819 the popular demand for constitu- 
 tional government in Spain could no longer 
 be resisted, and the success of the revolu- 
 tionary movement there encouraged the 
 patriots of Naples and Piedmont in similar 
 demands. In 1820 there was a conference 
 between Russia, Prussia and Austria at 
 Troppau, in which France and Great Britain 
 also took part. It was decided, under the 
 terms of the Holy Alliance, that the Nea- 
 politan Constitution should be put down 
 by force of arms. The only protest against 
 this action came from Great Britain, but, 
 the support of France failing, the protest 
 was an ineffectual one. Action was taken 
 by the Powers, with results that have 
 already been described. 
 
 There was a further meeting of the three 
 Kings at Laibach in the same year, when 
 the principle was enunciated that " useful 
 and necessary changes in legislation and 
 in the administration of states could only 
 emanate from the freewill and from the 
 intelligent and well-weighed convictions of 
 those whom God has made responsible for 
 power. Penetrated with this eternal truth 
 the sovereigns have not hesitated to pro- 
 
 38 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 claim it with frankness and vigour. They 
 have declared that, in respecting the rights 
 and independence of legitimate power, they 
 regarded as legally nuU, and disavowed by 
 the principle which constituted the public 
 right of Europe, all pretended reforms oper- 
 ated by revolt and open hostUities." 
 
 Here was a doctrine to which Great 
 Britain certainly could not subscribe. The 
 duty of making known the national objec- 
 tion fell upon Lord Castlereagh, who was 
 then Prime Minister, and he did so in a 
 letter studiously moderate in tone. The 
 right of a state to interfere in the affairs 
 of another state when its own interests 
 were endangered was conceded, but nothing 
 more. Intervention to put down a revolu- 
 tionary movement, apart from the bearing 
 of such movement upon the security of the 
 intervening state, was pronounced unright- 
 eous. In a word, Castlereagh disputed the 
 assumption that a possible revolutionary 
 movement could form the basis of any hostile 
 Alliance. 
 
 Immediate emphasis was given to this 
 letter by the movement for freedom in 
 Greece. Another Congress of the Powers 
 was summoned at Verona, and the duty of 
 
 39 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 representing Great Britain there devolved 
 upon Castlereagh. Before the Congress met, 
 his mysterious suicide brought Canning into 
 power. The Duke of WeUington was de- 
 puted by him to represent Great Britain 
 at Verona, where he began the proceedings 
 as a minority of one. 
 
 By this time the alleged principle of the 
 Holy Alliance had no warmer advocate 
 than France. Itching to interfere in the 
 affairs of Spain, France laid before the 
 Congress a proposal for an expedition against 
 that country, with the object of forcing 
 upon it such a constitution as the King of 
 France might choose to dictate. This pro- 
 posal was warmly supported by Russia, 
 and gave the Duke of Wellington an op- 
 portunity of defining with unmistakable 
 clearness the position of Great Britain. The 
 right of the Alliance, or of any power of the 
 Alliance, to interfere with the government 
 of an independent nation was denied in 
 Mo. Having uttered this denial. Great 
 Britain withdrew from the Congress. 
 
 Canning thus wrecked for ever the scheme 
 to interpret the Holy Alliance into an asser- 
 tion of the right of one nation to interfere 
 gratuitously in the internal affairs of another. 
 
 40 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 He had asserted, to quote his own words, 
 that Great Britain " would recognize institu- 
 tions raised up by the people as well as 
 those made by Kings." The principle laid 
 down then was adhered to by Great Britain 
 throughout Italy's long struggle for freedom 
 and national unity. It was clearly under- 
 stood that our own country would take no 
 part in unwarranted interference, and would 
 resist unjust aggression by every means 
 except an actual resort to arms. 
 
 For Russia the Holy Alliance remained 
 a very real entity long after it had served 
 the purpose to which it was first put, and 
 had been forgotten by other powers. Its 
 terms were last recalled by the famous 
 Peace Rescript of the Czar, which preceded 
 the first Hague conference ; and there 
 appears little reason to doubt that in his 
 issue of the Rescript he was guided by the 
 general principles laid down for monarchs 
 by his famous ancestor. 
 
 41 
 
THE PAPAL STATES 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE PAPAL STATES 
 
 IF choice had to be made, it would probably 
 be necessary to pronounce the Papal 
 States the worst governed of the provinces 
 of Italy. The temporal rule of the Pope 
 extended over the middle portion of the 
 peninsula, an area including Umbria, Ro- 
 rnagna and the Eastern marches. It com- 
 prised some of the fairest of the Italian cities, 
 including Bologna, Ravenna and Rimini. 
 The three million Italians who acknowledged 
 the temporal power of the Pope suffered 
 not only from the tyranny under which all 
 Italy groaned ; they had to submit to the 
 additional burden of a reactionary clericalism. 
 Napoleon had left his mark on this province 
 no less than upon the remainder of Italy. 
 Before his coming the cities, such as Bologna, 
 had enjoyed a large measure of municipal 
 independence. That disappeared when he 
 annexed the papal states ; and on the 
 
 45 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 return of the Pope from Fontainebleau it was 
 never restored. The good of the old regime 
 was forgotten, all that was evil was reani- 
 mated and perpetuated. 
 
 After the revolutionary period of 1830, 
 and with the accession of Pope Gregory, an 
 unimaginable state of affairs prevailed. 
 Gregory was a reactionary of so extreme a 
 type that he refused to allow a railway or 
 a telegraph line in the land he ruled. His 
 twenty states were governed by Cardinal 
 legates ; he himself was maintained in Rome 
 by the arms of foreign powers. His rule 
 was a rule of police and priest, his system 
 the stifling of aU education and progress. 
 What teaching was given in the schools 
 was imparted in Latin, but at this period 
 only two per cent, of the population of the 
 papal States was literate. 
 
 Police and priests worked hand in hand ; 
 to be a person of education was to be sus- 
 pected by both. Lists of " thinkers " were 
 compiled on both sides and compared. The 
 police were charged to force suspects to the 
 confessional ; the priests did not scruple to 
 divulge information so obtained to the police. 
 " The position of a ' thinker ' driven into 
 the confessional by the police must have 
 
 46 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 had piquancy," comments Trevelyan ; and 
 indeed it troubles the imagination to reahze 
 such a position. 
 
 The censorship of the Press was rigid 
 and unscrupulous ; no letters were safe 
 from the eyes of the officials, who made the 
 fullest use of information so obtained. The 
 chief places in the Courts of Justice were 
 held by clerics, who had also special courts 
 of their own, for trying what they pleased 
 to term spiritual offences. But the formality 
 of a trial was not needed in the realms of 
 the Pope, and hundreds of men and women 
 were banished or imprisoned without any 
 semblance of a judicial inquiry. 
 
 In such an atmosphere the Carbonari 
 flourished as nowhere else in Italy. The 
 Society's existence furnished employment 
 for whole hordes of spies, who pervaded 
 every walk of hfe, and often succeeded in 
 penetrating to the Carbonarist meetings, when 
 punishment, harsh and instant, followed. 
 The conspirators retorted by frequent assas- 
 sinations, an example their oppressors were 
 not slow to follow. A society, whose mem- 
 bers were known as San-Fedists, sprang into 
 existence to put down the Carbonari by means 
 of murder. There were organized bands of 
 
 47 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 murderers, known as Centurioni, who openly 
 slew and spoiled in the name of the Pope. 
 
 The petty tyrannies of the time and place 
 were as numerous as they were revolting ; 
 some were quite ludicrous. The wearing 
 of a beard was an offence in the eyes of poKce 
 and priests, since it was held to be the mark 
 of advanced ideas. It was possible for any 
 man to be haled off to the barber and shaved 
 incontinently, when his chin showed him 
 guilty of this offence. The towns groaned 
 under the curse of clericalism ; but they dared 
 not groan too loud, for Austrian bayonets 
 were ever at hand to enforce the police 
 sabres. 
 
 For the peasant, illiterate and poverty- 
 stricken, these oppressions and indignities 
 had little or no terror. In the village priest 
 he often found his best friend and readiest 
 helper. The Church, which created ignorance 
 and indigence, and stolidly perpetuated these 
 evils, salved its conscience by tending the 
 victims of its own sin and neglect. 
 
 In this slough of repression and injustice 
 the Papal States remained until 1847, when 
 Gregory died, and Pius IX was selected to 
 succeed him. His first acts proved him to 
 be a man of liberal views and strict justice. 
 
 48 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 When the news of this election was conveyed 
 to him he had said, " My God, they want to 
 make a Napoleon of a poor country priest.' 
 He possibly referred to the vast spiritual 
 responsibility delegated to him, for he showed 
 no timidity in deahng with the problems 
 presented by his temporal rule. 
 
 His first thought was to remedy the worst 
 injustices perpetrated in the name of his 
 predecessor. Decrees of banishment were 
 reversed ; the prisons were examined, and 
 innocent captives were set free. The censor- 
 ship of the Press and printing works was 
 relaxed, and a wide measure of free speech 
 was permitted. The wonder of it caught 
 all men of Italy, and the apostles of United 
 Italy already dreamed of a confederation 
 of Free Italian states with the Pope at its 
 head. 
 
 They forgot that the Pope ruled in a 
 double capacity, and that his position as 
 a small Italian prince was necessarily sub- 
 ordinate to that of head of the Catholic 
 Church. In the latter capacity he held 
 responsibilities to Austria and a great part 
 of what is now the German Empire, as 
 well as to France, Spain and Belgium, to 
 mention but part of his spiritual kingdom. 
 
 49 » 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Pius IX soon found that the aspirations 
 of his temporal subjects must take second 
 place, so important was the international 
 side of the vast position he held. 
 
 He was not long in discovering, also, that 
 some of the beneficiaries from his sense of 
 justice were developing an embarrassing 
 sense of gratitude. Among the exiles whom 
 he had recalled were men who assumed a 
 great deal more from his early acts than 
 he had intended should be read into them. 
 They contrived to make his position difficult 
 with the dignitaries of his church, as with 
 the foreign nations where repression was a 
 political creed. It also became apparent 
 that what he had done had already rendered 
 the old rulers of the Papal States impotent, 
 and in the absence of any authority to replace 
 them, a state of affairs perilously like anarchy 
 was threatening. 
 
 His next step was the issue of the Funda- 
 mental Statute, granting the semblance of a 
 Constitution to the States. This decree 
 established a Chamber of elected Deputies, 
 but left the administrative power in the 
 hands of the Pope and such ministers as he 
 might choose to appoint. His first minister 
 was Mamiani, a constitutionalist who cher- 
 
 50 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 ished ideas that had been cut and dried in 
 lands which were, constitutionally, centuries 
 in advance of his own. 
 
 Elsewhere in Italy a new wave of revolt 
 was sweeping back the Austrian intruder. 
 Milan had expelled General Radetzky, and 
 Charles Albert of Piedmont had declared 
 for a free Italy. Into this movement the 
 enthusiasts with whom Rome was now filled 
 attempted to drag Pius. Horrified at the 
 idea, he issued his Allocution, declaring that 
 he had no desire to make war on Austria. 
 
 The Roman mob at this time was under 
 the remarkable influence of Angelo Brunetti, 
 better known by his nickname of Ciceruac- 
 chio, a wine seller of incurable loquacity 
 and great good humour. He began his 
 career as a demagogue in the capacity of 
 one of the Pope's unwelcome admirers ; the 
 burden of his speeches to the slumdweUers 
 of Trastevere was the unfailing goodness of 
 Pius IX. He passed by easy stages to the 
 wickedness of his counsellors, and the mighty 
 past and great future of the city of Rome. 
 Among the evil counsellors he included Rossi, 
 who had succeeded Mamiani as the adminis- 
 trative minister of the Pope. 
 
 Rossi, a man of great executive capacity, 
 51 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 had quickly grasped the opportunity afforded 
 him of restoring order and method to the 
 affairs of the papacy. The effect of a firm 
 hand was already being demonstrated, when 
 he was assassinated by the younger Brunetti, 
 son of that Ciceruacchio already mentioned ; 
 but it is due to the latter to state that he 
 had no inkling of his son's vile intention. 
 Rome was given over to mob rule ; and 
 the Pope, in despair, fled over the Neapolitan 
 border to Gaeta. 
 
 In the meantime Austria had smothered 
 the attempt at freedom in the North. 
 Radetzky was back at Milan ; Charles Albert 
 had been defeated and had abdicated in 
 favour of his son. Rome at once became 
 the magnet for the liberators. Garibaldi 
 was gathering a force of volunteers near 
 Ravenna. Mazzini appeared on the scene, 
 as if by magic, from the fogs of his London 
 exile. The Roman Republic was declared, 
 and its government was entrusted to a 
 triumvirate, of whom Mazzini was the con- 
 trolling spirit. 
 
 It wiU not be supposed that Pius IX 
 lacked champions in such an emergency. 
 France dispatched an expedition under 
 General Oudinot to restore his Dominions 
 
 52 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 to Pius. Ferdinand of Naples, with whom 
 he had taken refuge, mustered his army 
 and prepared to march on the same purpose. 
 The Austrians were already moving South, 
 intent on being first in the race. Mazzini 
 was prompt to recognize the hopelessness of 
 the situation ; he was equally prompt in 
 deciding that Rome should be defended 
 to the last. 
 
 Garibaldi flew to the defence with his 
 volunteers, more than a thousand in number, 
 drawn from the students, citizens and 
 mechanics of the towns of Romagna. The 
 glorious blows he struck cannot be recalled 
 without a catch of the breath. Oudinot fell 
 back from the walls of the city with his 
 French force hopelessly shattered, and no- 
 thing to be done until substantial reinforce- 
 ments should arrive. The redshirt sped 
 South, and met the Neapolitans in the open 
 field. Two crushing defeats were sustained 
 by Ferdinand, and Pius realized that he 
 had nothing more to hope from King Bomba. 
 The Austrians, too, were held in check ; but, 
 notwithstanding, Mazzini saw that the case 
 of the Repubhc was hopeless. 
 
 At this time Ferdinand de Lesseps arrived 
 from Paris, ostensibly to arrange for the 
 
 53 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 peaceful occupation of the city by the French. 
 There seems no doubt that he undertook 
 this mission honestly, and suspecting no 
 ulterior motive on the part of Napoleon III. 
 It is almost equally certain that the real 
 motive for his despatch was to gain time 
 for the arrival of reinforcements, so that 
 the French triumph might be secured. He 
 certainly succeeded in his mission before he 
 was recalled, and the French proceeded to 
 besiege and capture the city. 
 
 Thus Pius IX returned to Rome, where 
 he was to remain supported by a French 
 garrison for more than twenty years. 
 
 54 
 
THE GRANDEUR OF DEFEAT 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE GRANDEUR OF DEFEAT 
 
 THE failure of the constitutional move- 
 ment of 1820 in Italy had convinced 
 the ardent patriots that freedom was not 
 likely to come by that means. Austria, 
 backed by the other absolute monarchs, 
 had repressed the constitutionalists, and 
 hanged and exiled the leaders of the move- 
 ment. There remained nothing for the 
 patriots but to drive the hated Austrians 
 out of every state of Italy. To that end 
 all the plots between 1820 and 1830 were 
 conceived ; they came to a head with the 
 French Revolution of 1830. 
 
 As though it had been a preconceived 
 signal, the states rose against their Austrian 
 masters. In Naples there was a rising in 
 1830, which was quelled by Ferdinand, with 
 the help of his Austrian friends. Parma 
 rose, and the Archduchess Marie Louise 
 fled across the borders till Austrian aid 
 
 57 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 could be got for her reinstatement. The 
 Duke of Modena also took to flight, and a 
 provisional government was established, only 
 to be repressed with the customary cruelties. 
 Hangings, wholesale imprisonments and 
 banishments followed in the wake of the 
 returning Austrians ; and once more the 
 government by police and spies was firmly 
 established in these unhappy states. 
 
 It would be idle to detail the risings of the 
 years that followed. Mazzini's first futile 
 attempt at revolt failed in 1833 near Milan ; 
 he and Garibaldi were concerned in an 
 attempt upon Sardinia in the next year. 
 Sporadic risings here and there, foredoomed 
 to failure, filled the years that intervened 
 until 1848. In that year all Italian eyes 
 were turned upon Sardinia, for King Charles 
 Albert had granted a constitution, liberal 
 beyond the ordinary dreams of the oppressed 
 Itahans ; and the first real Parliament of 
 Italy had met in Turin. 
 
 Even in the Duchies there was not such 
 tyranny as in the provinces of Lombardy 
 and Venetia, which were held directly under 
 Austrian rule. Milan, issuing to Sardinia 
 a despairing cry for help, rose on March 18, 
 1848, and after five days of terrible street 
 
 58 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 fighting, drove the Austrians, under General 
 Radetzky, out of the city, and estabhshed 
 a provisional government. The blow was 
 a severe one to Austria, and Lombardy was 
 even offered a measure of independence, on 
 terms. But Charles Albert was coming to 
 set Lombardy free, and Venetia had risen 
 too. In Parma and Modena the people had 
 agaio driven their Austrian rulers out, and 
 cast in their lot with Sardinia. Lombardy 
 thought Charles Albert had but to come and 
 conquer ; and the Austrian terms were 
 rejected with scorn. 
 
 Charles Albert was a brave man, but a 
 poor general. The Austrians had retired 
 to the space enclosed within the four strong- 
 holds of Pescheira, Verona, Legnano and 
 Mantua. The Sardinians sustained two 
 mortal defeats, at Custozza on July 25, 
 1848, and at Novara on March 23, 1849. 
 Milan and Lombardy had to be abandoned 
 to their fate ; Charles Albert abdicated on 
 the field of Novara, and died of apoplexy a 
 few months later. Lombardy felt the full 
 weight of Austrian severity again, and free 
 Piedmont had to submit to the ignominy 
 of Austrian garrisons in her strongholds. 
 
 Venice made a glorious fight of it under 
 59 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Manin, a political prisoner who was released 
 when the city rose, and proclaimed President 
 of a Venetian Republic. The defeat of 
 Sardinia shattered all the hopes of the young 
 Republic, but Manin made a desperate stand 
 behind the walls of the city. The siege 
 lasted 146 days, and then Manin escaped to 
 a life of exile, bitterly mourned by his fellow- 
 citizens. " I did not believe such Republican 
 dogs were such honest men," said the Aus- 
 trian Gonzkowsky, after an inspection of 
 the books of the Republic. 
 
 At the first outbreak in the North, Sicily 
 rose and demanded independence ; while 
 Naples coerced Ferdinand into sending 13,000 
 men, under the veteran General Pepe, to 
 help the Sardinians against Austria. But 
 Ferdinand retained his Swiss mercenaries 
 in the South, and with these he crushed the 
 Sicilian revolt. This he followed by recalling 
 the army from the North, a prelude to an 
 exemplary punishment of Sicily. His bom- 
 bardments of towns, his burnings and his 
 hangings made him even more generally 
 execrated than before ; and especially his 
 bombardments. He earned in this fashion 
 the name by which he is now remembered 
 in Southern Italy — King Bomba. It has 
 
 60 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 remained for the Germans to surpass his 
 senseless and destructive maiming of towns 
 and cities, and indiscriminate slaughter of 
 innocent inhabitants, in which women and 
 children suffered with male adults. 
 
 Rome too had risen — even Rome — and 
 sent Pope Pius flying for protection to Gaeta 
 across the NeapoUtan frontier. Mazzini had 
 lived through the great days of the trium- 
 virate, and Garibaldi had shown the French 
 how he could lead Italian volunteers to 
 victory. But there had been only too many 
 candidates for the privilege of reinstalling 
 the Pope in his city, and the short-lived 
 Roman Republic had been crushed by the 
 sister Republic of France. 
 
 The opening of the year 1850 saw the 
 cause of Italian freedom apparently broken 
 for ever. The liberal Pope, whose first 
 acts had begotten dreams of an Itahan 
 confederacy of free states, with the Pope 
 at its head, had become a reactionary of the 
 most uncompromising type. Tuscany, Parma 
 and Modena once more had rulers who 
 were effusively grateful to Austria ; and 
 for good cause. King Bomba was launciied 
 on that career of vicious misgovernment 
 described in burning words by no less an 
 
 61 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 eyewitness than Mr. Gladstone ; a career 
 that makes the ordinary man feel sad to 
 think he died unpunished by man. 
 
 It was the dark hour before the dawn. 
 The four great men who were to be instru- 
 mental in uniting Italy, and in driving the 
 stranger from her shores, were all tasting 
 the bitterness of preliminary failure. Maz- 
 zini, the inspired dreamer, had again fled to 
 London, httle realizing that the best part 
 of his work in the scheme of Italian regenera- 
 tion had already been done. Garibaldi, 
 broken in health, widowed, and desperately 
 despondent, was seeking in the new world 
 some means of living, however humble. 
 Victor Emmanuel had received from his 
 father the bitter legacy of a crown weighted 
 by the spite and misunderstanding of a 
 disappointed people. And the sagacious 
 Cavour had already discerned in the young 
 King the grit and patriotism needed to 
 weld the scattered states of Italy into the 
 constitutional monarchy which he rightly 
 judged to be the only solution of Italy's 
 long-suffered wrongs. 
 
 62 
 
MAZZINI 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 MAZZINI 
 
 BLIND revolt was the utmost expression 
 of Carbonarist activity. The Society 
 exhibited all the worst features_of purpose- 
 less conspiracy, from childish mummery to 
 senseless and brutal assassination. But the 
 spirit of revolt was so strong in Italy that 
 the Society attracted many of the best of 
 the Italian youth, until a great man arose 
 to provide them with a worthier means of 
 communication, a more definite scheme of 
 action, and a straighter path to the distant 
 goal. The name of that man was Giuseppe 
 Mazzini. 
 
 Cavour was an aristocrat, and Garibaldi 
 a man of the people ; but Mazzini belonged 
 to the professional middle class. His father 
 was a doctor, and he himself chose the bar 
 as a profession. But literature claimed him 
 as soon as his legal studies were completed, 
 and for the rest of his life he gained his 
 
 65 E 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 scanty living by writing. He soon attracted 
 the suspicion of the authorities by his habit 
 of walking about at night lost in thought, 
 and his father was told by the Governor 
 of Genoa, " The government is not fond 
 of young men of talent, the subject of whose 
 musings is not known to it." 
 
 The reproof was so far justified that 
 Mazzini was already a Carbonarist, and 
 was selected to perform a secret mission 
 for the Society. He was betrayed and 
 arrested, and pending his trial for con- 
 spiracy, spent six months in prison at Novara. 
 There was not sufficient evidence to convict 
 him, and he was set at liberty, but his liberty 
 was subject to such restriction that he pre- 
 ferred exile ; consequently he went to live 
 at Marseilles. 
 
 Before his captivity he had/ sickened of 
 the Carbonarist methods, ana in the seclu- 
 sion of his cell had evolved a new and better 
 Society, into the organization of which he 
 now threw himself heart and soul. When 
 he founded " Young Italy " he chose as 
 watchwords. Liberty, Equality, Humanity, 
 and on the other side of the banner. Unity, 
 Independence. In those few words were 
 summarized all the aims of the Society. 
 
 66 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 It sought independence so complete that 
 no part of Italy should remain under a 
 foreign yoke ; unity so thorough that 
 every state of Italy should be joined in 
 one Commonwealth ; liberty, equahty and 
 fraternity under a republican government, 
 where all men should be on the same foot- 
 ing. Those were the ideals conceived by 
 Mazzini in the lonely months of his cap- 
 tivity ; he never swerved from them for 
 the remainder of his life. 
 
 The organization was stripped of all the 
 fripperies by which the Carbonari appealed 
 to the ignorant and superstitious ; it had 
 no terrifying initiation ceremony or dread- 
 ful oath of allegiance. There were only 
 two degrees, the initiator and the initiated ; 
 members recognized one another by an 
 order word and a special handshake, both 
 changed at frequent intervals. The symbol 
 of the Society was a cypress branch, in 
 memory of the martjnrs who had died for 
 Italy ; its motto " Dio e Popolo " — God 
 and the people. 
 
 In order to establish means of communi- 
 cation and acquaintance between the seekers 
 for freedom in different parts of Italy, he 
 had recourse to an ingenious subterfuge. 
 
 67 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 An annual congress was arranged, for 
 the ostensible purpose of scientific discus- 
 sion, but really to arrange for further pro- 
 paganda, and to extend relations within 
 the Society. Lastly, Mazzini conducted a 
 paper, and produced pamphlets, which were 
 secretly circulated throughout Italy, and 
 did more than anything else to keep aHve 
 the cause of Italian Unity. Thus Mazzini 
 substituted a plan of campaign for patriots, 
 in the place of the sheer purposeless revolu- 
 tionary action of the Carbonarists. His 
 next move was to address a letter from 
 Marseilles to Charles Albert, King of Sar- 
 dinia, calling upon him to cast off the 
 Austrian yoke, and to trust to God and 
 the people. 
 
 " The people," he wrote, " are no longer 
 to be quieted by a few concessions. They 
 demand laws and liberty, independence 
 and union. Divided, dismembered and 
 oppressed, they have neither name nor 
 country. . . . 
 
 " All Italy waits for one word — one only 
 — to make itself yours. Select the way 
 that accords with the desire of the nation ; 
 maintain it unalterably ; be firm and select 
 your time; you have the victory in your 
 
 68 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 hands. Sire, on this condition we bind 
 ourselves round you, we proffer you our 
 Uves, we will lead to your banner the Uttle 
 states of Italy. . . . 
 
 " Unite us. Sire, and we shall conquer." 
 The effect of this letter, which was printed 
 and circulated throughout Italy, was to 
 stir the latent craving for freedom and justice 
 in many Italian hearts where it had been 
 dormant. Incidentally it annoyed the King 
 of Sardinia into arranging for the arrest of 
 Mazzini, should he ever cross the border ; 
 and it made Marseilles too hot to contain 
 him any longer. He transferred his resi- 
 dence to Geneva. 
 
 From Geneva he projected his first actual 
 revolt, intended to be a demonstration 
 against Austria in Lombardy ; but it failed 
 without so much a§ a shot being ftred. For 
 this failure Mazzini blamed the Carbonarists 
 of Paris, who had neglected to make certain 
 promised arrangements. The failure re- 
 sulted in Mazzini being condemned to death 
 and forced to live in hiding in Switzerland. 
 Even there he was not welcome, and in 
 the end he fled for refuge to London, where 
 he at least knew himself to be safe. His 
 high character and simple life earned for 
 
 69 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 him the respect of all with whom he came 
 in contact, and the friendship of many who 
 did not easily give their trust. 
 
 He mastered the English language so 
 thoroughly as to acquire a very distin- 
 guished English style, as reference to the 
 articles he contributed to the reviews of 
 the period will show. In course of time 
 he grew to love London, and to regard it 
 as his second home. During the period 
 of his exile in London his letters were opened 
 by the Home Office,, and, it was stated at 
 the time, their contents were revealed to 
 the governments of the Italian states ; as 
 a result of this supervision, it was said, a 
 revolt planned by two brothers named 
 Bandiera was anticipated by the authorities 
 and the young men lost their lives. 
 
 Against this spying The Times, although 
 it regarded Mazzini as a dangerous and 
 worthless character, very finely protested 
 on principle. This brought a letter from 
 Carlyle dealing with Mazzini's individual 
 merits, though Carlyle made no secret of 
 his opinion that Mazzini was an impracticable 
 visionary ; but the testimony he bore to 
 his character was a rare one, coming as it 
 did from such a man. 
 
 70 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 " I have had the honour to know Mr. 
 Mazzini for a series of years, and, whatever 
 I may think of his skill and insight in worldly 
 affairs, I can with great freedom testify 
 that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a 
 man of genius and virtue, one of those rare 
 men, numerable unfortunately in units in 
 this world, who are worthy to be called 
 martjn: souls, who, in silence, piously in 
 their daily life, practise what is meant by that." 
 
 The test of Mazzini's practical capacity 
 came with the formation of the Roman 
 Republic, and his appointment as triumvir. 
 His colleagues in the office deferred to him 
 in everything ; to all intent he was the 
 dictator of Rome. In that extremity it 
 can be said of him that he conducted a 
 revolution without violence of any kind. 
 Property of all individuals was entirely 
 unmolested ; only the property of the 
 Church was diverted for purposes of govern- 
 ment. He reached a point in humanitarian- 
 ism which almost made the administration 
 of justice impossible, since in his anxiety 
 that no political opponent or unoffending 
 person should be cast into prison, he 
 neglected means of imprisoning real offenders 
 against the Commonwealth. 
 
 71 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 The entry of the French into Rome saw 
 Mazzini once more fleeing from his native 
 land under sentence of death, and once 
 more he found a safe resting place in London. 
 His visits to Italy were frequently made, 
 but conducted secretly; and I'amico, as he 
 was called by Young Italy, never lost his 
 influence with the party he had originated. 
 He believed in revolt, if only unsuccessful 
 revolt, as an expression of the demand for 
 freedom, and as time went on the mani- 
 festations of the Mazzinists in this direction 
 became a sore embarrassment to the plans 
 of Cavour, who was steadily bidding for 
 the support of Napoleon III, whom Mazzini 
 loathed. For Cavour and his plans, Mazzini, 
 as a professed Republican, had little to say 
 that was good, and the feeling was recipro- 
 cated by Cavour. 
 
 Thus it happened that when Garibaldi 
 and his Thousand set out for their notable 
 expedition to Sicily, Mazzini left London 
 for Genoa to take part in the adventure. 
 He arrived too late, for Garibaldi had sailed, 
 a fact the more annoying to Mazzini since 
 he had wished to divert the attack from 
 Sicily to Rome itself. He hid in Genoa, 
 where Cavour sought to have him arrested ; 
 
 72 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 but with his beard shaved and his hat pulled 
 over his eyes Mazzini was safe enough, and 
 used afterwards to take pleasure in telling 
 how he chatted to Cavour's spies, and gave 
 them cigars. He was now working for a 
 united Italy, recognizing that a monarchy 
 was inevitable and his republic impossible. 
 " After I have helped to make Italy one 
 under the King," he wrote, " I shall go 
 back to London and write to tell the Italians 
 they are idiots." But still he wrote, " It 
 is no longer a question of Republic or Mon- 
 archy ; it is a question of national Unity, 
 of existence or non-existence." 
 
 But the lines on which he worked still 
 continued to cross those on which the unity 
 of the nation was finally accomplished. He 
 left Genoa to meet the triumphant Gari- 
 baldi at Naples and strongly advised Gari- 
 baldi to make a direct attack upon Rome, an 
 adventure which would have brought about 
 French intervention, and might easily have 
 delayed Italian unity for another genera- 
 tion. The advice was only rejected because 
 of Garibaldi's personal loyalty to Victor 
 Emmanuel ; indeed, Mazzini had unwit- 
 tingly hastened the consolidation of the 
 Kingdom in a way he never intended. His 
 
 73 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 influence with Garibaldi had forced Cavour 
 to contrive an expedition against the Papal 
 states, which resulted in the annexation 
 of Umbria and the Eastern Marches, leaving 
 to the Pope only the territory immediately 
 round Rome itself. 
 
 The remainder of Mazzini's life was 
 expended in unavailing struggles against 
 the inevitable. He was still under sentence 
 of death in his own country, and as a protest 
 against this the city of Messina returned 
 him to Parliament in 1865. As a professed 
 Republican, Mazzini would not take the 
 oath of allegiance to the King, and conse- 
 quently never took his seat. He shared 
 in the general amnesty extended to all 
 political offenders shortly afterwards, but 
 continued to excite his followers to revolt. 
 In 1870 it was necessary to arrest him, and 
 he spent two months in confinement at 
 Gaeta. 
 
 His death occurred in 1872, when the 
 Italian ParHament by an unanimous resolu- 
 tion paid tribute to his services to his 
 country, and to the cause of Italian Unity. 
 Those services, as already indicated, were 
 rendered in the darkest days of the history 
 of modern Italy, when he alone had the 
 
 74 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 vision and the foresight. Only his fervour 
 and high ideals kept alive the spirit of free- 
 dom in the bosoms of the scattered and 
 tortured patriots of Italy. He pointed 
 theni the way, and showed by his blameless 
 life how best it might be followed. In the 
 pursuit of his high ideals he lost sight of 
 the practical method by which much that 
 was substantial in his programme was 
 eventually gained. In his disappointment 
 and his impatience, he expressed himself 
 bitterly, and with a woeful pessimism. But 
 to the very end of his life his singleness of 
 purpose retained for him the veneration 
 of his followers, and the respect of many 
 high-minded men who differed from him 
 in the essentials of practical procedure. 
 
 75 
 
GARIBALDI 
 
.^ 
 
 -■^J 
 
 /-■ 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 GARIBALDI 
 
 FOR the actual work of liberation there 
 enters upon the scene the most ro- 
 mantic figure of the nineteenth century, 
 an Italian knight-errant who was doomed 
 to spend but a few months of his long life 
 on the soil he freed from the oppressor ; 
 the man of destiny ; Garibaldi the Lion. 
 
 In seeking the measure of the man by 
 the effect he produced upon his contem- 
 poraries it is only necessary to apply one 
 touchstone, the infallible one of London. 
 London, which greets emperors and foreign 
 kings with but mild enthusiasm ; Lon- 
 don, where our own great ones may walk 
 through the streets unmarked and unre- 
 cognized ; the London of the sixties, with 
 its tolerant contempt for all foreigners, 
 rose at Garibaldi and gave him such a greet- 
 ing as no man not of British blood has ever 
 received there before or since. His pas- 
 
 79 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 sage through five miles of London streets 
 occupied the half of a long day ; the carriage 
 in which he rode was strained to useless- 
 ness by the millions of clutching hands 
 that strove to detain it for another glimpse. 
 There are elderly men alive to-day who 
 will tell how their mothers held them up 
 as little boys, and craved for them the bles- 
 sing of the hero who had freed his country 
 from the most damnable of all tyrannies, 
 i A vivid word picture of the man who so 
 stirred the cold heart of London has been 
 left by the Dutch artist Koelman, who 
 saw him in Rome in the zenith of his phy- 
 sical beauty. 
 
 " Of middle height, well made, broad- 
 shouldered, his square chest, which gives 
 a sense of power to his structure, well-marked 
 under the uniform — ^he stood there before 
 us ; his blue eyes, ranging to violet, sur- 
 veying the group. . . . They curiously con- 
 trasted with those dark sparkling eyes of 
 his Italian soldiers, no less than his light 
 chestnut-brown hair, which fell loosely over 
 his neck on to his shoulders, contrasted 
 with their shining black curls. A heavy 
 moustache and a light blonde beard ending 
 in two points gave a martial expression 
 
 80 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 to that open oval face. But most striking 
 of all was the nose, with its exceedingly 
 broad root, which has caused Garibaldi 
 to be given the name of Leone ; and indeed 
 made one think of a lion, a resemblance 
 which, according to his soldiers, was still 
 more conspicuous in the fight, when his 
 eyes shot forth flames, and his fair hair 
 waved as a mane above his temples." 
 
 There are other descriptions of him ; 
 seated easily astride his snow-white war 
 horse, the sun lighting his long fair hair 
 and beard and making his red shirt aglow 
 with fiery colour. At his right hand rides 
 his faithful bodyguard, the black giant 
 Aguyar, on his mighty coal-black stallion ; 
 a faithful negro friend who followed his 
 fortunes from South America, and laid down 
 his life in the defence of Rome. They 
 only disclose one side of a personality so 
 magnetic that curious youths, who had gone 
 but to look on him, donned the red shirt 
 in a glow of enthusiasm which was sustained 
 as long as they were privileged to serve 
 with him. 
 
 He was born at Nice, then the Italian 
 city of Nizzia; his father was a fisherman 
 and he became a sailor. His physical 
 
 8i B- 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 prowess as a youth was extraordinary ; 
 sixteen times he turned his splendid swim- 
 ming to account in the saving of human 
 hfe. He sailed the Levant as captain of 
 a small merchantman ; he fought with 
 pirates ; he was wrecked. 
 
 Then, in 1832, he met Mazzini, who was 
 living in exile at Marseilles. Speaking in 
 London in 1864, at a gathering in his honour 
 where he noticed Mazzini unobtrusively 
 seated in a corner, Garibaldi said : " When 
 I was a youth, and had only aspirations 
 towards good, I sought for one able to act 
 as the guide and counsellor of my youth- 
 ful years. I found this man. He alone 
 kept and fed the sacred flame. This man 
 is Joseph Mazzini ; he is my friend and 
 teacher." There and then Garibaldi joined 
 Young Italy ; he was known as Borel. 
 
 In the next year Mazzini organized a 
 futile rising against the King of Sardinia 
 in Piedmont. Garibaldi was cast for an 
 important part in it, no less than the cor- 
 ruption of the Sardinian navy. He entered 
 the service of the King at Genoa for no 
 other purpose, and when his plan to seize 
 the frigate Euridice failed, he was naturally 
 forced to flee the country. For his offence 
 
 8a 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 he was condemned to death, but he was 
 already on his way to South America. 
 
 There he became the admiral of the rebel 
 Brazilian State of Rio Grande da Sul, his 
 fleet consisting at first of a single fishing- 
 boat, with which he fought his way to much 
 greater things. Here he met and won his 
 wife Anita, the companion of his wander- 
 ings and the mother of his brave sons. It 
 was a romantic and a whirlwind wooing. 
 
 His ship was anchored in the Brazilian 
 harbour of Laguna, and Garibaldi was scan- 
 ning the town through his telescope, when 
 he saw at a window the striking face of a 
 young girl. Impulsively he called for a 
 boat and rowed ashore. In the town he 
 met an acquaintance, who invited him to 
 partake of his hospitality. When Gari- 
 baldi accepted he was conducted to a room, 
 one of the occupants of which was the young 
 girl whose face had affected him so power- 
 fully. Their eyes met in a look of under- 
 standing, and without more ado the sailor 
 walked across to her and greeted her with 
 the words : " Thou oughtest to be mine." 
 
 In the years that followed, when Gari- 
 baldi won the freedom of Uruguay with 
 his Italian legion, Anita was his constant 
 
 83 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 companion in the saddle and in the camp. 
 She shared his victories, she softened his 
 reverses. She was with him after the defence 
 of Rome (see Chapter IV), when the armies of 
 three nations hunted him hke a wild beast 
 through the mountains of Italy. Before 
 that cruel pursuit was ended, she died in 
 his arms, to his ineffaceable grief. 
 
 His campaign in Uruguay is part of the 
 history of South America ; he and his Ita- 
 lians won the battles of Cerro and Saint 
 Antonio, which set the country free. In 
 those campaigns of the pampas he learned 
 to become the greatest guerilla fighter of 
 modern times. 
 
 But now the flag of freedom was once 
 more raised in Italy, and he returned to 
 place his sword at the disposal of that Pied- 
 mont which had condemned him to death. 
 The word passed from one end of the penin- 
 sula to the other : " Garibaldi is coming 
 back." They knew all about Garibaldi ; 
 Mazzini had seen to that. By pamphlet 
 and by word of mouth his deeds had been 
 blazoned abroad through Italy and were 
 inscribed in the hearts of his countrymen. 
 The liberator of Uruguay was eagerly awaited 
 by those who planned to free Italy. 
 
 84 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 He was a Republican by conviction, and 
 Piedmont had condemned him to death. 
 Yet his first act on landing was to offer his 
 services to Charles Albert ; but his recep- 
 tion was a cold one, and his offer was refused. 
 With his group of volunteers he carried 
 on a guerilla warfare in the Alpine fast- 
 nesses ; Mazzini, among others, fought 
 with him. He was still fighting long after 
 Charles Albert abandoned the struggle and 
 had abdicated his throne in despair. 
 
 When a youth of eighteen, he had been 
 taken by his father to Rome, an event 
 which he afterwards described as the turn- 
 ing point in his career. For him Rome 
 was the embodied expression of Italy, the 
 emblem of the united Italy that was the 
 object of his existence. He was now to 
 see a repubhc proclaimed at Rome, to bid 
 his dearest friends lay down their lives 
 in the hopeless defence of that Republic ; 
 to see it crushed out of existence by the 
 sister Republic of France. In that exper- 
 ience he conceived a loathing of Louis 
 Napoleon that remained with him for the 
 rest of his hfe, a bitter hatred that no cir- 
 cumstances could alter and no plea of oppor- 
 tunism could modify. 
 
 85 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 He fled from Rome with a faithful few, 
 and the soldiers of three armies hunted 
 him through the mountain fastnesses of 
 Italy. In evasion he showed the masterly 
 qualities that made him the greatest guerilla 
 fighter of modern times ; but he escaped 
 a bereaved man, broken in spirit and shat- 
 tered in health. 
 
 Garibaldi made his way to Nice, but the 
 Piedmontese Government could not har- 
 bour him, nor did he expect it, though 
 his admirers showed a resentment he was 
 far from feeling. He was allowed to stay 
 long enough to take a farewell of his aged 
 mother, and then his wanderings began 
 again. They took him west to America, 
 where he could find no better employment 
 than in a chandler's factory. He considered 
 himself fortunate to get to sea again, as 
 captain of a sailing ship. 
 
 It was at this period and in this capa- 
 city that he paid his first visit to England, 
 where an honour was paid him as unex- 
 pected as, by its very nature, it was gratify- 
 ing to him. To Garibaldi, skipper of a 
 collier in Newcastle harbour, Mr. Joseph 
 Cowen presented a sword of honour, for 
 the purchase of which the workers of that 
 
 86 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 city had subscribed their scanty pence. 
 Later Garibaldi was to be made the lion 
 of London, but no English act ever touched 
 him as this now almost forgotten episode. 
 
 But Italy called him ; and inheriting 
 a legacy of some £1,500 by the death of a 
 brother, he decided to settle close at hand 
 for the struggle which he now saw to be 
 impending. He chose for his habitation the 
 little island of Caprera, opposite the Cor- 
 sican harbour of Maddalena, and easy of 
 access to Nice and Genoa. Part of this 
 island he purchased and there lived a life 
 in the open air, farming, building — and 
 waiting. 
 
 The call found him prepared ; he set 
 out on the most glorious of his many adven- 
 tures. In two years he returned to Caprera, 
 having won for Italy the Kingdom of Naples 
 (see Chapter XI). He had to borrow 1,500 
 francs from a friend to start life as a far- 
 mer again. He had bitterness in his heart, 
 for the price exacted for the French help 
 in the making of united Italy included 
 the cession of his native city Nice to the 
 French. 
 
 From his island retreat he looked im- 
 patiently across to where Rome was held 
 
 87 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 by a circle of French bayonets. Rome 
 was still his goal, and the counsels of patience 
 given to him by wiser heads passed him 
 unheeded. Several times he collected his 
 volunteers in futile dashes for the capital, 
 and in one of these expeditions he narrowly 
 avoided precipitating a civil war. There 
 was a scuffle, in which shots were fired, 
 and Garibaldi himself was wounded in 
 the leg. In his early South American adven- 
 tures he had been captured by the Bra- 
 zilians and cruelly tortured, but the anguish 
 of those sufferings was not so exquisite 
 as this flesh wound from an Italian bullet. 
 
 He last drew his sword against Germany. 
 France had crushed his Roman republic ; 
 France had robbed Italy of his beloved 
 Nice ; but his instinct for liberty was so 
 true that all his grievances were forgotten 
 in France's hour of need. He was now 
 an old man, and the event proved that he 
 had lost all the dash of his youth and his 
 ripe age. He added nothing to his repu- 
 tation as a soldier by his last campaign, 
 though its undertaking was of a piece with 
 the soul of the man and his unquenphable 
 thirst for the right. 
 
 Garibaldi died at Caprera in 1882. " While 
 88 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 his life was ebbing out," writes Trevelyan, 
 " two little birds whom he had taught not 
 to fear him fluttered in from the moor and 
 sat chirping on the window-sill. The atten- 
 dants were about to drive them away lest 
 they should disturb him, when that voice 
 was heard once more by men, bidding them 
 let the little birds come in, and always 
 feed them after he was gone. And, hav- 
 ing given these orders, he went upon his 
 last expedition." 
 
 89 
 
CAVOUR 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 CAVOUR 
 
 CAMILLO CAVOUR, the man who was 
 actually to employ all the instru- 
 ments that came to his hand in welding 
 the scattered states of Italy into a great 
 nation, began life as a soldier. Then he 
 devoted his attention to farming, drifted 
 into journalism, and so entered public life as 
 the first representative of Milan in the first 
 Sardinian Parliament. 
 
 His next twelve years of life were spent 
 in the untiring service of his country. Such 
 service has seldom been exacted from any 
 man. He was at one and the same time 
 the Minister of War, the Minister of Finance, 
 the chief diplomat and the first adminis- 
 trator of the realm of Sardinia. He had 
 to contend with the united opposition of 
 all the great Powers of Europe, to consider 
 the exhausted finances of the kingdom, to 
 harmonize such contending influences as those 
 
 93 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 of the King, of Garibaldi and of Mazzini, and to 
 encounter religious and personal prejudices. 
 
 But when he died, worn out by his devo- 
 tion to his country, he had the satisfaction 
 of knowing that the interloper had been 
 driven from Italy and that his hand had 
 been the main instrument in the work. 
 
 He came of an aristocratic family of 
 Turin, as his manner rather than his appear- 
 ance proclaimed. A short stout man, with 
 a pronounced stoop that added to the un- 
 gainliness of his carriage, he was further 
 remarkable for the carelessness of his dress, 
 which in later life verged on absolute sloven- 
 liness. A short fringe of beard rimmed 
 the lower half of his face, but a noble fore- 
 head made it notable, and keen blue eyes 
 gazed unwaveringly through his gold-rimmed 
 glasses. His manner was distinguished; to 
 his subordinates, considerate and appre- 
 ciative ; to his equals, full of charm ; to 
 his colleagues and even to his King, inclined 
 to be overbearing when differences were 
 being discussed. 
 
 In common with the whole of his class, 
 he had an exalted hatred of the absolutism 
 which kept Italy in chains, and he was 
 readier than many of his class to assign a 
 
 94 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 due proportion of blame to the clericalism 
 which walked hand in hand with oppres- 
 sion and tyranny. So far he went with 
 Mazzini and Garibaldi, but he differed from 
 them in the expectations they formed of 
 repubhcanism. Cavour was a keen student 
 of the British system of government, and 
 as a traveller, preferred spending his time 
 in England studying British methods to 
 visiting any of the Continental countries. 
 He modelled his hopes for the future of 
 Italy upon British ideals, and very early 
 decided that his country could only be 
 redeemed by a constitutional monarchy. 
 These views he supported in his paper II 
 Risorgimento, which largely influenced King 
 Charles Albert to grant the Sardinian Con- 
 stitution in 1848. 
 
 He joined the administration of d'Azeglio 
 on the death of Santarosa, and the sound 
 judgment of the young King, Victor Em- 
 manuel II, had already placed him. " Look 
 out for Cavour," he said to Azeglio, his 
 intimate and friend ; "he will drive all 
 of you." His driving force, and his sincere 
 hatred of clericalism made him the only 
 man to convert into law the proposals for 
 limiting the power of the Church. Thence- 
 
 95 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 forward the destinies of the kingdom were 
 always in his hands until his death, even 
 when he had temporarily retired from office. 
 
 Looking round for help against the powers 
 of absolutism, he saw no chance except 
 that of Great Britain, and possibly of France. 
 The opportunity to bid for the aid of both 
 Powers came with the Crimean War, when 
 Sardinia was invited to send her troops 
 to Russia with those of the Allies. Only 
 Cavour approved of the proposal, which 
 was met with unanimous opposition from 
 his ministerial colleagues. Fortunately the 
 King agreed with him, and supported him 
 with aU his great influence, thus enabling 
 his prime minister to beat down the opposi- 
 tion. The reward came when the Sardinians, 
 by remarkable gallantry, won the day at 
 the battle of Tchernaya, and all Europe 
 rang with their bravery. 
 
 Austria acted as intermediary in the peace 
 negotiations, and strove hard to exclude 
 Sardinia from the congress of Paris, where 
 terms were settled. But neither England 
 nor France would countenance this injus- 
 tice. The difficulty of selecting a suitable 
 representative for the little kingdom was 
 overcome by sending Cavour himself, though 
 
 96 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 he accepted the responsibility with no great 
 optimism. He found even greater sym- 
 pathy than he expected at the hands of the 
 British delegates, Cowley and Clarendon, 
 and this influenced a similar consideration 
 from France. He made an opportunity to 
 put before the Congress the grievous wrongs 
 from which Italy suffered, laying particular 
 stress on the misgovemment of Naples. 
 When the possibility of influencing King 
 Ferdinand was suggested, he turned round 
 in the presence of the Austrian delegates 
 and, in plain language, laid on that power 
 all the onus for the woes of Italy. 
 
 It was a diplomatic success he had achieved, 
 if he did nothing practical. He had told 
 the Powers that they looked on at hideous 
 injustice, but he had found no champion. 
 He was dejected ; after the Congress he 
 said to Clarendon, "If we must reconcile 
 ourselves to Austria and the Pope, I must 
 ask the King to call to power the friends of 
 Austria and the Pope. In the other alter- 
 native, we shall not shrink from preparing 
 for a terrible war — a war to the death." 
 
 But the state of European politics at the 
 time had necessitated the support of Aus- 
 tria, as against Russia, by Great Britain. 
 
 97 G 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 The Queen and her Consort were unsym- 
 pathetic to Italy's cause, though the heart 
 of the British people was warm toward 
 the oppressed nation. Cavour soon gathered 
 from Clarendon's manner and his guarded 
 conversation that the expected help was not 
 to be derived from that quarter ; and that 
 all Italy might expect from Great Britain was 
 non-interference, and popular sympathy. 
 
 But sympathy was not what Cavour 
 wanted ; and he succeeded in getting from 
 France the material help that alone was 
 effective against Austria. In the short and 
 glorious war that followed Cavour worked 
 like a man possessed, for the whole burden 
 of the administration was upon him, and 
 the absence of the King in the field made 
 his task all the heavier. Consequently, the 
 armistice of Villafranca (see Chapter X) 
 disappointed him out of the self-control 
 he usually maintained, and his violent resent- 
 ment of it may be put down to overwork 
 and strain. It certainly involved him in 
 an open disagreement with the King, who 
 rejected his entreaties to disregard the peace 
 made by Napoleon. 
 
 " This treaty shall not be executed," he 
 declared ; "if need be I will take Solaro 
 
 98 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 della Margherita (the leader of the Clericals) 
 by one hand and Mazzini by the other. I 
 will become a conspirator. I will become 
 a revolutionary. But the treaty shall not 
 be executed. No ! A thousand times, no. 
 Never ! Never ! " 
 
 But the King had his way, and rightly 
 so, as events proved ; and after retiring 
 to his farm, Cavour came back to negotiate 
 with Napoleon for the annexation of the 
 Central states of Italy, according to the 
 plebiscite taken of them. The price de- 
 manded by the Emperor was not only Savoy, 
 which had probably been mentioned when 
 the Plombieres interview took place, but 
 the city of Nice as weU. It was a bitter 
 wrench for Cavour, but he had no option, 
 and Nice had to be given up. 
 
 Garibaldi never forgave Cavour that sur- 
 render, for Nice was his native city ; and 
 Cavour, who did not understand many of 
 Garibaldi's grievances against him, at least 
 comprehended and pardoned this one. The 
 surrender was the subject of a terrible scene 
 in the Italian Parliament after Garibaldi 
 had won and given over Naples to his coun- 
 try. Attacking Cavour for the disbanding 
 of the volunteers, the General went on to 
 
 99 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 say that it was impossible for him ever to 
 clasp the hand of a man who had sold his 
 country to the foreigner. Cavour's reply 
 was touching in its manly dignity : — 
 
 " I know," he said, " that between me 
 and the honourable General Garibaldi there 
 exists a fact that divides us like an abyss. 
 I believed that I fulfilled a painful duty 
 — the most painful I ever accomplished in 
 my Ufe— in counselhng the King and pro- 
 posing to Parliament to approve the cession 
 of Savoy and Nice to France. By the grief 
 that I then experienced I can understand 
 that which the honourable General Garibaldi 
 must have felt, and if he cannot forgive me this 
 act I will not bear him any grudge for it." 
 
 Usually the most generous of men, Gari- 
 baldi failed in magnanimity on this occasion, 
 and it was only at the instance of the King 
 that a formal reconciliation took place be- 
 tween him and Cavour. 
 
 The cession of this territory, and the 
 marriage of the King's daughter, a charming 
 girl of sixteen, to Prince Jerome Bonaparte, 
 who was more than twice her age and nothing 
 too nice in the way of Princes, were sore 
 pieces of work for Cavour. The expedition 
 of Garibaldi to Sicily and Naples involved 
 
 100 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 him in practices that were still more ques- 
 tionable. He not only consented to Gari- 
 baldi's departure on this revolutionary ex- 
 pedition, and dissembled his share in it, 
 but he sent forward men and supplies through 
 revolutionary agents. And when Garibaldi 
 had swept through Sicily and was about 
 to cross to the mainland, Francis II of 
 Naples threw over the Austrians and pro- 
 posed an aUiance with Sardinia. It was too 
 late, but Cavour did not tell him so. 
 
 "If we consent to the alliance we are 
 lost," he told an intimate. "If we reject 
 it, what will Europe say ? In my life I 
 was never more embarrassed." To gain 
 time he pretended to treat with Naples 
 while he was strengthening Garibaldi with 
 all the men and weapons he could have 
 sent to him. It was a risky business, for 
 France was minded to interfere with Gari- 
 baldi's crossing, and but for Great Britain 
 would have done so. But Garibaldi arrived 
 at Naples in time to save Cavour's face, 
 though not to spare him greater anxieties, 
 for his yearnings after Rome now threatened 
 to undo the work of Cavour's lifetime. An 
 attack on Rome at this juncture would 
 have made French intervention inevitable. 
 
 Once more Cavour suffered all the agonies 
 
 lOI 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 of uncertainty while the Northern army- 
 marched on the Papal States, and finally 
 got between Garibaldi and Rome, when 
 the position was saved by the meeting of 
 Garibaldi and the King. Indeed, the most 
 lasting picture one gets of Cavour is that 
 of a man waiting through an intolerable 
 suspense for the perfection of schemes im- 
 possibly daring, made possible by the skill 
 of his own diplomacy. His questionable 
 tactics were forced upon him by the more 
 than questionable adversary with whom 
 he contended, and left no smudge on a brave 
 and open character. "If we had done 
 for ourselves the things which we are doing 
 for Italy, we should be great rascals," he 
 once remarked to a colleague. But he 
 made no ado about anything he did for 
 Italy, not even when, upon his deathbed, 
 he still breathed his unfulfilled aspiration 
 for " a free Church in a free State." He 
 died a mart)^: to duty, and no more fitting 
 epitaph can be found for him in these days 
 than Trevelyan's judgment of him : 
 
 " If the example of Cavour had been 
 preferred to that of Bismarck as the model 
 for the patriots and statesmen of modern 
 Europe, the whole world would now be a 
 better place than it is." 
 
 102 
 
VICTOR EMMANUEL II 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 VICTOR EMMANUEL II 
 
 AFTER the fatal day of Novara, when 
 the army of Charles Albert was shat- 
 tered by Radetzky, and Milan had to be 
 abandoned to its fate, the unhappy King 
 called together his generals, and detailed 
 the terms the conqueror sought to impose. 
 He added : " From eighteen years ago till 
 now I have always made every effort possible 
 for the benefit of the people. I am deeply 
 afflicted to see that my hopes have failed, 
 not so much for my own sake, as for that 
 of the country. I have not been able to 
 find death upon the field of battle, as I 
 had desired ; perhaps my existence is now 
 the only obstacle to obtaining from the 
 enemy reasonable terms. And since there 
 remain no further means of continuing 
 hostilities, I abdicate this moment in favour 
 of my son Vittorio, in the hope that renew- 
 ing negotiations with Radetzky, the new 
 
 105 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 King may obtain better conditions, and 
 procure for the country an advantageous 
 peace. Behold your King ! " 
 
 Thus, in a fashion worse than tragic, 
 was Victor Emmanuel called to the throne. 
 He was then twenty-nine years of age, a 
 broad-shouldered, thick-set young man of 
 middle height. The chief characteristics of 
 his homely face were a stubborn jaw and a 
 snub nose. His ruddy cheeks, full beard 
 and fierce moustache were commonplace 
 enough, but his flashing dark eyes redeemed 
 his face, and, with his strong jaw, gave it 
 purpose and character. 
 
 The ignominy of his first royal duties 
 furnished him with a bitter recollection 
 throughout his life ; he had to patch up 
 an armistice with Austria preparatory to a 
 peace which entaUed the payment of a 
 heavy war indemnity by his unhappy coun- 
 try. His first entry as King into his capital 
 of Turin had to be made secretly and at 
 night, so roused was the people against the 
 crown by the failure of the war. A chill 
 silence was his greeting on his first appear- 
 ance in public ; and stormy scenes followed 
 the announcement in Parliament of the 
 terms of peace he had been forced to accept. 
 
 io6 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 The occupation of Piedmont by 20,000 
 Austrian troops was a sore blow to Pied- 
 montese pride, and the assembly ungen- 
 erously blamed the young King for the humi- 
 liation. 
 
 He took a short way with them ; the 
 Parhament had been elected in a frenzy 
 of war fever, and he dissolved it. He con- 
 sulted Massimo d'Azeglio, who consented 
 to form a ministry, though the task was 
 a distastefvil one. Having undertaken it, 
 Azeglio carried it through with touching 
 loyalty, and the universal respect in which 
 he was held did much to smooth the ruffled 
 relations between people and King. It was 
 Azeglio who suggested the catchword that 
 was later in the mouths of all his subjects. 
 
 " There have been so few honest kings 
 in this world," suggested the Minister, " that 
 it would not be a bad idea to initiate a 
 series." 
 
 "What, must I play a part of honest 
 king ? " asked the smiling monarch. 
 
 " Why not ? Let us hold that a king, 
 as well as an obscure person, has one word 
 only, and by that he must stand." 
 
 " In that case the profession seems an 
 easy one." 
 
 107 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 "And the Re Galantuomo, we have him 
 now," rephed Azegho. 
 
 The phrase caught the King's fancy, and 
 when he was asked to sign the census papers 
 in Turin he filled the column headed 
 Profession with the words " Re Galantu- 
 omo." 
 
 He had to dissolve another Parliament 
 before he could settle the terms of peace, 
 and then his hands were free for the necessary 
 work of consolidating the constitution. At 
 once he encountered the clerical opposition 
 which was to last throughout his life. The 
 existence in Piedmont of an ecclesiastical 
 Court, which assumed jurisdiction over 
 all ecclesiastics — and the number of these 
 was legion — constituted a legal anomaly 
 that had to be swept away. By every 
 means available the clergy fought against 
 the proposal ; they even influenced his 
 own mother to throw her great power with 
 him into their side of the scale. He lis- 
 tened, but was unmoved in his decision. 
 He tried to persuade the Pope to act as 
 mediator between him and his bishops, but 
 failed ; he stiU stood firm. When his people 
 grasped the fact that he put justice before 
 the threats of the Clergy and the entreaties 
 
 io8 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 of his mother, they began to understand 
 and love him. 
 
 This affection deepened as the breach 
 between the King and the clerics widened, 
 as it did, because of fresh legislation further 
 restricting the enormous influence of the 
 clergy. An incident which entirely turned 
 popular feeling to his side arose out of the 
 death of one of his Ministers, Santarosa, a 
 devout Catholic. He was refused absolu- 
 tion because of his position in the Ministry, 
 and his dying hours were embittered by 
 the violence of a priest, who actually pene- 
 trated to his bedside and disturbed his last 
 moments with vulgar abuse. A special envoy 
 to the Pope sent from Turin to complain 
 of this outrage received no satisfaction ; 
 and so the quarrel intensified in bitter- 
 ness. The death of Santarosa made way 
 for Cavour in the cabinet ; later the illness 
 of Azeglio left him the only man to carry 
 through the anti-clerical laws. Cavour re- 
 mained the master spirit of Italy from that 
 day until his untimely death. 
 
 Coincident with the climax of the quarrel 
 with the priests came a series of domestic 
 afflictions whereby the King lost his mother, 
 his wife, and his only brother in the space 
 
 109 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 of a few months. In the worst days of his 
 grief his clerical enemies did not scruple to 
 proclaim publicly from their pulpits that the 
 curse of God had descended upon the man 
 who had impiously bereft Mother Church 
 of her privileges. The sympathy of his 
 subjects was manifested in countless ways 
 in those sorrowful da}^, and in part atoned 
 to him for the obloquy that was showered 
 upon him. His courageous dealing with 
 the religious houses was not affected in any 
 way by his bereavements, and the moral 
 that was drawn from them ; but his suffer- 
 ings at this period aged him both in appear- 
 ance and manner. 
 
 It was Cavour who suggested that travel 
 might heal the wounds of his spirit and 
 planned his visits to London and Paris. 
 He failed to touch the imagination of London, 
 but in Paris he achieved an instant popu- 
 larity. During this visit to Paris the Emperor 
 put to him the famous question that haunted 
 Cavour during the years to follow : " And 
 what can we do for Italy ? " 
 
 If any understanding of his real qualities 
 were still lacking among his subjects and 
 the people of the rest of Italy, it came with 
 the approach of war, and with its actual 
 
 no 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 outbreak. The King flung himself into the 
 business of war with an ardour that warmed 
 every heart, " Now I shall sign nothing 
 more," he said with a great sigh of relief, 
 when he had executed the deed which made 
 Prince Carignano Regent. His presence 
 on the battlefield inspirited his own soldiers 
 and those of his allies as well ; the difficulty 
 was to keep him out of unnecessary danger. 
 An incident of the battle of Palestro has 
 recently been recalled by the Third Regiment 
 of French Zouaves, a detachment of which 
 encountered the King on the battlefield, 
 riding forward to almost certain death. 
 The Sergeant and Corporal held the bridle 
 of his horse, while the men fell thick around 
 him, and in spite of his remonstrances de- 
 tained him there. After the battle was 
 won, he had himself made Corporal of the 
 regiment, which has ever since borne his 
 colours on the regimental flag. When Italy 
 declared war on Austria in 1915, the Regi- 
 ment offered to his grandson. King Victor 
 Emmanuel III, the rank of Corporal, an 
 honour which was accepted in the spirit in 
 which it was tendered. 
 
 The first meeting of Victor Emmanuel 
 and Garibaldi took place at Milan after 
 
 III 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 the battle of Magenta, and the King at once 
 established the hold on Garibaldi's respect 
 and affection which he retained ever after- 
 wards, to the great advantage of the Italian 
 cause. Mazzini grumbled that with the 
 King Garibaldi was as weak as water ; a 
 bluff word and a pat on the back and Victor 
 Emmanuel had his own way. It was well 
 that somebody could deter the General 
 from the ill-considered enterprises to which 
 his own rashness and the fanatical repub- 
 licanism of Mazzini sometimes prompted 
 him. For Garibaldi the King could do no 
 wrong, and others had to accept the blame 
 for slights which need never have occurred, 
 had the King chosen to prevent it. 
 
 The end of the war defined the relations 
 between Cavour and the King. The peace 
 made by Napoleon at Villafranca was not 
 acceptable to Cavour, who urged the King 
 not to be bound by it ; but Victor Em- 
 manuel's common sense was superior to 
 the resentment of his great Minister. 
 Cavour's remonstrances, delivered in the 
 overbearing manner he assumed when he 
 was deeply in earnest, and had to encounter 
 opposition, gave the King a genuine cause 
 for offence. The greatest mutual respect 
 
 112 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 characterized their intercourse for the future, 
 and usually a close agreement of opinion 
 on essential points. But there was under- 
 standing without affection, or even any- 
 great liking. The King grumbled that when 
 involved in any public ceremony where 
 Cavour appeared, he always felt like the 
 tenor at the opera, leading on the prima 
 donna for acclamation ; a humorous grumble, 
 but expressive of the relations between the 
 two men. For Cavour, with his ingrained 
 and reasoned belief in the system of con- 
 stitutional monarchy, there was only one 
 great man in the realm, the King. And on 
 these terms a close and effective working 
 arrangement was maintained by two great 
 men, between whom there was no instinctive 
 liking. 
 
 In Victor Emmanuel, as in the three of 
 his subjects who, in their different ways, 
 all lived to the same end as he, the yearning 
 for a free and United Italy was a single life 
 purpose. It peeps out of every one of his 
 public utterances, it rings triumphantly in 
 the last speech he made from the throne 
 before his triumphal entry into Rome. 
 " With Rome as the capital of Italy, I 
 have fulfilled my promise and crowned the 
 
 113 H 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 enterprise that, twenty-three years ago, was 
 initiated under the auspices of my mag- 
 nanimous father. Both as a monarch and 
 as a son my heart thrills with a solemn joy, 
 as I salute all the representatives of our 
 beloved country gathered here together for 
 the last time and pronounce the words : 
 Italy is free and united, it only depends on 
 us to make her great and happy." 
 
 " We are at Rome, and here we remain," 
 he said when he took up his quarters at 
 the Palace of the Quirinal. And at Rome 
 he was buried ; his tomb may be seen in the 
 Pantheon, one of the few buildings of ancient 
 Rome spared by the ravages of time. To 
 such posthumous honour he was justly 
 entitled, as to the simple but majestic epi- 
 taph : "To the Father of his Country." 
 
 114 
 
ITALY AND FRANCE 
 
CHAPTER X 
 ITALY AND FRANCE 
 
 FRANCE, which had waded to freedom 
 through streams of blood, possibly 
 sympathized more vividly with Italy in 
 its struggle against the thraldom of the 
 absolutists than any other country of Europe. 
 The French people felt concretely what was 
 at best an abstraction with the men of 
 England ; their hearts told them what the 
 English drew from their reasoning powers. 
 The vicissitudes through which France 
 passed in the half century following Waterloo 
 made the expression of this sympathy fitful 
 and unrehable. If it constantly existed, 
 it was not able to find constant expression. 
 It was checked, too, by the very factor 
 which intensified British sympathy with 
 the Itahan nationalists. France was the 
 most Catholic country, as Great Britain 
 was the most Protestant. The French Re- 
 public sent its troops to Rome to crush 
 the Roman Repubhc at the bidding of 
 the Pope ; afterwards the French Emperor 
 
 117 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 garrisoned the city to preserve the Pope's 
 temporal power from the onslaught of the 
 apostles of Italian Unity. To this course 
 that strange man Napoleon III was driven by 
 the clericalists of France, whose support 
 maintained him on his throne, even when 
 his own sympathies and his own self-seek- 
 ing spurred him on to strike a blow for 
 Italian Liberty. 
 
 " What can we do for Italy ? " he had 
 asked Victor Emmanuel when the King 
 visited Paris. He spoke as the successor 
 of the great Napoleon, a role dear to him 
 at every period of his life. He dreamed 
 then, as he was always dreaming, of tearing 
 up the treaties of 1815, in the making of 
 which Austria had taken so important a 
 part. He knew that the gulf between Aus- 
 tria and Sardinia was slowly widening, as 
 it had been doing ever since 1849. But 
 he knew also that the Pope was in close 
 sympathy with the Italian princelings, who 
 were maintained on their thrones by Austrian 
 bayonets. He further knew that King Vic- 
 tor's visit to him was paid at the close of a 
 long wrangle with the Pope, and that Pius 
 IX had set his face against Sardinia, the 
 single state of Italy that was ruled by con- 
 stitutional methods. 
 
 118 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 The dilemma in which he was placed 
 reflected itself in his behaviour and con- 
 versation. The ministers most in his con- 
 fidence were quite unable to gauge from 
 his acts and speech what his real attitude 
 toward Italy might be. His hints of one 
 day were contradicted by his jests of the 
 next. This enigmatical conduct was in- 
 terrupted by the attempt made upon his 
 life by the Italian Orsini. It came in the 
 middle of a sustained effort by Cavour to 
 reach some arrangement whereby French 
 support might be assured for Italy against 
 Austria ; and it had the effect of putting 
 back the clock by at least a year. 
 
 Europe was all the more startled to hear 
 that Cavour and Napoleon had met " acci- 
 dentally " in the summer of 1858 at Plom- 
 bieres, and that in diplomatic circles great 
 importance was attached to the meeting. 
 The bluff King could not conceal his excite- 
 ment and satisfaction. " Next year," he 
 said soon after this meeting, " I shall be 
 King of Italy or plain M. de Savoie." Cavour 
 endeavoured to impose some discretion upon 
 him, but the significant conduct of Napo- 
 leon himself afforded even a better clue 
 to a Franco-Italian understanding. At the 
 diplomatic reception he held on January i, 
 
 119 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 1859, he blurted out a plain warning to the 
 Austrian ambassador, remarking to him with 
 painful distinctness, " I regret that our 
 relations are so strained; but tell your 
 sovereign that my feelings for him remain 
 unchanged." 
 
 Victor Emmanuel was all excitement, for 
 a few days later he was to open Parliament, 
 and he wished to make a speech that would 
 prepare Italy. After a long discussion with 
 Cavour, a speech was drafted and sent to 
 Napoleon for approval, and he added one 
 or two significant phrases to it. As de- 
 livered by Victor Emmanuel, with loud 
 emphasis and flashing eyes, its concluding 
 sentences rang through Italy like a clarion 
 caU. " Our country, small in territory, has 
 acquired credit in the Councils of Europe, 
 because she is great in the idea she repre- 
 sents, in the sympathy that she inspires. 
 The situation is not exempt from perils, 
 for, while we respect treaties, we are not 
 insensible to the cry of anguish that comes 
 up to us from many parts of Italy. Strong 
 in concord, confident in our good right, 
 we await with prudence and resolution the 
 decrees of Divine providence." 
 
 The effect of this speech, and especially 
 of the reference to the " cry of anguish," is 
 
 120 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 described by Massari, a Neapolitan exile 
 who was present in the Chamber and heard 
 it. " Senators, deputies, spectators, all 
 sprang to their feet with a bound, and broke 
 into passionate acclamations. . . . The face 
 of the ambassador for Naples was covered 
 with a gloomy pallor. We poor exiles did 
 not even attempt to wipe away the tears 
 that flowed copiously, unrestrainedly, from 
 our eyes, as we frantically clapped our hands 
 in applause of that King who had remembered 
 our sorrows, who had promised us a country." 
 And now the young patriots throughout 
 Italy began to prepare for a great struggle. 
 Quietly they gathered together what money 
 they could, and quietly they slipped away 
 from the prince-ridden principalities of the 
 centre and south to the rall5dng point in 
 Piedmont. The alarm of the Powers was 
 shown by the anxiety of Great Britain to 
 keep the peace, and by her reiterated pro- 
 posals for a conference to discuss the affairs 
 of Italy. The Austrian Government would 
 hear of no conference at which Sardinia 
 was represented, and demanded that the 
 army in Piedmont should disarm. Cavour 
 refused to disarm unless Austria should 
 first set the example, and the situation 
 grew more strained. 
 
 121 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Another meeting took place between 
 Cavour and Napoleon, where a bargain 
 was undoubtedly made. The betrothal of 
 the King's daughter to Prince Jerome Bona- 
 parte followed, though the Emperor dis- 
 claimed any significance for the alliance. 
 Now Cavour strove by all the means in his 
 power to put Austria quite in the wrong ; 
 Great Britain, on the other hand, worked 
 incessantly to prevent an open breach. As 
 a last effort, the proposal was made by 
 England that both Austria and Sardinia 
 should disarm simultaneously, and this pro- 
 posal Cavour could not shelve. He had 
 to accept, with anguish of soul ; but Austria 
 had already issued her ultimatum, and the 
 die was cast for war. 
 
 In the campaign that followed the allied 
 arms of Italy and France proved irre- 
 sistible. The Austrians were defeated at 
 Montebello on May 20, and again at Palestro 
 on May 30. The disaster of Magenta fol- 
 lowed on June 4, and the victors entered 
 Milan in triumph on June 8. Then came 
 the great double battle of Solferino and 
 San Martino, on June 24, and the power 
 of Austria in Italy was crushed for ever. 
 This was the moment chosen by Napoleon, 
 who had vowed to free Italy " from the Alps 
 
 122 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 to the Adriatic," to ask for an armistice. 
 It was granted, and signed at Villafranca 
 on July 12. Victor Emmanuel was to have 
 Lombardy, the banished princes were to 
 return, the Austrians were to retain Venetia, 
 and the Pope was to undertake certain 
 reforms in administration. 
 
 This armistice will always remain the 
 most insoluble of all the puzzles afforded by 
 the tortuous career of Napoleon. Venetia 
 lay at the feet of the Allies ; the task he 
 had undertaken now remained easy of full 
 accomplishment ; and in that moment he 
 turned back when complete victory was 
 in his grasp. " Poor Italy ! " sighed the 
 King, resigning himself to the inevitable. 
 He signed the peace of Zurich " as far as it 
 concerns me " and faced the resignation 
 of Cavour and his colleagues the more 
 philosophically because Cavour had over- 
 stepped all bounds in remonstrance with him. 
 
 But Tuscany and Parma were not so 
 resigned. The provisional governments set 
 up in these Duchies after the flight of their 
 rulers would not hear of the return of those 
 minor notabilities. They took plebiscites 
 of the people, who were practically unani- 
 mous in their demand for annexation by 
 Victor Emmanuel. Cavour recovered from 
 
 123 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 the nervous anger that had prostrated him 
 in time to resume the reins and go to nego- 
 tiate with Napoleon terms for his consent 
 to this annexation. The terms exacted by 
 the French Emperor went far beyond the 
 original bargain ; for he demanded the 
 city of Nice as well as Savoy, which had 
 been the extent of the original agreement. 
 
 Cavour had to be content to be squeezed, 
 and took all the responsibility for the bar- 
 gain ; a heavy responsibility as it afterwards 
 proved, for Garibaldi never forgave him 
 bartering away his native city of Nice. 
 Abuse was showered upon Napoleon by 
 the Party of Action for the robbery, as they 
 termed it. But it remains to be said that 
 the greater part of Savoy was certainly 
 more French than Italian, and even Nice 
 cannot be claimed as geographically a part 
 of Italy, in the same sense that Venice 
 is an integral part of the Kingdom. 
 
 The demand made by Napoleon, and 
 his insistence on its fulfilment, destroyed 
 the Italian faith in his disinterestedness, 
 and the persistence with which he main- 
 tained his troops in Rome during the years 
 that followed did not make for good feeling 
 between the two nations. But Italy could 
 not afford to cherish any grudges, especially 
 
 124 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 as Napoleon and the Pope were not on 
 good terms personally. The Emperor con- 
 sented to stand by while the Italian army 
 invaded and annexed Umbria and the Eas- 
 tern Marches, stipulating only that Rome 
 should not be touched. He had also re- 
 frained from interfering with the passage of 
 Garibaldi from Sicily to Naples, though 
 for that Italy had the good offices of Great 
 Britain chiefly to thank. 
 
 The Emperor Napoleon was also the inter- 
 mediary between Austria and Italy when 
 the transfer of Venetia back to its own 
 country was effected. There was little glory 
 for Italy in the means by which this terri- 
 tory was regained, since it was the direct 
 outcome of a war in which the Italians by 
 no means distinguished themselves, whether 
 by land or sea. In a word, Venice was 
 regained because the ambitions and interests 
 of Prussia permitted it. 
 
 In 1866 the rivalry between Austria and 
 Prussia for premier position among the 
 Teutonic races came to a head, and war 
 being inevitable, Prussia was cunning enough 
 to see how terribly Austria would be ham- 
 pered if Italy attacked her at the same time. 
 An alliance was thereupon concluded between 
 the two nations, Italy undertaking to help 
 
 125 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Prussia to reform the constitution of Ger- 
 many. Prussia, on the other hand, promised 
 to restore Venetia to Italy, and the Trentino 
 as well, if that territory should be actually 
 in the occupation of Italy when hostilities 
 were concluded. As soon as the pact was 
 made, Austria attempted to seduce Italy 
 from her alliance by an offer of Venetia 
 there and then, and this offer was made 
 through the Emperor Napoleon. But Italy 
 was no treaty breaker, and the temptation 
 was set aside. 
 
 War began in June 1866, and on the 24th 
 of that month the Italians met their ancient 
 enemies on the field of Custozza, the scene 
 of a former defeat. The battle was con- 
 tested by both sides with the utmost ob- 
 stinacy, but eventually the Italians were 
 forced to retreat. Their allies proved more 
 effective in the field, and the advantage of 
 their needle-guns made the battle of Sadowa 
 one of the most decisive of the nineteenth 
 century. The Austrians were quick to recog- 
 nize that they were in a hopeless plight, and 
 the cession of Venetia to Napoleon followed 
 quickly on the battle of Sadowa. Once 
 more Napoleon strove to separate Italy 
 from her allies, but without success. The 
 
 126 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 Italians were averse from any dealings with 
 him, and were also eager to wipe away 
 the stain of Custozza. 
 
 Popular feeling was at this time much 
 roused by the inactivity of the Italian fleet, 
 and Admiral Persano, who commanded it, 
 was ordered to attack Trieste. Instead of 
 doing so, he turned his ships against the 
 fortress of Lissa, on the Istrian coast, and 
 as a consequence some of his vessels were 
 badly damaged. While they were in this plight, 
 they were attacked by the Austrian squadron 
 from Pola, under Admiral Tegethoff, who 
 gained a notable victory in the face of the 
 superior strength of the Italians. Lissa was 
 fought on July 20, and on July 26 an armis- 
 tice between Prussia and Austria brought 
 the hostilities to a close, without giving 
 the Italians a chance to regain their lost 
 laurels. 
 
 In spite of the terms of the alliance, Prus- 
 sia made a separate peace with Austria ; 
 though Bismarck, in referring to Italy's 
 loyalty to her ally, said in the Prussian 
 Parliament, " We had a powerful support 
 in the immutable loyalty of Italy ; a loyalty 
 which I cannot sufficiently praise, or too 
 highly appreciate." 
 
 127 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 Italy's hesitation in making peace arose 
 out of her claim to Trieste and the Trentino, 
 a claim which Prussia would not endorse ; 
 nor would Napoleon. In a letter to the 
 King, the Emperor of the French expressed 
 his anxiety to hand over Venetia as soon 
 as possible ; and as there was no object in 
 remaining obdurate, Italy accepted the 
 province and signed the peace of Vienna 
 on October 3, 1867. 
 
 After the fall of the Emperor, the rela- 
 tions between the two countries showed 
 a sense of strain. The Catholics of France 
 disliked intensely the destruction of the 
 temporal power, and there was talk in 
 Paris of restoring the Pope. The Italians, 
 on their side, could not readily forgive 
 Mentana. Italy began a Tariff war on 
 France, although the bulk of Italian securi- 
 ties were held in France ; Paris retorted 
 by a display of financial hostility, which 
 sent Italian securities reeling down the 
 market, to the great disadvantage of Rome, 
 where a building boom collapsed, and heavy 
 financial stringency followed. Breaking point 
 was almost reached when the French pro- 
 claimed a protectorate over Tunis, with results 
 which are detailed in another chapter. 
 
 128 
 
THE STORY OF THE THOUSAND 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE STORY OF THE THOUSAND 
 
 WHILE the negotiations for the uni- 
 fication of Central Italy were in 
 progress, Garibaldi was gathering round him 
 at Genoa a band of devoted volunteers 
 eager for fresh work in the active redemp- 
 tion of Italy. The objective he had in his 
 mind was the Papal territory, and that 
 also was the goal of the Mazzinists, who sup- 
 ported him with money and weapons, work- 
 ing through Dr. Bertani. He was only 
 deterred from this objective by the King 
 himself, who sent for him and represented 
 the objections to an attack upon the Pope, 
 when so much was already at stake. Touched 
 by the confidence of the King, and per- 
 suaded by the strong reasons he advanced. 
 Garibaldi consented to abandon his enter- 
 prise in that direction, much to the disgust 
 of the Mazzinists. 
 But the General had not long to wait for 
 131 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 a good chance of spirited action. In the 
 spring of i860 Sicily rose; in Palermo, 
 Messina, and Catania the standard of revolt 
 was raised once more. Garibaldi was not 
 going to be deterred this time, though indeed 
 no one really wished to stop him. " I know," 
 he wrote to the King, " that I embark on a 
 perilous enterprise. If we achieve it, I shall 
 be proud to add to your Majesty's crown 
 a new and perhaps more glorious jewel, 
 always on condition that your Majesty 
 will stand opposed to counsellors who would 
 cede this province to the foreigner, as has 
 been done with the city of my birth." 
 
 Garibaldi's right hand man was Bixio, 
 whose men would follow him anywhere 
 in spite of his arrogance of manner and 
 surprising disciplinary methods. Some of 
 his command once complained to Garibaldi 
 of his treatment of them. He had beaten 
 them with the flat of his sword and had 
 swept aside all objection with the declara- 
 tion, " I command here. I am everything. 
 I am Czar, Sultan, Pope. I am Nino Bixio. 
 I must be obeyed like God. If you dare to 
 shrug your shoulders or to think of mutiny- 
 ing, I will come in my uniform, sabre in 
 hand, and cut you to pieces." 
 
 132 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 Garibaldi listened in patience, and then 
 remarked that it was all very sad ; with 
 whom did they wish to serve ? " With 
 Nino Bixio, of course/' came the answer in 
 chorus, and then they burst into shamefaced 
 laughter when they realized the meaning 
 of their admission. 
 
 A more prudent counsellor, if not such a 
 whirlwind fighter, was Cosenz, who followed 
 Garibaldi and joined him in Sicily. He, 
 and his colleague Medici, proved invaluable 
 advisers to the General, and served their 
 country well by restraining him from some 
 of the imprudences to which his impetuous 
 nature and his fiery comrades prompted him. 
 
 The rank and file of the redshirts were 
 young men of the cities, students, young 
 professional men, merchants, shopkeepers 
 and mechanics. They were actuated by 
 two motives : their passionate desire for 
 the freedom of Italy, and their supreme 
 confidence in their leader. The expedition 
 sailed from Quarto, near Genoa, in May i860. 
 
 The attitude of the Sardinian government 
 toward it can best be judged by Cavour's 
 instructions to Admiral Persano, in charge 
 of the Sardinian fleet. Should Garibaldi 
 land at an Italian port he was to be arrested ; 
 
 133 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 the fleet was to keep between the expedition 
 and the warships of Naples. To which 
 Persano telegraphed the brief reply, " I 
 understand." 
 
 The landing was safely effected, and the 
 city of Palermo, strongly held by a garrison 
 of 20,000 men, was captured almost before 
 Europe had reahzed what was in the wind. 
 The redshirts swept across the island, rein- 
 forced by the revolting Sicilians, and in a 
 few weeks Garibaldi had won the great 
 battle of Milazzo, and had driven the for- 
 eigner out of Sicily. Reinforcements under 
 sound leaders such as Medici and Cosenz 
 had reached him from the North, and he 
 now prepared to cross to the mainland 
 and complete the conquest of the kingdom 
 of Naples. 
 
 By this time reactionary Europe was 
 seriously alarmed. A French squadron lay 
 off Gaeta, and held the key to the position. 
 Napoleon proposed that Great Britain, 
 which had warships at Sicily and Naples 
 at the time, should co-operate to prevent 
 Garibaldi from crossing ; but Great Britain 
 saw no reason to interfere. The crossing 
 was made, and on September 7, i860, 
 Garibaldi made a triumphant entry into 
 
 134 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 Naples. The country rose to greet him ; 
 King Francis fled to the stronghold of Gaeta, 
 and that city and Capua alone remained 
 to the Bourbon throne. For some reason 
 Napoleon kept his fleet off Gaeta, thus 
 hindering the reduction of the place ; in 
 the end the ships were only withdrawn 
 after strong representations made by the 
 British government. 
 
 Garibaldi caused himself to be proclaimed 
 Dictator of the realm of Naples, and Maz- 
 zini, who had remarkable influence with him, 
 made his way to the city to meet him. The 
 position was a critical one ; the promptings 
 of Mazzini fully accorded with Garibaldi's 
 own wish to retain the Dictatorship until 
 he could proclaim King Emmanuel as King 
 of Italy in Rome itself. The stubbornness 
 of Capua and Gaeta alone prevented him 
 from attempting to put this suicidal plan 
 into practice. 
 
 Cavour knew that an attack upon Rome 
 would certainly involve the intervention 
 of France, which still garrisoned the city. 
 With difficulty he obtained the tacit approval 
 of Napoleon to an expedition against the 
 Eastern Marches and Umbria, the condition 
 being that no attempt should be made on 
 
 135 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Rome itself. The Sardinian army was hur- 
 ried South, and the Papal volunteers, under 
 General Lamoriciere, went out to meet 
 them, the French troops remaining behind 
 in Rome. Many of these papal troops were 
 brave Irishmen, whose enthusiasm for the 
 Church had taken them to Rome to help in 
 the defence of the Temporal power ; in fact, 
 the Pope's army included the devout sol- 
 diery of all nations. Well led by Generals 
 Fanti and Cialdini, the northern army in- 
 flicted a disastrous defeat on them at Castel- 
 fidardo, and the Pope was shorn of Umbria 
 and the Eastern Marches. 
 
 Meanwhile the Neapolitan army had 
 rallied, and waited for the Garibaldians in 
 a strong position on the river Volturno. 
 In spite of considerable accessions in num- 
 bers. Garibaldi had much the smaller army, 
 and his later volunteers were not of the same 
 quality as those who had followed him 
 through the campaign in Sicily. But noth- 
 ing could stand against him ; Francis saw 
 his last hope gone, and again fled for refuge 
 into Gaeta. The battle of Volturno was 
 possibly the most brilliant of all the exploits 
 of Garibaldi in the field, and it was as 
 decisive as it was brilliant. 
 
 136 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 And now the King travelled South to 
 meet the Dictator ; the victorious army 
 of the crown and the victorious volunteers 
 rapidly converged. The position was a 
 piquant one ; all Europe held its breath, 
 and wondered what Garibaldi would do. 
 He supplied the answer in a proclamation 
 to his troops, couched in the generous vein 
 that was so characteristic of him : " Our 
 brothers of the Italian army, commanded 
 by the brave General Cialdini, are fighting 
 the enemies of Italy and conquering. The 
 army of Lamoriciere has been defeated by 
 these brave men. All the provinces subject 
 to the Pope are free. Ancona is ours. 
 Our brave soldiers of the Northern army 
 have passed the frontier, and are now on 
 Neapolitan territory. We shall soon have 
 the good fortune to press these victorious 
 hands." 
 
 Next he took a plebiscite of the people 
 of Naples and Sicily, who were asked to 
 return the answer " Yes " or " No " to 
 the proposal " The people wishes for Italy 
 one and indivisible, with Victor Emmanuel 
 as constitutional King and his legitimate 
 descendants after him." The voting was : 
 Yes, 1,734,117; No, 10,979. 
 
 137 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Then Garibaldi issued another proclama- 
 tion, his farewell as Dictator of Naples : — 
 
 " To-morrow, Victor Emmanuel, the elect 
 of the nation, will break down the frontier 
 which has divided us for so many centuries 
 from the rest of the country, and listening 
 to the unanimous voice of this brave people, 
 will appear amongst us. Let us worthily 
 receive him who is sent by Providence, and 
 scatter in his path, as the pledge of our 
 redemption and our affection, the flowers 
 of concord, to him so grateful, to us so 
 necessary. No more political colours, no 
 more parties, no more discords. Italy one, 
 under the King Galantuomo, who is the 
 symbol of our regeneration and the pros- 
 perity of our country." 
 
 Before he laid aside his power, a dramatic 
 meeting took place in a valley of the Vajrano 
 Hills, between King and Dictator. Gari- 
 baldi was attired in the picturesque fashion 
 of his campaigns, with a ired shirt and a 
 bright handkerchief wound round his head 
 under his broad-brimmed hat. As the King 
 rode forward to meet him he swept off his 
 hat and cried aloud : "I hail the first 
 King of Italy." The two men clasped 
 hands in a long grip. 
 
 138 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 " How goes it, dear Garibaldi ? " asked 
 the King simply. 
 
 " Well, your Majesty ; and you ? " 
 
 " First-rate." 
 
 " Then," writes Trevelyan, " they rode 
 on together, and the two staffs behind them, 
 redshirts side by side with resplendent 
 uniforms, crosses and cordons of honour. 
 It was an epitome of the union of conserva- 
 tive and revolutionary forces that had 
 crushed the obscurantists and expelled the 
 foreigners. The constrained conversation 
 between the two groups betrayed the heart- 
 burnings on either side, and the grudging 
 sacrifices that each was making for the 
 other. But although there was cold polite- 
 ness where there should have been enthusiasm, 
 none the less that ride together was the 
 making of Italy, and seen down history's 
 lengthening vista, remains evermore a goodly 
 sight." 
 
 The remainder of the conquest of Naples 
 can be told in a very few words. Capua 
 fell to General della Rocca, who accepted the 
 help of Garibaldi's volunteers in the same 
 spirit of generous patriotism in which it 
 was proffered by their leader, who was ill. 
 Gaeta, too, fell to Fanti and Cialdini, and 
 
 139 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 nothing remained but the entry of the King 
 into Naples. But the triumph was marred 
 by an unfortunate insult to the Garibaldians, 
 which Cavour appears to have foreseen and 
 striven to prevent. He had written to 
 Farini, the member of his cabinet in atten- 
 dance on the King, " If Garibaldi's army 
 acclaims the King it must be treated well. 
 Woe to us if we show ourselves ungrateful 
 to those who have shed their blood for Italy. 
 Europe would condemn us." 
 
 It was arranged that on November 6 the 
 King should review the Garibaldians at 
 Caserta ; that the Generals should be pre- 
 sented to him, and that the men should 
 march past. The volunteers were accord- 
 ingly drawn up, but the King did not attend, 
 nor did he send any apology ; nor was any 
 explanation of his absence o:ffered at any 
 future time. It can only be supposed that 
 he had yielded to the influence of General 
 Fanti, who, as representing the Royal army, 
 never strove to conceal his hostility to the 
 volunteers. 
 
 On the same day there fell to General 
 Cialdini the thankless task of persuading 
 Garibaldi to enter Naples riding in the same 
 carriage as the King. Garibaldi used fear- 
 
 140 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 ful language about Fanti and especially 
 about the innocent Cavour, but finally 
 gave his consent. Accordingly, on Novem- 
 ber 8, i860, the King made his entry 
 into Naples to the plaudits of a wildly en- 
 thusiastic mob. With him in the carriage 
 was riding Garibaldi, who shared in the 
 ovation. Both men were out of temper, 
 and the whole occasion was spoiled by the 
 lack of courtesy that had been displayed by 
 the professional army men. 
 
 Garibaldi, who had given his King a 
 new realm, would accept nothing in return. 
 An estate for his elder son, a position as 
 royal Aide-de-camp for his son Riccioti, a 
 dower for his daughter, a castle and a yacht 
 for himself, were in turn refused. He sent 
 his secretary to a friend to borrow a small 
 sum of money ; this he laid out in the pur- 
 chase of seed wheat and a case of dried 
 codfish. He booked his passage on the 
 little tramp steamer Washington, said his 
 farewells to his friends, and returned to the 
 simple life of the island of Caprera. 
 
 141 
 
ROME AT LAST 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 ROME AT LAST 
 
 WHEN Victor Emmanuel sent his troops 
 to invade the Papal territory in 
 i860, he did so under an understanding 
 made with Napoleon III, after a great deal 
 of difficulty. Rome was held by a French 
 garrison, and it was the intention of Napo- 
 leon that his troops should stay there, since 
 the support of the clerical party in France 
 kept him on his throne. As far as it is 
 possible to understand the Emperor, it may 
 be surmised that his own sympathies were 
 with the Italian Nationalists, and that he 
 would gladly have seen an end of the tem- 
 poral power of the Pope, whom he personally 
 disliked. But the genuine feeling of one 
 section of his subjects, and the superstitions 
 of another, to whom Pius addressed his 
 periodical threats of excommunication, left 
 Napoleon no choice. 
 He ventured as far as he could possibly 
 145 K 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 go when he retained his troops in Rome, 
 and left the Papal troops the task of meeting 
 the northern army under Fanti and Cialdini. 
 The Pope submitted with a very bad grace 
 to the loss of Umbria and the Eastern 
 Marches, just as the Nationalists bore the 
 continued occupation of Venetia by Austria 
 with sullen impatience. A resolution of the 
 ItaUan Parliament, that Rome should be 
 the future capital of the kingdom, did noth- 
 ing to relieve the apprehensions of the Pope, 
 which were continually excited by the plans 
 of the Party of Action, which regarded 
 Rome as a necessary possession of a freed 
 Italy. 
 
 Cavour, with his customary penetration, 
 was content to leave the Roman question 
 to the healing influence of time, but spared 
 no effort to advance what he considered the 
 first step in the right direction, the evacua- 
 tion of the city by the French garrison. To 
 that end he was moving when death inter- 
 vened to prevent his realization of his last 
 ambition for Italy : a free Church in a free 
 State. It had been his plan gradually to 
 accustom the Catholic nations to the idea 
 of a Pope who should be solely a spiritual 
 ruler, divested of a temporal power which 
 
 146 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 had proved only an obligation and a respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 Freed from his retaining hand, the Party 
 of Action began at once to plan a conquest 
 of Rome on lines similar to that of Naples. 
 Garibaldi was ready, as he was ready for 
 any dangerous work on behalf of his loved 
 Italy. Ratazzi, the Prime Minister, was 
 understood to be sympathetic ; the men and 
 the money were available. What easier 
 than to repeat the coup of i860 ? But 
 Ratazzi was no Cavour, the necessary under- 
 standing with the French had not been made, 
 and Garibaldi's first move elicited a threat 
 from the Emperor that he would occupy 
 Naples unless the Italian government took 
 active steps to crush the revolt. Thus it 
 became necessary for the King to issue a 
 proclamation branding as traitors all men 
 who exceeded the limits of the law and 
 were guilty of aggressive action, and to send 
 an army to Rome to check the rising. 
 
 The climax was a sorry one ; the royal 
 army encountered the Garibaldians at Aspro- 
 monte, shots were fired, and Garibaldi him- 
 self was wounded in the foot, and taken 
 prisoner. The mishap to Garibaldi was a 
 very genuine source of sorrow to the King, 
 
 147 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 who saw, moreover, that a solution of the 
 Roman question had been indefinitely de- 
 layed. All attempts to end a painful situa- 
 tion by diplomacy broke on the rugged 
 obstinacy of the Pope himself. The King 
 offered to assume a great part of the papal 
 debt, and finally arranged with Napoleon 
 for the gradual withdrawal of the French 
 garrison. But Pius met all overtures with 
 his invariable non possumus, and busied 
 himself with organizing a papal army to re- 
 place the departing French garrison. 
 
 In 1866 the nationalists were once more 
 stirred to their depths by the recovery of 
 Venice, and the impatient Garibaldi again 
 began to contemplate action. He was 
 arrested on the very first indication of a 
 move on his part, but was allowed to go 
 to Caprera without so much as his parole 
 being exacted from him. Napoleon had 
 kept his engagement, and the French garri- 
 son had been gradually withdrawn ; but 
 this seemed to Garibaldi all the better 
 reason for trying once more to plant the 
 national flag on the Capitol. In the days 
 of the Republic he had received an appoint- 
 ment as generalissimo of the Roman army, 
 an appointment which had never been can- 
 
 148 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 celled ■ and which he chose to regard as 
 still existent. His son was already gather- 
 ing a force of volunteers ; and nothing 
 short of actual restraint could keep the old 
 warrior away from Rome, 
 
 As Roman generalissimo he now issued 
 a proclamation to his volunteers, having 
 evaded the watch set on him at Caprera 
 and arrived on the mainland. " If these 
 my volunteers, champions of liberty and 
 Italian Unity, wish to have Rome as the 
 capital of Italy, fulfilling the vote of Parha- 
 ment and the nation, they must not put 
 down their arms until Italy shall have ac- 
 quired hberty of conscience and worship, 
 built upon the ruin of Jesuitism, and until 
 the soldiers of tjnrants shall have been ban- 
 ished from our land." 
 
 The French had already landed, and were 
 armed with modem chassepots. Garibaldi's 
 volunteers were ill-disciplined and worse 
 armed, and bore no comparison with the 
 famous legion of 1859. The armies met at 
 Mentana, where there was a terrible slaugh- 
 ter of Garibaldians. Some fought bravely 
 enough, the rest " ran like rabbits," as 
 Garibaldi himself testifies. He disbanded 
 what remained, and crossed the frontier 
 
 149 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 to be arrested and confined until the excite- 
 ment was over. Thus the French returned 
 once more to Rome, and Victor Emmanuel 
 seemed to be farther away from the final 
 goal than ever before. The King himself 
 wrote a fine sincere letter to Napoleon, 
 imploring him to withdraw his soldiers 
 from Rome even at the risk of a break 
 with the clerical party, but his advice was 
 rejected. For the next generation Men- 
 tana remained a grievance against France 
 among Italian ultra-radicals >; indeed, its 
 memory has only been wiped away in these 
 latter days. 
 
 Napoleon and the temporal power were 
 destined to perish by the same stroke. A 
 Mazzinist attempt at revolt in 1869 gave 
 the French yet another excuse of continuing 
 their occupation of the city, and a still 
 greater disappointment ensued from the 
 sitting of the Vatican council in the same 
 year. In his speech from the throne the 
 King had expressed a pious hope that some 
 expression reconciling religious and civil 
 life would be issued as a result of its convo- 
 cation. 
 
 The proclamation of the dogma of papal 
 infallibility came as a sardonic comment 
 
 150 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 on this hope, and illustrated the wide gap 
 that existed between Church and State and 
 Italy. 
 
 But now France was plunged into war with 
 Germany, and all other considerations were 
 lost in the struggle. The French garrison 
 was withdrawn from Rome as a matter of 
 course, but the King waited for the down- 
 fall of France before availing himself of the 
 opportunity created for him and Italy. The 
 proclamation of a French Republic left no 
 reason for further delay. Once more Victor 
 Emmanuel approached the Pope with a 
 letter, appeahng to him " with the affection 
 of a son, the loyalty of a King and the soul 
 of an Italian." Pio Nono replied that if 
 he must yield to force, he must ; but never 
 would he yield to injustice. 
 
 Force, therefore, had to be employed. 
 A note was issued to the Powers, giving 
 assurance that the spiritual province of 
 the Pope would be in no way attacked, and 
 that his liberty and personal independence 
 were assured. General Cadoma crossed the 
 frontier, and on September 19, 1870, his 
 soldiers camped under the walls of Rome. 
 A semblance of resistance was set up, in 
 accordance with the orders of the Pope ; 
 
 151 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 but at the first breach in the walls the white 
 flag was shown and the King's army entered 
 the city. To the defenders all the honours 
 of war were accorded, but they were made 
 to lay down their arms and disperse. A 
 plebiscite was then taken of the citizens ; 
 the vote of the Romans was : — 
 
 For the King .... 40,785 
 For the Pope .... 46 
 
 The position of the Pope was defined by 
 the Law of Papal Guarantees, consideration 
 of which occupied the last session of the 
 Italian Parliament at Florence. By this 
 law the person of the pontiff was made 
 sacred and inviolable, and offences against 
 it were made punishable by the same penal- 
 ties as offences against the person of the 
 King himself. An endowment of over 
 £1,200,000 a year for the Pope was provided, 
 and it was enacted that royal honours should 
 be paid to his Holiness ; the permanent 
 use of the Vatican, the Lateran and Castel 
 Gondolfo were ensured for him. Meetings 
 of the Papal Conclave and (Ecumenical 
 Councils were to be protected from external 
 violence, perquisitions or seizures of papal 
 documents were inhibited, and envoys to 
 the Pope were given the same prerogatives 
 
 152 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 as ambassadors to the King. The spiritual 
 freedom of the clergy and the clerical colleges 
 was guaranteed, and other protections for 
 the Cardinals and minor Ecclesiastics were 
 devised. 
 
 Pius IX had always refused to treat 
 with the King ; he persisted in his attitude. 
 He declined to accept the income provided 
 for him, and" preferred to rely upon the 
 generosity of his children in every land, 
 rather than to become the pensioner of 
 those who had stripped him of his civil 
 sovereignty " (Clery, The Making of Italy). 
 He bequeathed his attitude to his successor, 
 for having outlived Victor Emmanuel by 
 nearly a month, he died suddenly on Feb- 
 ruary 6, 1879. The first public utterance 
 of Leo Xni, his successor, showed that he 
 persisted in the claim to civil sovereignty. 
 
 The first Italian Parliament in Rome 
 met on November 27, 1871 ; and the meeting 
 provoked a demonstration of remarkable 
 enthusiasm. The opening sentence of the 
 King's speech from the throne, " The work 
 to which we have consecrated our life is 
 accomplished," was greeted with an out- 
 burst of cheering that, heard outside, was 
 taken up and repeated until it echoed through 
 
 153 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 the utmost streets of Rome. " After long 
 expiatory trials," continued the King," Italy 
 is restored to herself and to Rome. Here, 
 where our people, scattered for so many 
 centuries, find themselves for the first time 
 reassembled in the majesty of their repre- 
 sentatives ; here, where we recognize the 
 home of our thoughts, everything speaks 
 to us of grandeur, but at the same time 
 everything reminds us of our duties." 
 
 So, at last, a full national life began for 
 Italy. 
 
 154 
 
ITALY AND GREAT BRITAIN 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 ITALY AND GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 DURING a quarter of a century Great 
 Britain had strained every nerve to 
 shatter the power of Napoleon. Money was 
 expended with a freedom exceeded only by 
 the outlay of the Great War of to-day ; and 
 without the financial aid and the sea power 
 of Great Britain, Europe would assuredly 
 have been enslaved. When the day of 
 settlement came, the Italian question did 
 not bulk very large among the problems 
 to be disposed of, or most assuredly Met- 
 ternich would never have been able to 
 reduce Italy to " a geographical expression." 
 But when Great Britain realized the injus- 
 tice that had been done to Italy, the country 
 overflowed with indignation on the one hand, 
 and with sympathy on the other. 
 
 The withdrawal of the Duke of Wellington 
 from the Congress of Verona accentuated 
 
 157 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 the disagreement of the country with the 
 doctrine of interference ; Great Britain 
 emphatically laid down the principle that 
 no country had a right to interfere in the 
 internal affairs of another. That very pro- 
 test was a notable check to absolutism, the 
 foremost of the evils under which Italy 
 was suffering. 
 
 Great Britain was also the most Pro- 
 testant country. She was Protestant with 
 an abhorrence of Popery that is hardly 
 comprehended in these days of religious 
 tolerance. The nation was ready enough 
 to believe that Italy was suffering from 
 the civil power of the Church of Rome, and 
 to sympathize with the struggle against an 
 influence, the retarding effect of which was 
 possibly exaggerated — ^it certainly ran no 
 danger of being under-estimated — by the 
 Britons of the early Victorian era. 
 
 Nor was Great Britain long kept in the 
 dark as to the real state of affairs in Italy. 
 Those were the days when Englishmen com- 
 pleted their education by taking "the Grand 
 Tour," and when young men of ultra-liberal 
 opinions were sent to travel on the Con- 
 tinent in order to mellow their views. Many 
 of them became more radical than ever as 
 
 158 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 a consequence of what they saw, and among 
 these were most of the bright spirits who 
 made the hterature of the last century in 
 England. Shelley, Keats, and Byron all 
 saw with their own eyes the anguish of an 
 enchained Italy, and they spoke and wrote 
 of what they saw and knew. Byron was 
 himself a Carbonarist, and his experience 
 lost nothing in the telling. A later genera- 
 tion of English literary men, among them 
 Meredith, Swinburne, and the Brownings, 
 realized even more keenly the epic of free- 
 dom that was being lived and fought in 
 Italy. 
 
 English sympathy with Italian Nationalism, 
 EngUsh hatred of Popery, and British indig- 
 nation at the repression and cruelty exer- 
 cised by Austria were all qualified by another 
 British aspiration — the earnest desire for 
 peace. The country was launched on the 
 wave of industrial development that has 
 made the English the richest people in the 
 world ; the drain of the long and costly 
 wars was still remembered, and Great Britain 
 desired above all things to keep the peace, 
 and that other nations should be restrained 
 from bringing about anything hke another 
 general European war. And in this desire 
 
 159 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 may be found the explanation of Canning's 
 resolve to discourage by every means in his 
 power interference by one nation in the 
 internal affairs of another ; but to stop 
 short at actual war. 
 
 This policy toward Italy was consistently 
 carried out. Disapproval of the oppression 
 of the Italians was freely manifested ; indi- 
 vidual Britons showed their sympathies by 
 actual participation in Italian movements 
 for freedom, and were not checked by their 
 government ; London became a city of refuge 
 for the exiles who had dared and lost ; but 
 Great Britain never actively intervened on 
 Italy's behalf. 
 
 Probably this moral support never ap- 
 proached closer to actual intervention 
 than after the visit paid to Italy by Mr. 
 Gladstone in 185 1. He reached Naples just 
 before the trial of the patriot Poerio and 
 forty of his friends, and was induced by 
 Sir James Lacaita to attend the trial. All 
 other aspects of Italy lost interest for him, 
 he followed the trial through all its turnings, 
 and afterwards obtained the permission of 
 the authorities to visit the condemned men 
 in the prisons to which they were sent. He 
 incorporated all he saw in the most scathing 
 
 160 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 indictment of any government ever made 
 by so great a man as he. 
 
 The burning invective of his letters to 
 Lord Aberdeen rang from one end of Europe 
 to the other. " It is not mere imperfection, 
 not corruption in low practices, not occa- 
 sional severity that I am going to describe ; 
 it is incessant, systematic, deliberate violation 
 of the law by the power appointed to watch 
 over and maintain it. It is such violation 
 of human and written law as this, carried 
 on for the purpose of violating every other 
 law, written and eternal, temporal and 
 divine ; it is the wholesale persecution of 
 virtue when united with intelligence, operat- 
 ing upon such a scale that entire classes 
 may with truth be said to be its object ; it 
 is the awful profanation of public religion, 
 by its notorious alliance in the governing 
 powers with the violation of every moral 
 law under the stimulants of fear and ven- 
 geance ; it is the perfect prostitution of 
 the judicial office which has made it, under 
 veils only too threadbare and transparent, 
 the degraded recipient of the vilest and 
 clumsiest forgeries, got up immediately and 
 deUberately by the immediate advisers of 
 the Crown, for the purpose of destroying the 
 
 l6l L 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 peace, the freedom, aye, and even if not by 
 capital sentences, the hfe of men among the 
 most virtuous, upright, intelligent, dis- 
 tinguished and refined in the whole com- 
 munity. 
 
 " Law, instead of being respected, is 
 odious. The governing power, which states 
 of itself that it is the image of God upon 
 earth, is clothed in the view of the over- 
 whelming majority of the thinking public 
 with all the vices for its attributes. I have 
 seen and heard the too true expression used, 
 ' This is the negation of God erected into a 
 system of government. ' " 
 
 The evidence of his own personal ex- 
 periences, which Mr. Gladstone used to sup- 
 port his charges, could not be contraverted, 
 except in a minor detail here and there, 
 by the government of Naples, which was 
 ill-advised enough to issue a reply to the 
 letters, involving itself in a rejoinder even 
 more terrible in the intensity of its just 
 wrath. The exposure was complete, but 
 it did not even begin to be effective. The 
 state of British opinion was so vehement 
 that Cavour hoped for solid support ; he 
 even thought that he had obtained a pro- 
 mise of it from Clarendon in an interview in 
 
 163 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 Paris. In this respect he was disappointed, 
 and finally had to rely upon France for the 
 substantial aid which England would not 
 grant. 
 
 One must go back to the chronicles of the 
 time to realize in what utter detestation the 
 people and government of Great Britain 
 were held by the Continental powers because 
 of the sanctuary afforded there to the exiles 
 from every country. This feeling reached 
 an unimagined pitch of bitterness when the 
 attempt made upon the life of Napoleon 
 and the Empress Eugenie by Orsini was 
 traced to its hatching place in London. The 
 French General Gudin gave expression to the 
 feeling in his prayer that " the infamous den 
 where such infernal machinations are hatched 
 may be forever destroyed. The country 
 demands it with loud voice, and the army 
 would shed for it the last drops of its blood." 
 
 Popular sentiment in Great Britain was 
 not affected by such bombast, and when the 
 Austrian General Haynau, a man with a 
 very bad record, ventured to visit London, 
 he was mobbed and hustled alarmingly by 
 the draymen of Barclay's brewery, to the 
 ill-concealed joy of a lot of people, who ought 
 to have known better than to show it, includ- 
 
 163 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 ing Lord Palmerston himself. But the Queen 
 and her Consort, and the conservative Lord 
 Derby, looked on this Continental hostility 
 with open alarm, and a certain lack of sym- 
 pathy with Italy was apparent in the official 
 attitude. 
 
 A change was brought about by the defeat 
 of Lord Derby's government, for in the new 
 administration the chief men were Palmer- 
 ston, Lord John Russell and Gladstone, all 
 warm sympathizers with Italy. Cavour was 
 in the lobby of the House when the Derby 
 administration fell, and astonished those 
 present by the excitement he displayed. 
 He threw up his hat and then embraced 
 an unfortunate French Charge d' Affaires who 
 happened to be standing next him, to the 
 great scandal of the undemqnstrative English- 
 men who witnessed the scene, and thought he 
 had gone mad. But he realized all that the 
 change of government meant to Italy ; and 
 truly it meant a great deal. It meant in 
 the first place the withdrawal of the British 
 and French representatives from the Court 
 of Naples, as a protest against the state of 
 affairs described by Mr. Gladstone. They 
 did not return until the death of King Fer- 
 dinand, the evil Bomba detested of all 
 
 164 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 Sicilians. Also, when Napoleon had cooled 
 in his enthusiasm for Italy, and proposed 
 to prevent Garibaldi from crossing from 
 Sicily to the mainland for the conquest of 
 Naples, he could get no support from Great 
 Britain. 
 
 " If France chose to interfere," wrote 
 Lord John Russell, "we should merely 
 disapprove her course, and protest against 
 it. In our opinion the Neapolitans ought 
 to be masters either to reject or to receive 
 Garibaldi." That was sufficient for Napo- 
 leon, who would not risk a course against 
 which Great Britain would protest. But 
 Lord John Russell was to go further in the 
 way of moral support. The wretched King 
 of Naples had behind him all the great 
 absolute powers, and the annexation of the 
 kingdom by Italy seemed to involve general 
 intervention. At this stage Lord John wrote 
 a dispatch to Sir Charles Elliott, the British 
 Minister at Naples, which was published 
 for the benefit of Italy. "It appears," he 
 began, " that the late proceedings of the 
 King of Sardinia have been strongly disap- 
 proved by several of the leading Courts of 
 Europe. Her Majesty's government must 
 admit that the Italians are the best judges 
 
 165 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 of their own interests. It is difficult to 
 believe, after the astonishing events we 
 have seen, that the Pope and the King of 
 the Two Sicilies possessed the love of their 
 people. When a people from good reason 
 takes up arms against an oppressor, it is but 
 an act of justice and generosity to assist 
 brave men in the defence of their liberties. 
 Therefore Her Majesty's government can 
 see no sufficient ground for the severe cen- 
 sure with which Austria, France, Russia and 
 Prussia have visited the acts of the King 
 of Sardinia. Her Majesty's government will 
 turn their eyes rather to the gratifpng pros- 
 pects of a people building up the edifice of 
 their liberties, and consolidating the work 
 of their independence." 
 
 In a letter written to Lord John, Elliott 
 describes the effect of reading this dispatch 
 to Cavour. " Cavour shouted, rubbed his 
 hands, jumped up and sat down, then he 
 began to think ; and when he looked up 
 there were tears in his eyes. Behind your 
 dispatch he saw the Italy of his dreams, the 
 Italy of his hopes, the Italy of his policy." 
 And the Hon. Odo Russell, writing to his 
 uncle from Italy, described how " thousands 
 of people copied it from each other to carry 
 
 i66 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 it to their homes and weep over it for joy 
 and gratitude in the bosoms of their fami- 
 lies." 
 
 This was moral support, indeed, of a kind 
 as valuable as any armed intervention could 
 possibly be. The motive behind it was 
 purely a disinterested one, and it is small 
 wonder that Italy has ever since been able 
 to believe in the chivalry of Great Britain, 
 and to credit our race with benevolent inten- 
 tions toward the smaller powers, even in 
 the face of what occurred in South Africa 
 at the end of the century. 
 
 Our later relations with Italy were tinged 
 with our growing distrust of France. For 
 instance, the Triple Alliance was only renewed 
 in 1887, after we had made a separate ar- 
 rangement with Italy to protect her coasts 
 in the event of any naval attack being made 
 upon them by France. Similarly Great Bri- 
 tain and Italy worked hand-in-hand in Egypt, 
 and we even proposed to establish with Italy 
 a condominium there, a proposal rejected 
 by Italy, to her subsequent regret. Great 
 Britain also encouraged the settlement of 
 Italy on the shore of the Red Sea at Mas- 
 sowah, and so helped to lead the Italians 
 on to their humihation in Abyssinia ; but 
 
 167 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 the motive was never mistaken in Italy. 
 Up to the most recent times the relations 
 between the two countries have been main- 
 tained on the most friendly and cordial 
 footing. Diplomatic necessities have divided 
 the interests of Great Britain and Italy on 
 more than one occasion, but a frank recog- 
 nition of the fact on both sides has always 
 prevented even the semblance of interna- 
 tional friction. Britain still retains her 
 ancient sympathy and admiration for Italy, 
 and Italy is not unmindful of the strong 
 support that helped her through the darkest 
 hours of her fight for nationality. Their 
 present pact has given rise to no such national 
 differences as arose from the Alliance to 
 which Italy was bound in 1882 for a third 
 of a century. 
 
 168 
 
THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 WITHOUT the moral support of Great 
 Britain and the active assistance of 
 France the Unity of Italy could never have 
 been achieved. And yet when the plains 
 of Europe were cleared for Armageddon, 
 and the hostile ranks were arrayed, Italy 
 was found bound by treaty to the side of her 
 oppressors, her word given to abstain from 
 striking a blow in the cause of freedom. 
 Powers as weak as she once was had cast 
 all into the melting-pot in the struggle for 
 very existence ; the cause was as clear and 
 as just as her own had ever been. The 
 Italians themselves recognized that they were 
 caught in the toils of an unnatural alliance. 
 The Triple Alliance was an unnatural 
 alHance at the time it was made ; it required 
 all the craft of Bismarck to make it appear 
 anything else. He chose his time when 
 Mazzini's fear that the Mediterranean would 
 
 171 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 become a " French Lake " was fresh, in 
 its terseness of expression, in the mind of 
 every Italian pohtician. He worked on that 
 fear to detach the Itahans from their bro- 
 thers-in-arms of Marengo and Solferino. 
 The opportunity occurred in Tunis, where' 
 a clash of Italian and French interests had 
 caused ill-feeling between the two nations. 
 
 The part played in the disturbance by 
 Great Britain was a curious one. A railway 
 had been constructed in Tunis by a British 
 Company, and attempts were being made to 
 acquire it, both in Italian and French inter- 
 ests. A decision of the English Courts 
 forbade it being sold to the French pur- 
 chasers, and eventually it was bought by 
 the Italian bidders. Incidentally it may 
 be said that it was asserted at the time that 
 the price paid was many times greater than 
 its value. 
 
 The Bey of Tunis was himself antagonistic 
 to the French, a fact which was promptly 
 turned to account. The antagonism was 
 stretched to an open quarrel, and supported 
 by Bismarck, the French seized Tabarca and 
 Biserta. They were then in a position to 
 compel the Bey of Tunis to accept a French 
 protectorate. Italy was forced to look on 
 
 172 
 
 U' 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 in impotent rage, though feehng ran high 
 throughout the peninsula. This was es- 
 pecially the case in Rome, where there 
 were riots which forced the resignation of 
 Cairoli, and brought Crispi into office. A 
 culminating cause of hatred of France was 
 a disturbance in Marseilles, in which a 
 number of Italian workmen were murdered. 
 
 In these circumstances Bismarck suggested 
 to Crispi that Italy should become a party 
 to the alliance already existing between 
 Germany and Austria. The terms of that 
 treaty have never been officially published, 
 but it is well understood that the main 
 clauses of it were : — 
 
 "(i) Should, contrary to the hopes and 
 against the sincere wishes of the two High 
 Contracting Parties, one of the two Em- 
 perors be attacked from the side of Russia, 
 the High Contracting Parties are bound to 
 support one another with their entire forces, 
 and, accordingly, only to conclude peace 
 jointly and in agreement with one another. 
 
 "(2) Should one of the High Contracting 
 Parties be attacked by another Power, the 
 other High Contracting Party hereby binds 
 himself not only to assist the assailant against 
 his High Ally, but at least to preserve bene- 
 
 173 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 volent neutrality towards his High Con- 
 tractant. 
 
 " If, nevertheless, in such case, the attacking 
 Power should be supported from the side 
 of Russia, whether in the form of active 
 co-operation, or of military measures which 
 threaten the attacked, then the obligation 
 of mutual support with the entire forces 
 stipulated in Art. I. of this Treaty at once 
 comes into force in this case too, and the 
 war will then also be carried on jointly by 
 the two High Contractants till the joint 
 conclusion of peace." 
 
 Bismarck's desire to make Italy a third 
 party to this arrangement did not meet 
 with unanimous support in Italy, although 
 the feeling against France still ran very 
 high. The Party of the Centre still leaned 
 to France as against Germany and Austria ; 
 the party which only existed to recover 
 the Itahan provinces still groaning under 
 Austrian rule loudly denounced the proposal 
 as an unnatural one. But popular feeling 
 was behind Crispi. In 1882 King Humbert 
 and his Queen visited Vienna, and it was well 
 understood that Bismarck had triumphed. 
 j In fact, on May 20, 1882, Italy had already 
 subscribed to the Treaty for a term of five 
 
 174 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 years, although the fact was not disclosed 
 until the following year. When it came 
 up for signature in 1887 it was revised on 
 terms more favourable than before to Italy. 
 Count Robilant had made a condition of 
 signature that notes should be exchanged 
 between Rome and London, the effect being 
 that Great Britain should undertake to pre- 
 serve the Italian coast from a French attack. 
 
 The Treaty was again renewed by Rudini 
 in 1891, and by Prinetti in 1902. By this 
 time the old friendship between France and 
 Italy had been restored. The friendly rela- 
 tions established by the Franco-Italian com- 
 mercial Treaty of 1899 were expanding into 
 something like warmth of feeling between the 
 two great Latin nations. For Italy the 
 unnatural Alliance had outlived its purpose ; 
 it is doubtful whether, under normal cir- 
 cumstances, it would have been renewed 
 when it expired in 1914. 
 
 But before that time Italy had to suffer 
 for her share in the pact. Involved in 
 war for the possession of Tripoli, she found 
 herself unable to operate against the Adriatic 
 coast of her enemy Turkey. The section 
 of the Italian fleet which had been dispatched 
 to carry out these operations was commanded 
 
 175 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 by the Duke of the Abruzzi, now the High 
 Admiral of the Itahan fleet. When he 
 received instructions to suspend operations, 
 he rephed in a telegram which led to his 
 recall. Abruzzi remained in charge of the 
 naval base at Spezzia for the rest of the war. 
 
 The necessity for an understanding between 
 Italy and Austria on the Balkan question 
 was renewed by the action of the League 
 of the Balkan states, and the position created 
 on the Albanian coast by their successful 
 war with Turkey. At the end of the year 
 1912 the Treaty was again revised. It 
 appears that until this period there were 
 three separate instruments — Austria with 
 Germany, Italy with Germany, and Austria 
 with Italy — though all to the same tenor.. 
 According to an Austrian White Paper pub- 
 lished at the end of May 1915, a single 
 Treaty was signed on December 8, 1912. 
 The same authority is relied upon for the 
 text of the more important clauses. 
 
 " Clause III. — In case one or two of the 
 high contracting parties, without direct pro- 
 vocation on their part, should be attacked 
 by one or more Great Powers not signatory 
 of the present Treaty and should become 
 involved in a war with them, the casus 
 
 176 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 foederis would arise simultaneously for all 
 the high contracting parties. 
 
 " Clause IV. — In case a Great Power not 
 signatory of the present Treaty should 
 threaten the State security of one of the high 
 contracting parties, and in case the threat- 
 ened party should thereby be compelled 
 to declare war against that Great Power, the 
 two other contracting parties engage them- 
 selves to maintain benevolent neutrality 
 towards their Ally. Each of them reserves 
 its right, in this case, to take part in the 
 war if it thinks fit in order to make common 
 cause with its Ally. 
 
 " Clause VII. — ^Austria- Hungary and Italy, 
 who have solely in view the maintenance, as 
 far as possible, of the territorial status quo in 
 the East, engage themselves to use their 
 influence to prevent all territorial changes 
 which might be disadvantageous to the one 
 or the other of the Powers signatory of the 
 present Treaty. To this end they will give 
 reciprocally all information calculated to 
 enlighten each other concerning their own 
 intentions and those of other Powers. Should, 
 however, the case arise that, in the course 
 of events, the maintenance of the status quo 
 in the territory of the Balkans or of the Otto- 
 
 177 M 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 man coasts and islands in the Adriatic or 
 the Aegean Seas becomes impossible, and 
 that, either in consequence of the action of a 
 third Power or for any other reason, Austria- 
 Hungary or Italy should be obliged to change 
 the status quo for their part by a temporary 
 or permanent occupation, such occupation 
 would only take place after previous agree- 
 ment between the two Powers, which would 
 have to be based upon the principle of a 
 reciprocal compensation for all territorial or 
 other advantages that either of them might 
 acquire over and above the existing status 
 quo, and would have to satisfy the interests 
 and rightful claims of both parties." 
 
 The seventh Clause which does not appear 
 to have formed part of the Treaty originally 
 signed between the three Powers was cer- 
 tainly added to it at some time prior to 1912. 
 It was made clear by the publication of the 
 Italian Green Book at the end of May 1915, 
 that this clause or another reading of it was 
 operative in the year 1911, when Italy was 
 at war with Turkey. As shall presently be 
 shown, it formed the basis of the long nego- 
 tiations which preceded the final breach of 
 the unnatural alliance and Italy's interven- 
 tion in the European war. 
 
 178 
 
AN INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 AN INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL 
 
 ROME and Venice being united to the 
 Kingdom, the work of making a great 
 nation out of a collection of states had to 
 be begun. Italy was at least half a century 
 behind other countries of Europe in such 
 essential matters as means of communication, 
 education, and industrial development. Rail- 
 ways had to be built on national lines, tele- 
 graphic communication had to be provided, 
 schools had to be built and endowed, and 
 the differences that separated the states had 
 to be bridged. This is always an expensive 
 and a troublesome business, involving many 
 mistakes and much internal dissension, as 
 new countries, even richly endowed, such as 
 Australia and South America, have discovered. 
 In an old and poor country, as Italy was 
 in the seventies, it must have been a heart- 
 breaking task. The enthusiasm of the many, 
 which reached a fervent pitch in the fight 
 
 i8i 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 to oust the foreign tyrant, cooled in the long 
 struggle with ordinary material difficulties. 
 Money had to be borrowed, at high interest, 
 for all the expensive work of development 
 that was so courageously undertaken. The 
 nascent industries had to be protected by 
 duties on imports, which added indirect 
 taxation to the already heavy direct taxa- 
 tion necessarily imposed. The army had 
 to be kept on a peace footing never dreamed 
 of in a country so favourably situated as 
 our own ; and in addition, a large fleet had 
 to be provided to protect the inordinately 
 long seaboard of the country. 
 
 The resources of the country did not supply 
 any easy means of recouping all this pre- 
 liminary expense. Italy is not endowed 
 with valuable coal deposits, one of the 
 easiest and most available assets of a coun- 
 try which has manufacturing ambitions. 
 Its main industry in 1870 was agriculture ; 
 and the standard products were such vari- 
 able ones as fruit, olives, wine, silk, and the 
 like. Wages were low and taxes high, the 
 time of the worker was curtailed by military 
 service. In 1870 Italy had a hard struggle 
 before it. 
 
 On the other hand, the people was an 
 182 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 industrious and a fruitful one, simple for the 
 greater part in their habits, and devotedly 
 patriotic. The compulsory military service 
 did much to sweep away state barriers, 
 since men of Piedmont, Umbria and Naples 
 served side by side in the same regiments. 
 No doubt one writing in the middle of the 
 year 1915 has lost perspective, and can 
 regard the ordinary peace sufferings of 
 a nation too light-heartedly ; doubtless it 
 was a bitter price the Italian masses paid 
 for the exalted ambitions of Italian states- 
 men ; but the fact remains that Italy bat- 
 tled through. 
 
 Her head was appearing above water at 
 the very time when such informed observers 
 as Stillman and Thayer were inclined to 
 lament the rapidity with which unity had 
 been accomplished, and the loftly ideals and 
 imperfect performance of the successors of 
 Cavour. Writing in the nineteenth century 
 in 1900, Signor Dalla Vecchia supplies his 
 impression of the country, having visited 
 it after an absence of some years. 
 
 " None who saw the Italy of thirty years 
 ago can deny that enormous progress has 
 been made in these thirty years, in every 
 branch of industrial life. Industrial Italy 
 
 183 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 was then an unknown quantity in the world ; 
 now it supphes almost all that is wanted 
 for home consumption, and can also supply 
 other countries with the very things she 
 once had to import herself. The shipyards 
 of Spezzia, Venice, Leghorn, Castellamare 
 and Taranto can compete with the best 
 shipyards in the world. The textile industry 
 at Biella and Schio has reached the highest 
 point of development. A Milanese firm, 
 in competition with EngUsh and American firms 
 obtained two years ago the order for a large 
 amount of rolling stock for a foreign railway." 
 The wave of industrial development was 
 then only beginning to rise, six years later 
 a trade expansion without parallel in the 
 history of any country in the world had to 
 be recorded. The volume of Italian trade 
 increased between the years 1890 and 1907 
 by 118 per cent. ; in the same period the 
 trade of Great Britain increased by 55 per 
 cent., and that of the German Empire by 
 92 per cent. In view of the trade competi- 
 tion between Germany, Great Britain, and 
 the United States during the period under 
 review, these figures are doubly remarkable. 
 In the years that have followed the expan- 
 sion has been well maintained.. 
 
 184 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 One factor in this remarkable industrial 
 progress has been the development of cheap 
 electric power. The waterfall as a source 
 of industrial wealth has been freely exploited 
 to the great advantage of the whole nation ; 
 in seven years the use of electric power 
 increased fivefold, the import of coal doubled, 
 and the output of steel quadrupled. The 
 cost of lighting and travelling was enor- 
 mously cheapened, and new industries, such 
 as the manufacture of carbonate of lime in 
 vast quantities, were added to the list of 
 Italy's productive assets, owing to the ex- 
 ploitation of this source of potential power. 
 
 The old industries of the country revived 
 and throve amazingly. The silk industry 
 of Milan far outstripped that of its quondam 
 successful rival of Lyons ; the imports of 
 raw cotton trebled in a few years. The 
 artists who made beautiful glass in Venetia, 
 and cut rare cameos or fashioned novel 
 jewellery in Rome, took fresh heart with 
 the rapidly expanding markets their wares 
 again found. At Turin one of the greatest 
 manufactories of motor-cars in the world 
 was established ; at Naples vast works for 
 making rolling stock for the world's rail- 
 ways. 
 
 185 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 With a rapidly expanding trade, a rise 
 in the wages of the workers may usually be 
 expected. The industrial workers of Italy 
 have benefited by the improved standing 
 of the country's trade in two ways ; their 
 wages have risen and the conditions of 
 their life have notably improved. Strikes 
 have been frequent, as might be expected 
 in a country where trade is good and the 
 workers are organized. Their necessity, 
 from the workers' point of view, may perhaps 
 be established by mentioning the fact that 
 the government, which does not permit 
 strikes of its own employees , is notoriously 
 the worst paymaster in the country. 
 
 In 1905 the government took over all the 
 railways of Italy, a step followed immediately 
 by great confusion, due to a mismanagement 
 which has since disappeared. As in all coun- 
 tries where the railways are the property 
 of the state, the people have now benefited 
 by reductions in fares and other advantages 
 not obtainable in countries where the rail- 
 ways are exploited in the interests of private 
 enterprise. 
 
 Evidence of Italy's great industrial pro- 
 gress at the beginning of the twentieth cen- 
 tury could be mviltiplied if it were necessary ; 
 
 186 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 it is more to the point to examine the factors 
 which conduced toward it, and its effect on 
 national hfe in Italy. One glance at the 
 map of Italy will reveal to the most casual 
 observer that the country possesses, by 
 virtue of its geographical position and ad- 
 vantages, remarkable trading facilities. The 
 proportion of its sea-coast to its total area 
 is greater than that of any country in the 
 world, with the sole exception of Great 
 Britain. The number of excellent ports 
 is very large, and the position of Italy in the 
 middle of the Mediterranean, on the direct 
 trading route between West and East, and 
 between North and South, is remarkably 
 favourable for the exchange of mercantile 
 commodities. 
 
 Another factor has been the inherited 
 mechanical skill of the people of the cities. 
 They are the direct descendants of men who 
 were the greatest craftsmen of Europe, the 
 heirs of an age when the artist was a crafts- 
 man, and many a humble craftsman was an 
 artist. This skill in handicraft was only 
 held in abeyance, or partly in abeyance, by 
 the cruel tyranny of a foreign rule, and the 
 senseless opposition of the Church to pro- 
 gress and education. With freedom and 
 
 187 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 opportunity the Italian craftsman quickly 
 came to his own again, his tireless industry 
 furnishing him with another advantage in 
 the world's race for industrial conquest. 
 
 But every country must pay a price for 
 rapid industrial progress. Protective taxes 
 fall heavily upon the masses, and especially 
 upon the humble people engaged in agricul- 
 ture. Where, as in Italy and Germany, the 
 agricultural interests are further protected 
 by food taxes, and by bounty systems such 
 as that by which those countries fostered 
 the cultivation of the sugar beet, the lot 
 of the agricultural labourer is likely to be 
 indeed a hard one. The bread riots which 
 marked the end of the nineteenth century in 
 the cities of Italy showed how hardly the 
 food taxes pressed upon the humbler city 
 dwellers. The lot of the rural dwellers was 
 even harder, driving them to escape from 
 their troubles by emigration on a scale 
 which soon furnished Italy with a problem 
 that has affected her foreign policy very 
 potently. 
 
ITALY'S COLONIAL POLICY 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 ITALY'S COLONIAL POLICY 
 
 ONE of the German claims to world 
 mastery is based upon the fruitfvil- 
 ness of the German people. Italy can lay 
 the same claim to " a place in the sun," 
 though she has never put it forward so 
 blatantly, or endorsed it by methods so 
 arbitrary and violent as those resorted to by 
 the subjects of the Kaiser. In spite of a 
 heavy infant mortality, due to the poverty 
 and ignorance of the Italian peasant, the 
 excess of births over deaths in Italy is higher 
 than in most European countries, being 
 surpassed only by that of Germany, Great 
 Britain, and Scandinavia. 
 
 The time has gone by when the value to 
 the state of the healthy individual citizen 
 was neglected and ignored. It is universally 
 recognized that the young man who finds 
 his home surroundings inadequate to his 
 energy and ambition, and who is enterpris- 
 
 191 
 
J 
 
 ITALY AND THE 
 
 ing enough to seek fresh fields for his talents, 
 is the valuable citizen, more valuable than 
 he who, placed in similar circumstances, 
 remains dully apathetic and only grumbles 
 at his disadvantages. No country is now 
 content to lose the most enterprising of its 
 humbler classes, and to see them sink their 
 nationality and that of their children in the 
 citizenship of some new and foreign country. 
 
 Up to the present time Great Britain 
 has been the only fruitful country of Europe 
 which has been able to avoid this drain of 
 human wealth, due to emigration. Italy, 
 on the other hand, has been proportionately 
 the heaviest sufferer of any European coun- 
 try ; and this in spite of the fact that the 
 sentimental tie between the Italian emi- 
 grant and his native land is a very strong 
 one. It is estimated that during the last 
 generation 5,000,000 Italians have been per- 
 manently lost to the country, most of them 
 absorbed by the United States of America 
 and the South American Republics. 
 
 The Italian emigrant has most of the 
 qualities that are of value in a new country. 
 He is energetic and industrious, and accus- 
 tomed to performing heavy work in a hot 
 sun. He hves simply, and prefers to send 
 
 192 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 home for his ItaUan wife and to rear his 
 large brood of healthy children. He is 
 cheap and temperate, and but for his fiery 
 and quarrelsome nature, might be considered 
 law-abiding. Therefore one expects to find 
 Italian navvies wherever railway construc- 
 tion is going forward in any tropical or 
 semi-tropical country. One is equally certain 
 of finding Italian farmhands where fruit is 
 being cultivated or vineyards are being 
 tilled in a new land. 
 
 Situated as she was, it is doubtful whether 
 Italy could have reached her present indus- 
 trial position but for the safety valve of 
 emigration. The Italian emigrant does not 
 forget those he leaves behind him, and for 
 many years remittances from the wanderers 
 have been pouring into Italy, the total sum 
 coming from workers in America alone being 
 estimated at from £5,000,000 to £7,000,000 
 annually. How Italy's poor would have 
 fared in her worst financial straits without 
 these remittances from abroad, it would be 
 hard to say. 
 
 It must also be remembered that the 
 ambition of a large number of these emi- 
 grants is eventually to return home, with 
 enough money to buy a small plot of land 
 
 193 N 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 and to settle down as farmers and fruit 
 growers in their native land. Many of them 
 have realized this ambition, so valuable 
 to the State not only because of the new 
 capital thus invested in Italy, but because 
 of the new ideas and fresh methods that 
 are introduced by these adventurers, which 
 serve to leaven the too conservative lines 
 on which agriculture is conducted by the 
 stay-at-homes. 
 
 But the Italian government had to face 
 the fact that only a small proportion of the 
 emigrants returned to conditions of life 
 so much harder than those they found in 
 newer countries. Many more, when they 
 were able, sent for their families, and thus 
 stopped the flow of foreign money, in their 
 instance, to Italy. There are large towns in 
 the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo whose 
 inhabitants are entirely of Italian origin. 
 All are prosperous people, interested in the 
 great coffee-growing industry of that state. 
 They speak nothing but Italian, they have 
 established communities where the customs 
 and the very architecture are Italian. But 
 their children are taught Portuguese in the 
 schools, and are intermarr5ang with the 
 Brazilians ; in other words, all these people 
 
 194 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 have lost their ItaHan nationahty. In the 
 Argentine Repubhc, in Chile, and in Cah- 
 fomia the same thing may be observed ; it 
 is the sure sign that Italy is being drained 
 of much of the best of its virile youth. 
 
 This emigration continued over a series 
 of years at the rate of some half a million 
 emigrants a year, and the very drain on the 
 cheap labour of the country tended in some 
 degree to better the condition of the agri- 
 cultural labourer, and to increase his scanty 
 wages. But there was no sign of slackening 
 in the stream of emigration ; it rather 
 tended to increase as the accounts of the 
 prosperity of those who had emigrated were 
 passed from mouth to mouth, and the 
 returned wanderers repeated their glowing 
 accounts of the plenty in which they revelled 
 in other lands. Also it became impossible 
 for those who wished to return to realize 
 their ambition, and buy enough land on 
 which to live in Italy, as they were able to 
 live elsewhere. The Italian land is not very 
 fertile, the holdings are small, and there 
 is an abiding land hunger there which refuses 
 to be satisfied. 
 
 But aU the Itahan emigrants did not fare 
 so far from home as North and South 
 
 195 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 America. A very substantial number went 
 no farther afield than to the North of Africa, 
 where they throve in all sorts of capacities. 
 There are at present quite three times as 
 many Italians as Frenchmen in Tunis, and 
 the French candidates for Parliament are 
 often constrained to address their electors 
 in Italian. In Morocco, in Tunis, in Egypt 
 and in Asia Minor' there are flourishing 
 Italian emigrants by hundreds. Trading 
 relations with Italy were soon established 
 by many of these places, and Italy began 
 to discern a legitimate path for expansion 
 across the Mediterranean. 
 
 The example of Great Britain, which is 
 able to find an outlet for all its surplus popula- 
 tion under the flag of the Empire, has shone 
 brightly before Italian eyes, just as it has 
 dazzled the imagination of France, and 
 excited the cupidity of Germany. Italy 
 could legitimately claim a sphere of influence 
 on the Northern coast of Africa, for her 
 long, vulnerable coastline rendered her par- 
 ticularly susceptible to attack from a quarter 
 so close at hand, and so capable of being 
 employed against her. Italian emigrants 
 proved their suitability in a climate and 
 upon a soil not unlike their own, and much 
 
 196 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 African land hitherto waste was reclaimed 
 and cultivated by them. 
 
 The inception of Italy's colonial policy 
 antedated the great exodus to America, 
 which served as an argument for persisting 
 in it. How Italy fared in Tunis has already 
 been told, and the bitterness of the loss 
 was accentuated by the thought that a 
 country to which legitimate claims could 
 be advanced had now become but another 
 outlet for the leakage of Italian citizens. 
 Great Britain had played a part in the 
 drama which resulted in the loss of Tunis, 
 and Great Britain, with the best intentions 
 in the world, encouraged Italy in a new 
 colonial venture which ended in a painful 
 humiliation. 
 
 Italian subjects had estabhshed very con- 
 siderable trading interests in the African 
 interior, penetrating the Egyptian hinter- 
 land, and Abyssinia and SomalUand as well. 
 With the friendly feeling that has always 
 characterized the relations of the two 
 countries, there was no clash of interests 
 between Great Britain and Italy in this 
 territory, although French aspirations were 
 concerning the British government in no 
 small degree. Thus Great Britain encour- 
 
 197 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 aged Italy to establish a trading port at 
 Massowah, on the Red Sea, and invited her 
 co-operation, which was granted, in the 
 punitive expedition dispatched against the 
 Mahdi. Later Italy was invited to assume 
 joint control of the affairs of Egypt with 
 Great Britain, an invitation which Italy 
 saw fit to decline. 
 
 The establishment of the port at Mas- 
 sowah soon brought Italy into contact with 
 Abyssinia ; and a very pretty quarrel with 
 the Negus of that country, and with the Bey 
 of Tigre, the province in which Massowah 
 was situated, soon developed. Italy an- 
 nexed Tigre, and a force of Italian soldiers; 
 penetrating inland as far as Dogali, were 
 surprised, the result being that 500 of them 
 were massacred. At this juncture a quarrel 
 arose about the throne of Abyssinia, to which 
 Menelik succeeded in establishing his claim, 
 deposing Mangasha, with whom the Italians 
 had quarrelled. 
 
 Menelik proved more amenable, and a 
 treaty was drawn up and signed by Menelik, 
 This treaty of Ucciali, it was claimed by 
 Italy, constituted an admission by Menelik 
 that Italy had established a protectorate 
 over Abyssinia. The clause in dispute, 
 
 198 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 according to the translation of it afterwards 
 produced by Menelik, was worded as follows : — 
 "The King of Abyssinia may make use of 
 the government of the King of Italy in all 
 matters whereon he may have to treat 
 with other governments." But the Italian 
 claim was that the real wording of the 
 clause was " agrees to make use " and not 
 " may make use." 
 
 In any case, Russia and France induced 
 Menelik to resist the claim of a protectorate, 
 and to resort to open hostilities. The Ita- 
 lians were iU prepared, and Crispi, who was 
 in power, was deprived of the support of 
 Germany, because he had recently given 
 warning of his intention to denounce the 
 Triple Alliance. The Italian army of 14,000 
 men was commanded by General Baratieri, 
 who had already proved his lack of compet- 
 ence, and who had been superseded. Before 
 his successor could arrive he attacked the 
 much superior forces of Menelik, who had 
 80,000 men entrenched in a position almost 
 impregnable at Adowah. The result was 
 a sad blow to Italian prestige ; the Italians 
 were utterly routed and left 6,000 dead on 
 the battlefield. They had to accept Mene- 
 lik's peace terms and withdraw to their 
 
 199 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 port of Massowah. The court-martial to 
 fix responsiblity for the disaster of Adowah 
 was held in secret and much uncertainty 
 still surrounds the causes of the Italian 
 reverse.- 
 
 Although the Abyssinian fiasco deprived 
 the colonial policy of Italy of any popularity 
 it may have possessed with the masses, 
 it did not deter the government from the 
 hope of realizing its dreams of African ex- 
 pansion. One result of this colonizing failure, 
 which had involved an expenditure of 
 £20,000,000, was a cry for army reform. 
 Reorganization was delayed, but it ulti- 
 mately took place ; and at the same time the 
 Italian Navy was considerably strengthened 
 by the addition of new, up-to-date warships. 
 These reforms, initiated in 1904, were spread 
 over several years, with results that thor- 
 oughly justified their initiation, as was 
 shown when Italy again became involved 
 in war. 
 
 200 
 
THE WAR IN TRIPOLI 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 THE WAR IN TRIPOLI 
 
 THE events which led up to the sudden 
 and dramatic demand by Italy that 
 Turkey should evacuate Tripoli and Cyre- 
 naica still remain a chapter of unwritten 
 history. Events have moved so rapidly 
 since September 1911 that the world has 
 already forgotten with what dramatic sud- 
 denness that demand came. A rumour that 
 Turkey was preparing to fortify the fine 
 harboiu: of Tobruk, the nearest port to Egypt 
 in Libya, had been faintly heard in some of 
 the Chancelleries. It was accompanied by 
 hints of German intrigue in Constantinople. 
 The rumour has since been connected with 
 Italy's startling demand. 
 
 The reasons on which the demand was 
 based certainly did not refer to Tobruk. 
 Italy stated that Turkey had exercised con- 
 straint upon Italian subjects in Tripoli for 
 many years, and had been interfering with 
 
 203 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Italian interests there for an even longer 
 period. Therefore Turkey must evacuate 
 the territory within twenty-four hours. Be- 
 fore Europe had recovered from the shock, 
 Italy proceeded to enforce the demand, and 
 on September 29, 1911, declared war. 
 
 The lack of finesse shown in these blunt 
 proceedings was the subject of a general 
 European outcry. Had Italy followed ac- 
 cepted traditions, the pretext would have 
 been elaborately laboured ; and a thick 
 veil of excuse would have been thrown over 
 the action. Nowhere was this lack of tact 
 more publicly regretted than in Berlin, where 
 there were solid reasons for objecting to so 
 pointed an action. But Europe could do 
 nothing for Turkey beyond expressing its 
 surprise and grief, and unanimous under- 
 takings of neutrality followed the first gasp 
 of surprise. 
 
 Italy's very real interests in the Mediter- 
 ranean were admitted on every side. She 
 had viewed the annexation of Tunis by 
 France without being able to prevent it, 
 though her subjects there outnumbered 
 those of France by three to one. She had 
 seen great Britain established in Egypt, and 
 Spain in Northern Morocco ; she had watched 
 
 204 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 the French flag move East along the African 
 coast. She had been submitted to humi- 
 Hating reverses in Abyssinia ; she had looked 
 on with alarm while Austria appropriated 
 Bosnia and a long stretch of the Adriatic 
 coast, and had been resentful, but impo- 
 tent. Germany had staked the Bagdad 
 railway, and still the claims of Italy in the 
 Mediterranean remained unsatisfied. Her 
 claim to Tripoli was but an effort to restore 
 the balance of Power in the Mediterranean, 
 and was supported by the fact that Turkey, 
 in eighty years' possession of the province, 
 had done nothing to justify her position. 
 
 The war began with a spirited attack 
 on the Tripolitan ports. Tripoli, Tobruk, 
 Derna, Bengasi and Homs were in turn 
 taken and garrisoned. A force of 10,000 
 men was landed at Bucamez, near the Tuni- 
 sian frontier, and occupied the town of 
 Zuara. Another force landed at Bu Sceifa, 
 and captured Misrata. Between all these 
 places stretched expanses of desert which 
 were already as much in the hands of the 
 Italians as of any one else, save perhaps 
 a few bands of Arabs. 
 
 In December igii a pitched battle at 
 Ain Zara was won by Italy, and in March 
 
 205 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 1 91 2 another battle at Bengas. Two sharp 
 battles were also fought at Zanzur, that of 
 September 191 2 proving the decisive battle 
 of the war. The advance of a great army 
 of Arabs and Turks was spotted by Italian 
 aeroplanes, and General Ragni was warned 
 in time to enable him to inflict a great defeat, 
 with heavy slaughter, upon the Turks. 
 
 Even more marked was the supremacy 
 shown by the Italians on sea. Early in 191 2 
 the Italian fleet established an effective 
 blockade of the Arabian coast of the Red 
 Sea, and three Italian cruisers sank seven 
 Turkish destroyers off Konfudah. In April 
 the forts at the mouth of the Dardanelles 
 were bombarded, and in July five destroyers 
 entered the Straits, battered the forts, and 
 escaped unscathed. 
 
 In the Aegean the Italian warships had 
 it all their own way. The Italians cap- 
 tured and occupied the following Turkish 
 islands : Rhodes, where the Turkish garri- 
 son of 2,000 men was captured by General 
 Ameglio ; Lindos, Stampalia, Icaria, Patmos, 
 Leros, Calymnus, Cos, Nisyros, Episcopi, 
 Syme, Khalki, and a number of smaller 
 islands. 
 
 In actual battle the Italians lost only 300 
 206 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 officers and 1,500 men, though the loss by 
 disease, such as typhoid, was considerably 
 greater than the loss by battle. A large 
 mortality also ensued from the revolt of 
 Arabs at Tripoli, the soldiers who perished 
 in putting that down not being included 
 in the official summary of battle losses. 
 The cost of the war to Italy was officially 
 estimated at £20,000,000. 
 
 The end of the war was hastened no doubt 
 by the combination of the Balkan States 
 against Turkey. It is equally true that 
 the unbroken success of the Italian arms did 
 much to stimulate the Balkan League to 
 its strong action in 191 2. Turkey was glad 
 to give up Cyrenaica and Tripoli and to pay 
 a small indemnity, in order to be free to 
 attack the foe nearer home. Italy, for her 
 part, undertook to aid Turkey to raise a 
 loan in order to carry on this new and serious 
 war. 
 
 Thus, in a few days over a year, Italy 
 established an undisputed claim to the only 
 portion of the Mediterranean coast of Africa 
 which was free from European occupation, 
 and re-established her claim to a voice in all 
 matters affecting the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 The whole conduct of the war was a justifi- 
 207 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 cation of all that had been claimed for the 
 new army and the reorganized navy. The 
 Italian troops proved themselves hardy, 
 courageous and disciplined ; their officers 
 were efficient and their generals prudent and 
 resourceful. Every detail of organization 
 was severely tested and found adequate. 
 The transport was quick and well co-ordin- 
 ated, the equipment good and up-to-date ; 
 the commisariat seldom lacking. It has 
 already been said that the losses by epidemic 
 disease were heavy, but a weakness in the 
 sanitary arrangements noticeable in the 
 earlier part of the campaign was afterwards 
 remedied. 
 
 Italy started the war with a paper super- 
 iority at sea ; but that superiority was not 
 so marked as the ascendancy established as 
 soon as the actual fighting started. The 
 Italian fleet was at once proved a very real 
 fighting machine, and good seamanship and 
 shooting completed the work begun by 
 liberal expenditure and judicious equipment. 
 Thus both on land and sea Italy retrieved 
 the Abyssinian debacle, and again took her 
 place as a warrior nation. 
 
 Nor was she long in establishing her moral 
 right to the territory so boldly acquired. 
 
 208 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 Before the war was over the work of develop- 
 ment had been begun. In one year she did 
 more for Libya, as the new province is called 
 in Italy, than Turkey had done in eighty. 
 The ports were at once deepened and wharves 
 were provided. In the oasis near Tripoli 
 railway construction was initiated, and the 
 water and sanitary arrangements of the 
 town were improved. Schools were opened 
 and the public services organized upon a 
 European basis. 
 
 The work of road construction was begun 
 from several of the more important centres 
 of population, with a view to agricultural 
 development. To the same end scientific 
 commissions have since been appointed, 
 in order that the beginnings of the new 
 colony shall be founded on scientific lines. 
 In the same way the problems of tropical 
 disease have been gripped, with a view to 
 combating those diseases on the spot and 
 preventing their introduction into Italy. 
 
 Enquiry is stiU proceeding into the re- 
 sources and possibilities of the country, of 
 which one-fifth has already been pronounced 
 agricultural land of excellent quality. Emi- 
 gration under government auspices has al- 
 ready started, and the first experiments in 
 
 209 o 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 that direction are being carefully watched 
 and fostered. In a word, Italy began at 
 once to realize and fulfil her responsibilities 
 to her new possession. 
 
 The diplomatic consequences of Italy's 
 action were even more important. The two 
 other signatories to the Triple Alliance 
 resented the sudden ultimatum to Turkey 
 very bitterly, especially Germany, whose 
 influence at Constantinople had become para- 
 mount. Italy was soon to feel the effects of 
 the displeasure she had given to her great 
 allies. A section of the Italian fleet, com- 
 manded by the Duke of the Abruzzi, making 
 a demonstration against the port of Pervesa, 
 on the Albanian coast of the Adriatic, pro- 
 voked a warm protest from Austria, on the 
 ground that such action was a breach of 
 Clause 7 of the Triple Alliance. In conse- 
 quence of this protest, all action against this 
 part of the Turkish dominion had to be 
 suspended. 
 
 A second protest was to follow. On 
 November g, 1911, Baron Aerenthal, the 
 Austrian Foreign Minister, complained that 
 an Itahan fleet had been signalled in the 
 neighbourhood of Salonica, where it had 
 used searchlights ; and raised the point that 
 
 210 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 any action against the coast of Turkey in 
 Europe was a breach of Clause 7 of the 
 Treaty. When Count Berchtold succeeded 
 Baron Aerenthal, he pressed the point, urging 
 that any Italian attack on the Dardanelles 
 would contravene (i) Italy's undertaking 
 to abstain from any act that would endan- 
 ger the status quo in the Balkans ; and 
 (2) the very spirit of the treaty which was 
 based upon the status quo. 
 
 Later an Italian squadron was bombarded 
 by the forts at the entrance of the Dar- 
 danelles and replied, damaging the forts at 
 Kum Kale. At this period in the war. 
 Count Berchtold intimated that he con- 
 sidered the treaty had been violated, and 
 that if the Italian government desired its 
 freedom of action, the Austrian government 
 would also resume its freedom of action. 
 
 In these contentions Austria had the 
 support of Germany, and Italy had to give 
 way. But Italy emerged triumphantly from 
 the war in spite of the tacit opposition of 
 her allies, and was able later to turn the 
 tables on them in a way they probably did 
 not contemplate at the time. 
 
 211 
 
WHY ITALY WENT TO WAR 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 WHY ITALY WENT TO WAR 
 
 DURING the Tripolitan war, as it has 
 been shown, Italy reahzed the dis- 
 advantages of the Triple Alliance. As 
 Signor Salandra said in a speech delivered to 
 the Italian Chamber on June 3, 191 5 : "It 
 is impossible to estimate how many Itahan 
 soldiers perished, and how much treasure 
 was expended by Italy through the impos- 
 sibility of taking direct action against Tur- 
 key, which knew herself to be protected by 
 our own allies from every attack endangering 
 the vital spots in her armour." 
 
 Yet Italy renewed the Alliance at the 
 close of that war ; and the reason is not far 
 to seek. Itahan statesmen saw how events 
 were shaping in the Balkans, they justly 
 expected that at no distant date the whole 
 Albanian coast of the Adriatic would pass 
 from the possession of Turkey, and they 
 wished to tie the hands of Austria, as their 
 own had been tied. They had not to look 
 very far back to the day when Austria had 
 
 215 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 occupied Bosnia, and an Austrian army, 
 commanded by General Conrad von Hoetzen- 
 dorf, had been massed on their frontier with 
 a sinister menace. 
 
 Soon after the pact was renewed the 
 eventuality foreseen by Italy actually oc- 
 curred. In July 1913, and again in October 
 of that year, Austria discussed with her 
 Allies an action against Serbia, to which 
 Italy would not consent. " Impartial his- 
 tory will declare," said Signor Salandra in 
 his speech of June 3, " that Austria having 
 found, in July and October 1913, that 
 Italy would be no party to her aggressions 
 on Serbia, plotted with Germany to bring 
 off a surprise." The opportunity was the 
 crime of Sarajevo, the surprise was the 
 bombshell of July 1914. 
 
 Prompt protest was made to Von 
 Flotow, then German ambassador in Rome, 
 by the Marquis di San Giuliano that 
 Italy had not been informed of the steps 
 taken by Austria, and that Germany had 
 been concerned in keeping them secret. 
 " Whereupon," as Signor Salandra revealed 
 in a subsequent interview, " Von Flotow 
 turned as red as a peony ; for he was a 
 gentleman." 
 
 ai6 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 An actual account of this conversation 
 is contained in the Italian Green Book in 
 the shape of a note addressed to Vienna by 
 San Giuliano. The Italian statesmen began 
 by impressing on the German that, accord- 
 ing to their reading of Clause 7 of the Treaty 
 of Alliance, Austria had not the right to 
 take such action without a previous agree- 
 ment with her alhes. If a European war 
 should result it would be due to an aggres- 
 sive act on the part of Austria, and Italy 
 would not support her in it. 
 
 Austria having infringed the terms of the 
 Alliance, Italy was entitled by the terms 
 of Clause 7 to redress ; and they demanded 
 for Italy the cession of the Italian provinces 
 ruled by Austria, adding that if adequate 
 compensation for the breach of faith were 
 not forthcoming, the Triple Alliance must be 
 shattered for ever. In the days immediately 
 preceding the declaration of war, Italy also 
 sought an undertaking from Austria that 
 no territorial acquisition would be made 
 at Serbia's expense. On July 30, Von Merey, 
 the Austrian ambassador at Rome, told 
 San Giuliano that Austria could not enter 
 into such an engagement. 
 
 The point cannot be too strongly empha- 
 217 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 sized that Austria held Italy close to the 
 spirit and the letter of the Triple AlUance 
 diiring the struggle for Tripoli ; that Aus- 
 tria, by failing to consult Italy before her 
 strong action against Serbia, infringed the 
 very section of the Treaty which had been 
 urged to Italy's detriment ; that when 
 her secret became known her attitude was 
 one of defiance of Italy. 
 
 The beginning of the European war not 
 only saw Italy preserving her neutrality ; 
 Italy was pressing for the redress of very 
 genuine grievances inflicted by Austria. 
 Rather than break her pledged word, Italy 
 had shed the blood of her soldiers and poured 
 out her treasure. Austria had broken the 
 treaty in the very clause that had made it 
 of value to Italy. Not only that ; Austria 
 had called to her colours men of Itahan 
 blood, though Austrian subjects ; those who 
 tried to escape military sevice were im- 
 prisoned and punished even more harshly. 
 Wherefore Italy continued to press for 
 redress. The territory demanded by Italy 
 was more certainly an integral part of the 
 Kingdom than Alsace and Lorraine are 
 lost pieces of France. There Austria per- 
 petrates the cruel misgovernment with which 
 
 218 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 all Italy was once afflicted, and has striven, 
 by all methods that tyranny could devise, to 
 crush out of the unfortunate inhabitants 
 their nationality. The methods employed 
 by the Germans in Poland have been 
 copied with a literal exactness that shows 
 the source of Austrian inspiration. Italian 
 teaching, Italian speech, and Italian pro- 
 gress have been sternly repressed. New 
 colonists of Austrian and Slav nationality 
 have been introduced, and have received 
 grants of the land belonging to the original 
 inhabitants. When war was declared the 
 young men of these districts were sent to the 
 front, and placed in positions where they 
 could be massacred by Russian machine guns. 
 This Italia Irredenta has also been a 
 constant menace to the safety of the King- 
 dom. It is strongly fortified by the Aus- 
 trians, and constitutes a gateway to the 
 heart of the Kingdom, through which, if 
 Italy were unprepared, an invading army 
 could find an easy way to Venice and Milan. 
 For forty years a strong party has existed 
 in the Italian parliament pledged to the 
 ultimate recovery of these severed provinces 
 of Italy. The sympathy, if not the support, 
 of all Italy has always been theirs. 
 
 219 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Italy demanded the cession of these pro- 
 vinces as the price of the wilful violation of 
 treaty obligations by Austria. 
 
 The dispatches of Baron Sonnino, as pub- 
 lished in the Italian Green Book, lay con- 
 tinued emphasis on this point. " Italy," 
 he declares, " has an interest of the first 
 importance in the preservation of the full 
 integrity and of the political and economic 
 independence of Serbia." Austria argued 
 there had been no occupation of Serbia, 
 or nothing but a momentary occupation. 
 It was then the Italian Foreign Minister quoted 
 to Count Berchtold his own protest against 
 an attack on the Dardanelles during the 
 Italian war with Turkey. Then Austria 
 had declined to allow even the use of the 
 searchlights of the Italian fleet on the coast 
 of European Turkey, on the plea that such 
 action was a breach of Clause 7. By this 
 time the negotiations had become decidedly 
 awkward for Austria, who could only reply 
 by evasions, designed for the wasting of time. 
 
 The course of the negotiations reached an 
 interesting point when Germany, alarmed at 
 the prospect of Italy ranging herself against 
 her former allies, undertook to obtain the 
 redress that was sought. Germany's first 
 
 220 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 step as intermediary was an important one — 
 the dispatch of Von Buelow to Rome as 
 German ambassador. Although in retire- 
 ment at the time, Von Buelow was probably 
 the most powerful man in the German Empire, 
 next to the Kaiser himself. He had been 
 Chancellor for nine years, the only German 
 Chancellor worthy to be mentioned in the 
 same breath as Bismarck. He left that 
 office after exercising a restraint upon the 
 Kaiser himself that could have been im- 
 posed by no other of the Emperor's subjects. 
 
 His relations with Italy were pecuharly 
 intimate. He had married into one of the 
 oldest and most influential Italian families ; 
 his connections had immense influence in 
 the Italian Senate. He himself had lived 
 in Italy, since his retirement, for the greater 
 part of the year ; he thoroughly understood 
 the Italian disposition, the Itahan people 
 and Italian politics. His appointment to 
 Rome was taken, and rightly taken, as an 
 open sign of Germany's serious desire to 
 avert ItaUan intervention. 
 
 The negotiations he undertook were backed 
 by an offer made by Germany on behalf of 
 Austria. The shape this ofier ultimately 
 took, according to a statement made to the 
 
 221 
 
ITALY AND THE 
 
 Reichstag by the German Chancellor, was 
 as follows : — 
 
 (i) That part of the Tyrol inhabited by 
 Italians to be ceded to Italy. 
 
 (2) Likewise the western bank of the 
 Isonzo, in so far as the population is purely 
 Italian, and the town of Gradisca. 
 
 (3) Trieste to be made an imperial free 
 city, receiving an administration ensuring 
 an Italian character, and to have an Italian 
 University. 
 
 (4) Recognition of Italian sovereignty over 
 Valona, and the sphere of interest attaching 
 thereto. 
 
 (5) Austro- Hungary to declare her political 
 disinterestedness as regards Albania. 
 
 (6) The national interests of Italian Na- 
 tionals in Austro-Hungary to be respected. 
 
 (7) Austro-Hungary to grant an amnesty 
 for political and military crimes to natives 
 of the ceded territory. 
 
 (8) The future wishes of Italy regarding 
 general questions to be assured of every 
 consideration. 
 
 (9) Austro-Hungary to give a solemn 
 declaration concerning the concessions. 
 
 (10) Mixed committees to be appointed 
 to supervise the details of the concessions. 
 
 222 
 
UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 (ii) Austro-Hungary not to require mili- 
 tary service from natives of the territory to 
 be conceded. 
 
 This cession of territory was only to be 
 carried out at the conclusion of the war ; 
 and on the assumption, as Italy pointed out, 
 that Austria was then in a position to make 
 the concessions promised. As for the carry- 
 ing out of these undertakings, Germany 
 solemnly offered her own guarantee that 
 the promises would be fulfilled in their 
 entirety. 
 
 Italy pressed for the immediate cession 
 of the promised territory, but could get 
 nothing more than solemn promises. The 
 nice point then arose : what was the exact 
 value of a solemn promise made by Ger- 
 many. With the example of the Belgian 
 treaty fresh in his mind, Signor Salandra 
 apparently did not value Germany's pledged 
 word at a very high price. He certainly 
 refused to accept the pledge, and was in- 
 stantly confronted with a poUtical crisis. 
 
 In his speech of June 3, 191 5, Signor 
 Salandra hinted that the crisis had been 
 brought about by very dubious methods. 
 It must be remembered that he was speaking 
 under extreme provocation ; that Italy 
 
 223 
 
ITALY AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 
 had been denounced by the Kaiser as a 
 traitorous nation which had broken its 
 pledged word for British gold ; that he him- 
 self had been subject to gross insult on the 
 part of the German Chancellor, speaking to 
 the Reichstag. In this light must be read 
 his accusation of Von Buelow. " He (Von 
 Buelow) supposed that Italy could be led 
 from its path by some millions badly spent 
 in influencing a few persons, out of touch 
 with the soul of the nation ; by attempted 
 bargains with political men which, I hope 
 and believe, have not been clenched. The 
 suspicion is unavoidable that a foreign am- 
 bassador has meddled with the Government, 
 the Parliament and the Country." 
 
 In any case the plot miscarried miser- 
 ably, and Salandra and Sonnino were able 
 to continue their demands for instant cession 
 of the Trentino. Austria declared that it 
 was materially impossible to surrender any- 
 thing until peace had been made, and the 
 negotiations finally broke down. On May 
 3 Baron Sonnino denounced the Triple 
 Alliance, and Italy was at last free of obliga- 
 tion to her unnatural allies. 
 
 Eutler & Tanner, Frome and Loudoil.