Part 8

It would be interesting to consider the force of popular legend in a national movement, to weigh sentiment against statesmanship and military prowess. The land of Dante and of Savonarola would be an especially fertile field for such inquiry, among no people has the prophet been held of higher value than with the Italians. To-day we find them turning to their dramatists and novelists for help in the solution of new social problems just as Mazzini and the youth of his day looked to Alfieri for political guidance. There is no doubt that Mazzini believed it was his destiny to be a poet, and that throughout his whole life he looked forward to the day when Italy should be united and free, and he could turn to the work of writing her dramas.

Literary feuds play so little part in Anglo-Saxon history that we find it difficult to understand the importance of their place in Latin countries. Italy a century ago was the battle-ground of the Romanticists and Classicists. The Classicists believed in a certain smug cloistered virtue, a policy of non-resistance, and the contemplation of past glories. It was the ambition of the Romanticists "to give Italians an original national literature, not one that is as a sound of passing music to tickle the ear and die, but one that will interpret to them their aspirations, their ideas, their needs, their social movement." Alfieri had been preaching resistance to Austrian tyranny through his dramas, the boy Mazzini first looked to him as a political saviour of Italy. He wrote, "these literary disputes are bound up with all that is important in social and civil life," and again "the legislation and literature of a people always advance on parallel lines." "Young Italy" first hoped to win freedom through its literature.

The ill-fated Carbonari rebellion of 1821 sent many Piedmontese patriots flying through Genoa to Spain. Giuseppe Mazzini, then sixteen years of age, walking from church one Sunday morning in Genoa in company with his mother, was stopped by a tall, gaunt-featured, black-eyed man who held out his hat asking alms for "the refugees of Italy." The scene made a tremendous impression on the youth's mind, for the first time he felt that the cause of freedom was not a scholastic subject, but one demanding the height of sacrifice. He set himself to study the causes of the failure of past uprisings, and at the same time dedicated himself to the work of teaching his countrymen how they might succeed.

The French Revolution had failed because it had taught men only a knowledge of their rights, without any conception of their duties. Men had not learned the law of self-restraint, and their ideal was the greatest personal liberty rather than the greatest personal obligation to their fellow-men. The revolutionists of Europe had a philosophy, but no religion. The first great discovery that Mazzini made was that if Italy were ever to be united, his countrymen must be fired with faith in their own God-given destinies. They must make of their cause a religion, they must learn, in his words, that Italy "had a strength within her, that was arbiter of facts, mightier than destiny itself." At the start he offered his countrymen two arguments for action, the one that this land of theirs had twice ruled the world, that she who had given Christianity and the Renaissance to Europe had yet to send forth "the gospel of humanity." He wrote: "Italy has been called a graveyard; but a graveyard peopled by our mighty dead is nearer life than a land that teems with living weaklings and braggarts;" he showed Italians "the vision of their country, radiant, purified by suffering, moving as an angel of light among the nations that thought her dead." Such words rang like an inspiration, but Mazzini, studying the men with whom he had to work, knew that such inspiration was not enough. They struck the note of glory, but all revolutionists had heard that note; what was needed was the call to self-sacrifice.

With this fundamental need firmly fixed in his mind Mazzini gave what spare hours fell to the lot of a young Italian lawyer to the work of writing to the independent journals. At first he leaned to the side of caution, realizing how strict was the censorship of the Italian press, but gradually he contrived to slip bolder and more inflammatory messages into circulation under the censor's nose. He spoke of a new party that should arise in a short time, and called it "Young Italy," he expressed deep sympathy with political exiles, he turned his literary criticisms into studies of national development. Ultimately one of the papers for which he wrote, the "Indicatore Livornese," became too daring, and was ended by the authorities. Mazzini then aimed higher, and gained credit with the "Antologia," the Edinburgh Review of Italy, by a series of articles on the historical drama.

Meanwhile he was still studying the problem of giving a new religion to the youth of Italy. He had joined the Society of the Carbonari, and was learning that the plots and counter-plots of an unwieldy secret society would accomplish no good end. There was too much ritual, too little effort. The Carbonari had no definite plan, they were entirely at the mercy of any chance leader of disaffection, each member only knew one or two other members. Of a sudden the Revolution of July in France fired liberals throughout Europe, Mazzini and his young friends in Genoa immediately began active preparations for a military uprising. Lead was being cast into bullets when the police of Genoa intervened and Mazzini was placed under arrest. He had been suspected of revolutionary sentiments for some time. The Governor of Genoa told Giuseppe's father that he considered the son "was gifted with some talent, and too fond of walking by himself at night absorbed in thought. What on earth has he at his age to think about? We don't like young people thinking without our knowing the subject of their thoughts."

Mazzini was taken to the fortress of Savona, and there imprisoned to await his trial. The commander of the fortress allowed the young prisoner to keep his Bible, Tacitus, and Byron. From these hours of solitary confinement sprang the youth's passionate regard for the English poet, a man whose writings he later vehemently held were only to be classed with Dante as an inspiration to Italians.

The government could prove nothing definite against him, but he was thought too dangerous a man to be at large, and so was finally given his choice between nominal imprisonment in a small town and exile. France was throbbing with a new democracy, Paris was the center of revolutionary propaganda, and so Mazzini chose exile there. Early in 1831 he parted from his family at Savona and started north. He felt that he had come to the parting of the ways, and that henceforth his life was to be absolutely given to the cause. For the first time he saw the Alps, and his nature, always strongly susceptible to heroic scenery, was deeply stirred. He watched the sunrise from Mont Cenis and wrote, "The first ray of light trembling on the horizon, vague and pale, like a timid, uncertain hope, then the long line of fire cutting the blue heaven, firm and decided as a promise;" here was the poet soul free at last to speak its message.

With the date of this first exile begins Mazzini's call to "Young Italy." He had recognized that his countrymen must waken to a new religion, that their souls must be touched rather than their ambitions. The youth of Italy would feel the call more strongly than the middle-aged. "Place," he said, "the young at the head of the insurgent masses; you do not know what strength is latent in those young bands, what magic influence the voice of the young has on the crowd; you will find in them a host of apostles for the new religion. But youth lives on movement, grows great in enthusiasm and faith. Consecrate them with a lofty mission, inflame them with emulation and praise; spread through their ranks the word of fire, the word of inspiration; speak to them of country, of glory, of power, of great memories." "All great national movements," he wrote later, "begin with the unknown men of the people, without influence except for the faith and will that counts not time or difficulties." Mazzini was not diffident with regard to his own youthful powers, nor was Cavour, five years Mazzini's junior, who wrote to a friend at this time prophesying that he would one morning wake up Prime Minister of Italy.

The most important feature of "Young Italy" was its religion, the Carbonari had had none. Men were now told that they had a mission given them by God, and that what had been before a mere personal right had become a sacred duty. The second feature was the liberation of the poor, a need which all former revolutionists had seemed to overlook. The French Revolution had had no such substructure, the poets and dramatists had idealized national rather than social liberty, but Mazzini saw that the time had come for a further step, that Austria was not the only enemy his people had to fear. He wrote, "I see the people pass before my eyes in the livery of wretchedness and political subjection, ragged and hungry, painfully gathering the crumbs that wealth tosses insultingly to it, or lost and wandering in riot and the intoxication of a brutish, angry, savage joy; and I remember that these brutalized faces bear the finger-print of God, the mark of the same mission as my own. I lift myself to the vision of the future and behold the people rising in its majesty, brothers in one faith, one bond of equality and love, one ideal of citizen virtue that ever grows in beauty and might; the people of the future, unspoilt by luxury, ungoaded by wretchedness, awed by the consciousness of its rights and duties, and in the presence of that vision my heart beats with anguish for the present and glorying for the future." Mazzini gave "Young Italy" as its watchword "God and the People."

There can be no question but that "Young Italy" was strong where the Carbonari had been weak, but both movements had of necessity many of the same defects. Government espionage forced the new movement like its predecessors to choose the devious courses of a secret society. The restlessness of the age caused the new movement to take each fitful start as a momentous signal. The strength of Austria was not underestimated, but the weakness of the disunited Italian states was. Diplomacy was disregarded; it was only many years later that Mazzini the prophet learned the value of Cavour the statesman. "Young Italy" was launched in a troublous sea, destined to encounter many storms, but fated ultimately to spread abroad the seeds of the hope that was to awaken republicans throughout all European countries.

Mazzini no sooner arrived in Lyons than he found himself in the center of plots. The French government, still fresh from the days of July, was in two minds; first they aided a band of Italian refugees who were planning a raid into Savoy, then they faced about and scattered the conspirators. Another plan was for a trip to Corsica, there to gather arms to aid the insurgents in Romagna, but the funds for this attempt were lacking. Mazzini gave up immediate action for the moment, and locating at Marseilles started with a few youthful friends to organize his great concerted movement. They had nothing but youth and audacity. A contemporary (probably Enrico Mayer) described Mazzini at this time as "about 5 feet 8 inches high, and slightly made; he was dressed in black Genoa velvet, with a large 'republican' hat; his long, curling black hair, which fell upon his shoulders, the extreme freshness of his clear olive complexion, the chiseled delicacy of his regular and beautiful features, aided by his very youthful look and sweetness and openness of expression, would have made his appearance almost too feminine, if it had not been for his noble forehead, the power of firmness and decision that was mingled with their gaiety and sweetness in the bright flashes of his dark eyes and in the varying expression of his mouth, together with his small and beautiful mustachios and beard. Altogether he was at that time the most beautiful being, male or female, that I had ever seen, and I have not since seen his equal."

Mazzini was proud of these early days when he looked back upon them later. He wrote, "We had no office, no helpers. All day, and a great part of the night, we were buried in our work, writing articles and letters, getting information from travelers, enlisting seamen, folding papers, fastening envelopes, dividing our time between literary and manual work. La Cecilia was compositor; Lamberti corrected the proofs; another of us made himself literally porter, to save the expense of distributing papers. We lived as equals and brothers; we had but one thought, one hope, one ideal to reverence. The foreign republicans loved and admired us for our tenacity and unflagging industry; we were often in real want, but we were light-hearted in a way, and smiling because we believed in the future." It was Mazzini's period of boundless hope.

Much of this hope throbbed through the literature that the small Marseilles press scattered throughout Europe, men were in such a state of unrest that the burning words became to them a prophetic writing on the wall. In a hundred ways the contraband pamphlets were smuggled across frontiers, all classes sent assurances of support and aid to the young men in Marseilles, everywhere lodges of "Young Italy" were started, and local editors scattered Mazzini's doctrines through their immediate territories. Priests, attracted by the strong religious tenor, professional and business men, many of the nobility even joined the new movement. Garibaldi, a young officer in the Genoese merchant service, Gioberti, then a teacher at Vercelli, Ruffini, and his fellow-conspirators working under the very shadow of destruction at Genoa, enrolled under the new standard of "God and the People." The old members of the Carbonari, the followers of Buonarotti and his "veri Italiani" joined the ranks, within two years "Young Italy" counted its members by the tens of thousands. Not since the era of the great Crusades had there been any simultaneous rising to compare with it.

All men who hoped for the coming of a united Italy looked towards Piedmont as the state by which the first step must be taken. Piedmont had great military traditions. It supported an efficient army, it was so situated that it held the key of entrance into Lombardy, and had the Alps and the Apennines as a base of retreat. In Piedmont there was moreover an intense national feeling, the House of Savoy was deeply rooted in the affections of the people, and almost alone among the Italian sovereignties that House was practically indigenous to the soil. In Charles Albert Piedmont had just received a king who was an intense nationalist, to whom the name of "Italia" was sacred, and who, at certain times, seems to have felt that he was destined to drive the foreigner beyond the Alps. He was no liberal, both his nature and his priestly advisers counseled him against revolutionary measures, he had not the sanguine temper of the leader, he was more the theorist than the actor. Yet with all his temperamental defects the men of the new generation looked on him as a possible saviour, he had given countenance to the Carbonari in his youth, and had led the conspirators of 1821 to believe that he would side with them in any war for Lombard independence. He had not given such aid as they expected, but he was still the one sovereign to whom "Young Italy" could look with any measure of hope. Mazzini was never an ardent believer in monarchies, but now, when his new party was growing with tremendous leaps and bounds, he felt that even the leadership of a king was better than no leadership at all. He was ready at this time to sacrifice republicanism for nationalism; how far he would then have followed a monarchy, if successful, is a difficult question to decide. He was so much in earnest that he could not always critically balance the means and the end.

Early in 1831 Mazzini published his famous letter to Charles Albert. It was the cry of a prophet to a later generation. He pointed out that the King of Piedmont needed no aid from Austria or France. "There is a crown more brilliant and sublime than that of Piedmont, a crown that waits the man who dares to think of it, who dedicates his life to winning it, and scorns to dull the splendor with thoughts of petty tyranny. Sire, have you ever cast an eagle glance upon this Italy, so fair with nature's smile, crowned by twenty centuries of noble memory, the land of genius, strong in the infinite resources that only want a common purpose, girt round with barriers so impregnable, that it needs but a firm will and a few brave breasts to shelter it from foreign insult? Place yourself at the head of the nation, write on your flag, 'Union, Liberty, Independence.' Free Italy from the barbarian, build up the future, be the Napoleon of Italian freedom. Do this and we will gather round you, we will give our lives for you, we will bring the little states of Italy under your flag. Your safety lies on the sword's point, draw it and throw away the scabbard. But remember, if you do it not, others will do it without you and against you."

Charles Albert had moments of heroism, but they were only too often followed by moments of overwhelming caution. If he ever read Mazzini's letter he must have thrilled at the call to save a country he loved with the whole ardor of his nature. After that first thrill had passed he must have realized that the time to take such a supreme step had not come, or that he had not the will to lead it. Once harboring such a doubt the King became a battle-ground for advisers, and when the short fight for control of the King's mind was won, the reactionaries proved themselves the victors. The unfortunate King allowed others to act against his better judgment; when the fire of revolt next blazed up in Piedmont the government turned a savage face towards the conspirators. The little band of revolutionists was hounded without mercy, terror reigned in Genoa, and the only choice offered the rebels was between betrayal of their friends and execution. Jacopo Ruffini, one of Mazzini's dearest boyhood friends, killed himself in prison when offered such an alternative. The pendulum swung back, gaining momentum thereby for its coming flight. "Ideas," wrote Mazzini, "ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs."

At twenty-eight Mazzini found himself an outcast, hunted at last from France as he had been before from Italy, living in the closest concealment in Switzerland, all his hopes tumbling about him. He tried to organize a band of raiders who should enter Savoy from the Swiss frontier; they were disrupted by treachery and distrust before the first shot was fired. Mazzini's health broke under the endless strain, there were nights when he never went to bed, days when he had to lie concealed in a goatherd's hut. At times he seemed to find his only consolation in the white-capped mountains, them he passionately worshiped, the Alps were always nearest to him after Italy. He had very few friends, almost no books; there were no presses now to speak his words to the young hearts of Europe, only occasionally word came to him that his great idea was growing in the outer world.

In those dark days in Switzerland Mazzini suffered most from the thought that he had entailed all his family and friends in his vain sacrifice. His boyhood confidants were dead or in exile, families he loved were scattered over many countries, the few women he knew well were left solitary in their homes. The woman he loved he felt he could not ask to marry him, he had no home to give her, and scarcely knew whether his next day's food would be forthcoming. He wrote to a friend, "I wanted to do good, but I have always done harm to everybody, and the thought grows and grows until I think I shall go mad. Sometimes I fancy I am hated by those I love most." In all his letters of this period we catch the note of a spirit torn between pity for sufferings he thinks himself to have caused, and the stern sense of a duty given him by God. They are wonderful letters, the thoughts of a man who could put no limits to his own self-sacrifice nor value too highly the sacrifices of others. In one letter he wrote: "I think over it from morning to night, and ask pardon of my God for having been a conspirator; not that I in the least repent the reasons for it, or recant a single one of my beliefs, which were and are and will be a religion to me, but because I ought to have seen that there are times when a believer should only sacrifice himself to his belief. I have sacrificed everybody."

A great heroic spirit was trying to justify, not its own aims, but the sorrows it had brought upon others. Mazzini could never have seemed hard and cold, but in those dark days in Switzerland, and in those later to come in London, the gentle, humble spirit of him was pre-eminent. He loved friendship, home life, the arts; he had met his ideal woman; and yet each and every joy life had to offer him he gave up on the altar of his duty. "Duty," he said, "an arid, bare religion, which does not save my heart a single atom of unhappiness, but still the only one that can save me from suicide;" and again he wrote, "When a man has once said to himself in all seriousness of thought and feeling, I believe in liberty and country and humanity, he is bound to fight for liberty and country and humanity--fight while life lasts, fight always, fight with every weapon, face all from death to ridicule, face hatred and contempt, work on because it is his duty, and for no other reason."

In 1837 Mazzini gave up the heights of Switzerland for the fogs of London, moved largely to this change by the fact that in England he need no longer live in hiding. He did not look forward with any eagerness to life in England; if the English cared little what political beliefs refugees brought with them, they were not the people to flame with interest in a cause. Byron, Mazzini considered more Italian than English; he could not conceive of poetry as stirring the British blood. He took cheap lodgings, and set himself to writing for support, finding time to keep up his correspondence with members of "Young Italy" scattered over Europe, and also time to look after such Italians in London as were in greater straits than he. The Ruffini family were with him for a time, then misunderstandings separated them, and the last tie that bound him to Genoa was gone. He lived the pathetic life of a literary hack, spending his days working in the British Museum, and his nights writing in his own small room. The one charm he found about London was its fog. "The whole city," he wrote, "seems under a kind of spell, and reminds me of the witches' scene in Macbeth or the Brocksberg or the Witch of Endor. The passers-by look like ghosts--one feels almost a ghost oneself."