22 chapters
19 hour read
Selected Chapters
22 chapters
PREFACE
PREFACE
The old figure of speech 'in the fulness of time' embodies a truth too often forgotten. History knows nothing of spontaneous generation; the chain of cause and effect is unbroken, and however modest be the scale on which an historical work is cast, the reader has a right to ask that it should give him some idea, not only of what happened, but of why it happened. A catalogue of dates and names is as meaningless as the photograph of a crowd. In the following retrospect, I have attempted to trace t
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
The unity of Italy, which the statesmen of Europe and all save a small number of the Italians themselves still regarded as an utopia when it was on the verge of accomplishment, was, nevertheless, desired and foreseen by the two greatest intellects produced by the Italian race. Dante conceived an Italy united under the Empire, which returning from a shameful because self-imposed exile would assume its natural seat in Rome. To him it was a point of secondary interest that the Imperial Lord happene
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
Considering what the state of the country was after 1815, and how apparently inexhaustible were the resources of the Empire of which the petty princes of the peninsula were but puppets, it is remarkable that political agitation, with a view to reversing the decisions of Vienna, should have begun so soon, and on so large a scale. Not that the nation, as a whole, was yet prepared to move; every revolution, till 1848, was partial in the sense that the mass of the people stood aloof, because unconvi
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
The Austrians fully expected a rising in Lombardy in the middle of March, and that they were not without serious fears as to its consequences is proved by the preparations which they quietly made to abandon Milan, if necessary. The Court travelling-carriages were got ready, and the younger princes were sent away. Carbonarism had been introduced into Lombardy the year before by two Romagnols, Count Laderchi and Pietro Maroncelli. It was their propaganda that put the Austrian Government on the ale
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
On 27 April 1831, Charles Albert came to the throne he had so nearly lost. His reconciliation with his uncle, Charles Felix, had been effected after long and melancholy preliminaries. To wash off the Liberal sins of his youth, or possibly with a vague hope of finding an escape from his false position in a soldier's death, he joined the Duc d'Angoulême's expedition against the Spanish Constitutionalists. His extraordinary daring in the assault of the Trocadero caused him to be the hero of the hou
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
The day is drawing near when the century which witnessed the liberation of Italy will have passed away. Already a generation has grown up which can but faintly realise the passionate hopes and fears with which the steps that led through defeat to the ultimate victory were watched, not only by Italians, but by thousands who had never set foot in Italy. Never did a series of political events evoke a sympathy so wide and so disinterested, and it may be foretold with confidence that it never will ag
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
So stout a fight for independence must win admiration, if not approval. The political reasons against the course taken by the Sicilians have been suggested in a former chapter. In separating their lot from that of Naples, in rejecting even freedom unless it was accompanied by disruption, they hastened the ruin of the Neapolitans and of themselves, and surely played into the hands of the crafty tyrant who desired nothing better than to fish in the troubled waters of his subjects' dissensions. In
37 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
While the remnant of the Piedmontese army recrossed the bridge over the Ticino at Pavia, crushed, though not though want of valour, outraged in the person of its King, surely the saddest vanquished host that ever retraced in sorrow the path it had traced in the wildest joy, a few thousand volunteers in Lombardy still refused to lay down their arms or to recognise that, after the capitulation of Milan, all was lost. Valueless as a fact, their defiance of Austria had value as a prophecy, and its p
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
In the spring of 1848, a date might be found when every Italian ruler except the Duke of Modena wore the appearance of a friend to freedom and independence. In the spring of 1849 no Italian prince preserved that appearance except the King of Sardinia. Many causes contributed to the elimination, but most of all the logic of events. It was a case of the survival of the fittest. What seemed a calamity was a step in advance. Early in March, the Marquis Pallavicini, prisoner of Spielberg, had a long
38 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
Circumstances more gloomy than those under which Victor Emmanuel II. ascended the throne of his ancestors it would be hard to imagine. An army twice beaten, a bankrupt exchequer, a triumphant invader waiting to dictate terms; this was but the beginning of the inventory of the royal inheritance. The internal condition of the kingdom, even apart from the financial ruin which had succeeded to the handsome surplus of two years before, was full of embarrassments of the gravest kind. There was a party
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
The decade from 1849 to 1859 may seem, at first sight, to resemble an interregnum, but it was an evolution. There is no pause in the life of nations any more than in the life of individuals: they go forward or they go backward. In these ten years Piedmont went forward; the other Italian governments did not stand still, they went backward. The diseases from which they suffered gained daily upon the whole body-politic, and even those clever foreign doctors who had been the most convinced that this
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
The Cagliari was captured and detained with its crew. As two of the seamen were British subjects, the English Government joined Sardinia in demanding its restitution, which, after long delays, was conceded. In 1857, the Emperor of Austria relieved Field-Marshal Radetsky, then in his ninety-third year, of the burden of office. He was given the right of living in any of the royal palaces, even in the Emperor's own residence at Vienna, but he preferred to spend the one remaining year [Pg.211] of hi
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
Baron von Kellersperg reached Turin on the 23rd of April, bringing with him the Austrian ultimatum: 'Disarmament within three days, or war.' Cavour read the document, and then drew his watch out of his pocket. It was half-past five in the afternoon. At the same hour on the 26th, he gave Baron von Kellersperg the answer: 'Sardinia having accepted the principle of a general disarmament, as formulated by England, with the adhesion of France, Prussia and Russia, the Sardinian Government has no other
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
Napoleon's hurried journey to Turin on his way back to France was almost a flight. Everywhere his reception was cold in the extreme. He was surprised, he said, at the ingratitude of the Italians. It was still possible to ask for gratitude, as the services rendered had not been paid for; no one spoke yet of the barter of Savoy and Nice. But Napoleon, when he said these words to the Governor of Milan, forgot how the Lombards, in June 1848, absolutely refused to take their freedom at the cost of re
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
During the journey from Turin to Genoa, Garibaldi was occupied in opening, reading and tearing up into small pieces an enormous mass of letters, while his English companion spent the time in vainly speculating as to what this vast correspondence was about. When they approached Genoa, the floor of the railway carriage resembled a gigantic wastepaper basket. It was only afterwards that Lawrence Oliphant guessed the letters to be responses to a call for volunteers for Sicily. The origin of the Sici
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
The Italian kingdom is the fruit of the alliance between the strong monarchical principles of Piedmont and the dissolvent forces of revolution. Whenever either one side or the other, yielding to the influence of its individual sympathies or prejudices, failed to recognise that thus only, by the essential logic of events, could the unity of the country be achieved, the entire edifice was placed in danger of falling to the ground before it was completed. When Garibaldi stood on Cape Faro, conquero
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
Francis II. would have been happy had he found counsellors to persuade him to keep pure such titles to sympathy as he then possessed. Decorum, if not humanity, should have urged him to retire, surrounded by the solitary flash of glory cast on his fallen cause by the brave defence of Gaeta. But the revolution, the new Islam, if it could not be conquered must be made to suffer for its triumph. Hence the exiled King was advised to call in murder, pillage and rapine as accomplices. The political bri
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
There were two possible successors to Cavour, the Tuscan, Bettino Ricasoli, and Urban Rattazzi, a Piedmontese barrister. The first belonged to the right, the second to the left centre in the Parliamentary combinations. Cavour had no very close personal relations with either, but he knew their characters. Rattazzi formerly held ministerial office under him, and the long Tuscan crisis of 1859, looked at, as he looked at it, from the inside, gave him opportunities of judging the Iron Baron who oppo
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
In 1865 a scheme of a different sort, and of momentous consequences, grew into shape. It was a scheme of which Cavour first guessed the possibility, as well as the far-reaching results. In August 1865 Count Bismarck asked General La Marmora whether Italy would join Prussia in the contingency of a war with Austria? Only a year before he was still [Pg.358] thinking of carrying out his policy with the aid of Austria, and he had offered to help her to wrench Lombardy from Italy (and from France if s
33 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
The words of Victor Emmanuel to the Venetian Deputation contained a riddle easy to solve: what was meant by the 'completion' of Italy was the establishment of her capital on the Tiber. In most minds there was an intense belief in the inevitability of the union of Rome with the rest of Italy, but no one saw how it was to be brought about. What soothsayer foretold Sédan? In the first period after the war, domestic difficulties fixed the attention of the Italian Government on the present rather tha
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
At the Berlin Congress eight years later, Prince Bismarck pressed the same views upon Count Corti, the Italian delegate. He would have been glad to see the Italians go to Tunis, but Count Corti ingenuously replied: 'You want to make us quarrel with France.' Meanwhile the Englishman who represented France and the Englishman who represented England were discussing the same subject, and out of their discussion arose the French occupation of Tunis. Disquieting rumours got about at once, but they wer
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE END.
THE END.
[1] See Memoirs of Lord Castlereagh , 1848, Vol. i. p. 34. [2] It is now Carlyle's turn to be aspersed. Let Mazzini speak for him from the grave: 'I do not know if I told you,' he wrote to the Marchesa Eleonora Curlo Ruffini, in a letter published a few months ago, 'that I have met upon my path, deserted enough, I hope, by choice, a Scotchman of mind and things, the first person here, up till now, with whom I sympathise and who sympathises with me. We differ in nearly all opinions, but his are s
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter