Part 13

The next step in the dramatic history followed almost immediately, and although it took place without the open approval of Cavour there is no question but that he was secretly hoping for its success. The King of Naples and Sicily was in hard straits, his people were now continually fomenting revolutions, Austria no longer came to his aid as she had formerly. The feeling throughout Europe was so general that Francis II. stood on the edge of the precipice that on April 15 Victor Emmanuel wrote him and told him that his only hope of safety lay in granting his subjects an immediate constitution. Francis, like a true Bourbon, postponed action until it was too late. Meantime northern revolutionists were waking to the idea of sending an expedition south to free Sicily, and Garibaldi's name was on every tongue. Cavour did not wish Garibaldi to go, he knew the tremendous odds against his succeeding, and he realized that in case of success serious difficulties must at once arise. He was tempted to keep Garibaldi at home by force, but the King would not listen to such action. On May 5 Garibaldi and his famous Legion sailed from Quarto, and with their sailing an accomplished fact Cavour gave them such help as he could.

Good fortune tended on Garibaldi and the Thousand, they made their landing on the Sicilian coast and swept the royal troops before them. The English fleet did not actually aid them, but were not sorry for their happy progress. The rest of the world looked on and wondered if this sudden attack on southern Italy was another of Cavour's coups. Most observers considered that it was. The King of Naples said that Garibaldi was a blind; behind him was ranged Piedmont, intent on the fall of his dynasty.

Garibaldi was hailed at Palermo as dictator and his victory over Sicily was complete. He had always acted in Victor Emmanuel's name, but Cavour feared that his followers were too deeply imbued with Mazzini's republican ideas to be eager to join with Piedmont. He was mistaken, he did not then altogether understand Garibaldi, and he never did entire justice to Mazzini's principles.

If the European Powers had protested, Garibaldi could not have crossed to the mainland, but England would not accept Napoleon's proposal to intervene, and Naples was left to itself. Cavour understood that the Kingdom of Francis must fall, and only hoped that it might be by diplomacy rather than at the hands of Garibaldi's troops. His plans to this end failed, Garibaldi reached Calabria and began his triumphal march to Naples. He had become a name with which to conjure all classes of the people, victory over every evil must follow his footsteps, the Kingdom of Naples, wretchedly weak, fell before him. Garibaldi became a hero throughout Europe, it was now Cavour's task to treat diplomatically with such a victorious force.

In order that Garibaldi might not attempt to sweep north through Papal territory Cavour determined to send the army of northern Italy down into Umbria and the Marches of Ancona. It was a direct defiance of the temporal power of the Pope, but all discerning men had seen that the step must soon come. Moreover it was the desire now of practically all Italy to be united, the flood had swept so far that they would be content with nothing but the whole peninsula. Again Europe made no effectual protest, Napoleon was as usual undetermined, Lord Palmerston eager for Italy's success. Ancona fell, and Victor Emmanuel marched on into Neapolitan territory, delivering the last central provinces from Austrian influence. The Austrian government did not declare war, perhaps they realized at last that the world was moving forward, not backward, and that they had had their day.

Garibaldi's last victory occurred on the Volturno on October 1. The royal forces and the victorious Legion had practically met. Cavour was strongly tempted to declare Victor Emmanuel dictator, but his belief in constitutional methods triumphed. He would not bedim one ray of Garibaldi's glory, but he wanted to cement the constitutional monarchy. Disputes arose between the royal generals and the revolutionists, Cavour insisted that the Garibaldian troops should be honorably treated. He knew that Garibaldi had not forgiven him for the sacrifice of Nice, but he could place higher his own admiration for the hero. "Garibaldi," he wrote to the King, "has become my most violent enemy, but I desire for the good of Italy, and the honor of your Majesty, that he should retire entirely satisfied."

Tremendous popular influences were at work to have a dictator appointed to govern southern Italy for at least a year. Cavour might have consented to the popular acclaim for Garibaldi, or have compelled the appointment of one of his own party. He did neither, instead he appealed to the Parliament. He introduced a bill authorizing the Government to accept the immediate annexation of such provinces of central and southern Italy as expressed by universal suffrage their desire to become a part of the constitutional Kingdom of Victor Emmanuel. Parliament passed this bill on October 11. It was still in doubt whether the Garibaldians would agree. On October 13 Garibaldi called his followers together, and declared that if the people voted for annexation they should have it. Then he issued the order that "the two Sicilies form an integral part of Italy, one and indivisible under the constitutional King, Victor Emmanuel, and his successors." He had made the King a present of his conquests. It is probable that Cavour had truly estimated Garibaldi's depths of patriotism.

Napoleon still kept his troops at Gaeta, but was finally brought to see that the conflict could only end in the one way. The French fleet withdrew, and the city surrendered February 13, 1861. Francis II. went into exile. Rome still held out, but Cavour was determined that the Pope's temporal power must end and that city become the capital of the new kingdom. A general election to the new Parliament took place, and the returns showed a large majority pledged to Cavour's views. When the new Chamber met their first act was to vote Victor Emmanuel's assumption of the title of King of Italy. It had been proposed by some that the title be King of the Italians, but Cavour insisted that only King of Italy spoke of the accomplished fact of the new nation.

On March 25, 1861, Cavour stated in Parliament that Italy must have Rome as its capital, but on the distinct understanding that this act should in no sense denote the servitude of the Church. He proclaimed a free church in a free state as the solution of the historic problem, events had shown that a power which could only be sustained by means of foreign support was not destined to last. Parliament voted for Rome as the capital, and Cavour opened negotiations with the Vatican. He found argument there vain, and turned to France in the hope of securing an ally who could conciliate the Pope. Meanwhile he was busied with the disposition of Garibaldi's troops, which were persistently disregarded by the regular army. Garibaldi was indignant and stated in Parliament that Cavour was "driving the country into civil war." Cavour, stung by the words, nevertheless held his peace and replied calmly. The breach between the two men was made up, they met as friends a little later at the King's desire.

In May, 1861, it was seen that Cavour was ailing, he had worked too hard and given himself no chance to rest. The last day he sat in Parliament he fell ill with fever, and from that he never recovered. Unto the very end he was deep in plans for the new nation; on June 6 he died.

The tale of the birth of the Italian nation reads like a romance, barrier after barrier, seemingly insurmountable, fell at the touch of a wand, and the wand was ever in Cavour's hand. Mazzini had breathed a new hope into Italy, Victor Emmanuel had given a noble leader to the cause, Garibaldi had fought and conquered, but it was Cavour who had so fused their efforts that they led to the single goal. He was always the Italian first, the Minister of Piedmont afterwards. In history he will figure as a great patriot, in his lifetime he was recognized throughout Europe as the great statesman.

It is reported that Metternich in his old age said, "There is only one diplomatist in Europe, but he is against us; it is M. de Cavour." Palmerston always recognized him as the one man who could unite his country and foil Napoleon, Bismarck studied him as a pattern for his own later efforts, and Napoleon, his lifelong ally and opponent, conceded that Cavour alone impressed him as a genius of the first rank in statecraft. His contemporaries could not always understand him, he had so often to give up the immediate advantage for the future gain, he had to wear his mask so frequently even among his own people that men grew to believe he preferred the circuitous to the straight path. From the vantage point of a later day it is possible to see how frail was the skiff he navigated and how perilous the seas. It was so easy for the Powers of Europe, secure themselves, to prefer peace to any fresh disturbance. What did the welfare of a few small states matter to them? Italy was chronically misgoverned. Cavour had to take each forward step in fear that he might call down upon Piedmont the avalanche of Europe; his one ally, the French Emperor, was as stable as quicksilver, never two days the same. It almost passes belief that Cavour did manage to sail his skiff into port, he could only have done it by alternate patience and audacity.

Cavour did not live to see Rome or Venice become part of the Kingdom, but it was his work that made those later triumphs possible. He had foreseen their coming, he had a genius for foresight, even in the early days when he seemed speaking only for Piedmont he was planning for Italy. But in his planning for the great goal he never forgot to make certain of each step, his diplomacy was a logical sequence of accepted opportunities, he believed in taking the straight path if that were possible, if not in circling the obstacle that blocked his way.

The story is told that when the wife of the Russian Minister at Turin was shopping in that city the clerk suddenly left her and ran to the door. When he returned he said, "I saw Count Cavour passing, and wishing to know how our affairs are going on, I wanted to see how he looked. He looks in good spirits, so everything is going right." The story illustrates how, after Cavour had once taken the helm, the people of Piedmont trusted him, growing more and more confident that he would lead them aright although they could not always see the logic of his steps. Few statesmen have received more complete allegiance from a people than Cavour ultimately won, but no statesman ever deserved the gratitude of his countrymen more unreservedly.

GARIBALDI, THE CRUSADER

When Mazzini had stirred men's minds to fever-heat in the great cause of Italian liberty, and Cavour had so manipulated events that political progress was possible, came Garibaldi, to lead with all the fire of a crusader the new race of Italian patriots. He was a hero of legends as soon as he took the field. He cannot be compared to any modern general, nor his army to any other army of recent centuries; he was the personal hero whose red shirt and slouch hat became symbols of liberty, and whose name was sufficient to work miracles of faith. Many a Calabrian peasant confidently expected the millennium to follow in Garibaldi's footsteps, and this faith, spreading as all great popular emotions do, swept him and his ragged volunteers to victory after victory that a less legendary but vastly more experienced general never would have known. He was always the pure-hearted crusader with the single goal.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in Nice in the year 1807, two years the junior of Mazzini, three years the senior of Cavour. His parents, who were in very modest circumstances, wished him to enter the priesthood, but his nature was too adventurous to suit him for the religious life. Even as a boy he craved action and wanted to share his father's life on the sea. Father and grandfather had been sailors, and the boy Giuseppe could not be kept from boats. Realizing this inheritance, the father took him with him on his voyages. His second voyage was made to Rome, and the sight of that city stirred the boy to the foundations of his nature. Years later he wrote of this first boyhood impression, "Rome, which I had before admired and thought of frequently, I ever since have loved. It has been dear to me beyond all things. I not only admired her for her former power and the remains of antiquity, but even the smallest thing connected with her was precious to me."

Very early, on a voyage to Russia, a young Ligurian mate told the youth something of the plans of the scattered Italian patriots, and, once conscious that there was a movement on foot to liberate his beloved country, Garibaldi sought all people and writings which could enlighten him on that score. Thus he came almost immediately under the influence of Mazzini's work and joined his new movement of "Young Italy." From the moment of this association his life held the single purpose, he was ready to make any sacrifice in this cause. In 1834 he joined in the ill-fated expedition to Savoy, and as a consequence found himself on February 5, of that year, flying from Genoa as a proscript. A few days later he learned from a newspaper that he had been condemned to death by the government. Shortly afterwards he sailed from Marseilles for Brazil.

For the next fourteen years Garibaldi led the life of a guerilla leader, fighting the battles of Montevideo, and taking a chief part in the innumerable wars for independence which served to keep the South American states in constant upheaval during the first half of the Nineteenth Century. The various states were full of French, Spanish, and Italian adventurers, and Garibaldi contrived, with that intuitive insight into character which was one of the chief characteristics of his genius, to choose certain of the Italians who were as intense partisans of liberty as he, and form them into a legion, destined to be the nucleus of that famous Italian "Legion" which was later to win its victories on the other side of the world. The South American adventures of the young general read like a story from the romantic pages of a novelist, they are a perpetual record of battles, sieges, and alarms. Through their turbulent course Garibaldi learned experience of rough, irregular fighting, which was later to prove invaluable. To add to the romance of these years Garibaldi met at a small town in the district of Laguna, in Brazil, the woman who so charmed him at first sight that he immediately wooed her and won her for his wife, the dearly beloved Anita who accompanied him afterwards on all his military expeditions, both by land and sea, and proved herself the equal of any of his men in devotion and the most intrepid courage in the face of extreme peril.

In 1847 Pius IX., the new Pontiff, stirred all Italian patriots with the brave words he uttered in behalf of a new and free Italy. To men who had waited long for a leader who should unite all the small states the Pope appeared as a real deliverer, and for a few short months he did indeed stand at the head of a movement closely allied to the Guelphic policies of the Middle Ages. The news of the Pope's call to all Italians reached Garibaldi and his friends in Montevideo, and immediately the former and his friend, Colonel Anzani, wrote to Pius IX. tendering him their allegiance, and offering the assistance of their swords. Lines throughout the letter show the self-abnegating, single-hearted devotion of Garibaldi to Italy's cause, the one sacred service of his life. "If then to-day our arms, which are not strangers to fighting, are acceptable to your Holiness, we need not say how willingly we shall offer them in the service of one who has done so much for our country and our church. We shall count ourselves happy if we can but come to aid Pius IX. in his work of redemption.... We shall consider ourselves privileged if we are allowed to show our devotedness by offering our blood." Unfortunately the Pope was not made of the same heroic fiber as the South American soldier. No answer was made to the letter, but Garibaldi was so eager to be on the scene of action and learn conditions for himself that he immediately sailed, although still under sentence of death, for Italy with fifty members of his Legion.

They landed at Nice on June 24, 1848. Already they had learned at Alicante the stirring events of that memorable spring, and were burning to take the field against the Austrians. The leader and his handful of men hastened to Lombardy to offer their services to the Sardinian King, Charles Albert. The King received the offer very coldly, but, his ardor undaunted, Garibaldi pushed on to Milan. The latter city had learned of his many battles in South America and hailed him with great enthusiasm. From the country volunteers came pouring to his standard, and in an incredibly short time at least 30,000 men had joined the remnant of the legion. They were most of them wild with the desire to drive the Austrians from Lombardy. Charles Albert was defeated and signed an armistice by which Milan was given back to the Empire, but the Garibaldian army paid no heed to the formal terms of peace, and continued a guerilla warfare wherever white-coated Austrians were to be found.

An eye-witness, Giulio Dandolo, thus describes the appearance of Garibaldi's troops: "Picture to yourself," he says, "an incongruous assemblage of individuals of all descriptions, boys of twelve or fourteen, veteran soldiers attracted by the fame of the celebrated chieftain of Montevideo, some stimulated by ambition, others seeking for impunity and license in the confusion of war, yet so restrained by the inflexible severity of their leader that courage and daring alone could find a vent, whilst more lawless passions were curbed beneath his will. The general and his staff all rode on American saddles, wore scarlet blouses, with hats of every possible form, without distinction of any kind, or pretension to military ornament.... Garibaldi, if the encampment was far from the scene of danger, would stretch himself under his tent; if on the contrary the enemy were near at hand he remained constantly on horseback giving orders and visiting the outposts. Often disguised as a peasant, he risked his own safety in daring reconnaissances, but most frequently, seated on some commanding elevation, he would pass whole hours examining the surrounding country with his telescope. When the general's trumpet gave the signal to prepare for departure lassoes secured the horses which had been left to graze in the meadows. The order of march was always arranged on the preceding day, and the corps set out without so much as knowing where the evening would find them. Owing to this patriarchal simplicity, pushed sometimes too far, Garibaldi appeared more like the chief of a tribe of Indians than a general, but at the approach of danger and in the heat of combat, his presence of mind was admirable; and then by the astonishing rapidity of his movements he made up in a great measure for his deficiency in those qualities which are generally supposed to be absolutely essential to a military commander."

Speed and audacity constituted the two main elements of the leader's tactics. One day when on Lake Maggiore Garibaldi managed to take two Austrian steamers by surprise, and placing 1500 men upon them, suddenly appeared at Luino. From there he planned an attack on 10,000 Austrians encamped nearby, but news of his intentions reached the enemy, and he was obliged to scatter his small force in a skilfully contrived retreat. The actual result of such a campaign was small, but the extreme skill of his sudden advances and retreats won him a European prestige as a master of light warfare, and continually brought soldiers to his standard. When the regular armies ceased fighting ardent patriots turned to Garibaldi as the last remaining hope.

While in Switzerland he was seized with marsh fever and became dangerously ill. When he recovered he joined his family at Nice and there spent the autumn. Charles Albert had by now repented his cold treatment of the young man's offer of service and tendered him a high rank in the Sardinian army. Garibaldi, however, wished more immediate action than such a position offered, and had moreover been fired with hope at the reports of Daniel Manin's heroic defense of Venice against the Austrians. He determined to go to Venice, and started with two hundred and fifty volunteer companions. At Ravenna he learned of the revolution at Rome, and then, as always in his life, could not resist the call of the Eternal City. He changed his course towards Rome, and as he traveled his followers increased to 1500 men. With this band he approached the city, which had been deserted by that Pope of noble impulses but timid resolution to whom Garibaldi had written offering his services the previous year.

Pius IX. executed a complete volte-face. Terrified at the assassination of his Prime Minister Rossi, and worked on by his clerical ministers of State and foreign diplomatists, he withdrew the liberal concessions he had just granted his Roman subjects, declared the notoriously vicious King Bomba of Naples a model monarch and fled to Gaeta, leaving Rome to the revolutionists. At the same time Mazzini the arch idealist appeared among them, and he and Garibaldi, both hailed as pre-eminent leaders in their respective fields, were elected members of the new Roman Assembly. Mazzini was in charge of the civil government, Garibaldi of the army now rapidly gathering from all parts of Italy. He took his position on the frontier menaced by the Neapolitan army, and fortified the stronghold of Rieti.

Meanwhile in northern Italy Charles Albert had again taken the field, had lost the battle of Novara, and had abdicated. The Roman Republic immediately found itself beset by great European Powers, Austria, Spain, and Naples, eager to restore the Pontiff and teach his audacious subjects a salutary lesson. As Manin in Venice, so Mazzini in Rome looked to France for succor, or at least to uphold the policy of non-intervention. Did not the constitution of the then existing French Republic specifically state that that nation "would never employ her arms against the liberty of any people"? Acting on this assumption the Roman Assembly voted for the perpetual abolition of the temporal power of the Pope, and on April 18, 1849, addressed a manifesto to the governments of England and France, setting forth "that the Roman people had the right to give themselves the form of government which pleased them, that they had sanctioned the independence and free exercise of the spiritual authority of the Pope, and that they trusted that England and France would not assist in restoring a government irreconcilable by its nature with liberty and civilization, and morally destitute of all authority for many years past, and materially so during the previous five months."