Part 3 (1/2)

Piedmont needed some years, not of rest, but of active and consecutive labour before it could enter the lists again as armed champion of Italian independence. The disastrous issue of the last conflicts had been attributed to every cause except that which was most accountable for it: a badly led and badly organised army. The ”We are betrayed”

theory was caught up alike by republicans and conservatives, who accused each other of ruining the country rather than give the victory to the rival faction. Whatever grain of truth there was in these taunts, the military inefficiency of the forces which Charles Albert led across the Ticino in March 1848 remained the main reason why Radetsky was able to get back Lombardy and Venetia for his master.

This Cavour knew, and he was anxious not to precipitate matters till La Marmora, to whom he privately gave _carte blanche_, could say that his work was done. He began treating Austria with more consideration than she had received from Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio, who was a bad hand at dissembling. Count Buol was gratified, almost grateful. But these relatively harmonious relations did not last long. In February 1853 there was an abortive attempt at revolution in Milan, of which not one person in a thousand knew anything till it was suppressed. It was the premature and ill-advised explosion of a conspiracy by which Mazzini hoped to repeat the miracle of 1848: the ejection of a strong military power by a blast of popular fury. But miracles are not made to order, though Mazzini never came to believe it. As a reprisal for this disturbance, the Austrian Government, not content with executions and bastinadoes, decreed the sequestration of the lands of those Lombard emigrants who had become naturalised in Piedmont. Cavour charged Austria with a breach of international law and recalled the Sardinian minister from Vienna. It was risking war, but he knew that even for the weakest state there are some things worse than war. It was reversing the policy of prudence with which he had set out, but when prudence meant cowardice, Cavour always cast it to the winds. The outcry in all Europe against the sequestration decree deterred the Austrian Government from treating the Sardinian protest as a _casus belli_. Liberal public opinion everywhere approved of Cavour's course, and in France and England increased confidence was felt in him by those in authority. Governments like to deal with a strong man who knows when not to fear.

Only such a man would have conceived the idea which was now taking concrete form in Cavour's mind. This was the plan of an armed alliance with the Western Powers on the outbreak of the war, which as early as November 1853 well-informed persons looked upon as henceforth inevitable. Cavour would never have been a Chauvinist, but he was not by nature a believer in neutrality. He was const.i.tutionally inclined to think that in all serious contingencies to act is safer than not to act. The world is divided between men of this mould and their opposites. La Marmora told him that the army, which had made incredible progress considering the state in which it was a short time before, could place in the field a force for which no country would have reason to blush. If not a great general, the Piedmontese Minister of War might fairly be called a first-cla.s.s organiser. For the rest, Cavour believed that the ultimate school of any army is war. Above all, he believed that this was the hour for a great resolve or a _gran rifiuto_. If the House of Savoy stood still with folded arms it might retire into the ranks of small ruling families, which leave the rearrangement of maps to their betters. It was secretly reported to Cavour that Napoleon III. was beginning to drop enigmatical remarks about Italian affairs, and it was these reports that finally decided him to strain every nerve to make his audacious design a reality.

Russia had broken off diplomatic relations with Sardinia in 1848, and when Victor Emmanuel communicated the death of his father to the Powers, the only one which returned no response was the empire of the Czar. It would be absurd to adduce this lack of courtesy as an excuse for war; still it gave a slightly better complexion to an attack which the Russian Government was justified in calling ”extraordinarily gratuitous.” Cavour had one person of great importance on his side, the king. In January 1854 he broached the subject with the tentative inquiry, ”Does it not seem to your Majesty that we might find some way of taking part in the war of the Western Powers with Russia?” To which Victor Emmanuel answered simply, ”If I cannot go myself I will send my brother.” But it is not too much to say that the whole country was against him. The old Savoyard party opposed the war tooth and nail, and from the ”Little Piedmont” point of view it was perfectly right.

The radicals, headed by Brofferio, denounced it as ”economically reckless, militarily a folly, politically a crime.” Most of the Lombard emigration thought ill of it, and the heads of the army were lukewarm or contrary; this was not the war they wanted. The Tuscan romancist Guerrazzi wrote, with unpardonable levity, that republicans ought to rejoice because this was the final disillusion given to Italians by monarchy, limited or not. One republican, however, Manin, saw in the Italian tricolor displayed with the French and English flags in Paris the first ray of hope that had gladdened his eyes since he left Venice, and Poerio; when he heard of the alliance in his dungeon, ”felt his chain grow lighter.” It seemed as if those who had suffered most for Italy had a clearness of vision denied to the rest.

What, if persisted in, would have been the most serious obstacle was the opposition of Rattazzi, but he was won over to a.s.sent, if not to approval, by Giuseppe Lanza, a new figure on the parliamentary scene, who had lately been elected Vice-President of the Chamber. Lanza (who was destined to be Prime Minister when the Italians went to Rome) was then only slightly acquainted with Cavour; from being independent, his favourable opinion carried more weight. With Rattazzi's adhesion the majority of the Centres was secured. It was not an enthusiastic majority, but it quieted its forebodings by the argument which was beginning to take hold of people's minds: that Cavour must be let do as he chose. Hardly any one liked him, but to see him stand there, absolutely unhesitating and sure, among the politicians of Buts and Ifs, began to generate the belief that he was a man of fate who must be allowed to go his way.

It is easy to be wise after the event, and it may seem strange now that the alliance with the Western Powers found so few, so very few cordial supporters. But Cavour himself called the risks which attended it ”enormous.” The great question for Sardinia was what Austria would do. If she did nothing, the pros and cons were perhaps evenly balanced; if she joined Russia, the pros would be strengthened; if she joined the allies, the situation for Sardinia would be grave indeed.

The republicans were already calling the war an alliance with Austria.

Were the description verified, it was hard to see how the utmost genius or skill could draw aught but evil from so unnatural a union.

The first invitation to Sardinia to co-operate came separately from England, which had vetoed a monstrous proposal on the part of Austria to occupy Alessandria, in order, in any case, to prevent Piedmont from attacking her during the war. Lord Clarendon instructed Sir James Hudson to represent to Cavour that Austria's fears would be set at rest if a portion of the Sardinian army were sent to the East. The chief English motive was really the conviction that numbers were urgently required if the war was to succeed, and also the desire to lessen the large numerical superiority of the French. In the first instance Cavour replied that although he had been all along in favour of partic.i.p.ating in the war, his Cabinet was too much against the idea for him to take any immediate action. But the subject was revived. An alliance with Piedmont was popular in England, where the Government was in an Italian mood, having been made terribly angry by the King of Naples' prohibition of the sale of mules for transport purposes in the East. In December 1854 Cavour was formally invited to send a corps which would enter the English service and receive its pay from the British Exchequer. He would rather have sent it on these terms than not at all, but the scheme met with such unqualified condemnation from La Marmora and General Dadormida, the Foreign Minister, that it was set aside as not becoming to the dignity of an independent nation.

Meanwhile something had occurred which reinforced the arguments of those who were against sending troops at all. After hedging for a year, Austria signed a treaty couched in vague terms, but which appeared to debar her, at any rate, from taking sides with Russia--Italy's most flattering prospect. Napoleon III. expected much more from it than this; he thought that Austria was too much compromised to avoid throwing in her cause with the allies. It must be said of Napoleon that among the men responsible for the Crimean War he alone aimed at an object which, from a political, let alone moral view, could justify it. He did not think that it would be enough to obtain a few restrictions, not worth the paper on which they were written, and the prospect of a new lease of life to Turkish despotism.

He certainly had one paltry object of his own; he wished to gratify his subjects by military glory. He began to suspect the hollowness of the testimony of the plebiscite; the French people did not like him, and never would like him. A war would please the populace and the army; it would also make him look much more like a real Napoleon.

But when he had decided to go to war, he hoped to do something worth doing. He thought (to use his own words) ”that no peace would be satisfactory which did not resuscitate Poland.” There, and nowhere else, were the wings of the Russian eagle to be clipped. Moreover, the entire French nation, which cared so little for Italy, would have applauded the deliverance of Poland. On the Polish question the ultramontane would have embraced the socialist. France was never so united as in the sympathy which she then felt for Poland, except in that which she now feels for Russia. But Napoleon did not think that he could resuscitate Poland without Austrian a.s.sistance. At the close of 1854 he made sure of getting it.

Cavour clung to his project. Probably his penetrating mind guessed that Austria could not fight Russia, which had saved her from destruction in 1849. There now arose a demand for some guarantee which should give Piedmont, if she took part in the war, at least the certainty of a moral advantage. The king remarked to the French Amba.s.sador that all this wrangling about conditions was folly ”If we ally ourselves promptly and frankly, we shall gain a great deal more”

Doubtless Cavour thought the same, but to satisfy the country it was necessary to demand, if nothing else, a promise from the Western Powers that they would put pressure on Austria to raise the sequestrations on the property of the Lombard exiles. But the Powers, which were courting Austria, refused to make any such promise, on which the Foreign Minister, General Dadormida, resigned, notwithstanding that the Lombard emigrants generously begged the Government not to think of them. Cavour offered the Foreign Office and the Presidency of the Council to D'Azeglio; under whom he would have consented to serve, but D'Azeglio declined to enter the Ministry, whilst engaging not to oppose its policy Cavour then took the Foreign Office himself, and at eight o'clock on the evening of the same day, January 10, 1855, the protocol of the offensive and defensive alliance of Sardinia with France and England was, at last, signed.

Wilting of the Crimean War in after days, Louis Kossuth observed that never did a statesman throw down a more hazardous and daring stake than Cavour when he insisted on clenching the alliance after he had found out that it must be done without any conditions or guarantees.

Cicero's _Partem fortuna sibi vindicat_ applies to diplomacy as well as to war, ”but the stroke was very bold and very dangerous.”

CHAPTER VI

THE CRIMEAN WAR--STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCH

The speeches made by Cavour in defence of the alliance before the two Houses of Parliament contain the clearest exposition of his political faith that he had yet given. They form a striking refutation of the theory, still held by many, especially in Italy, that he was lifted into the sphere of high political aims by a whirlwind none of his sowing. In these speeches he is less occupied with Piedmont, the kingdom of which he was Prime Minister, than an English statesman who required war supplies would be with Lancas.h.i.+re. ”I shall be asked,” he said, ”how can this treaty be of use to Italy?” The treaty would help Italy in the only way in which, in the actual conditions of Europe, she could be helped. The experience of the last years and of the past centuries had shown that plots and revolutions could not make Italy; ”at least,” he added, ”in my opinion it has shown it.” What, then, could make her? The raising of her credit. To raise Italy's credit two things were needed: the proof that an Italian Government could combine order with liberty, and the proof that Italians could fight. He was certain that the laurels won by Sardinian soldiers in the East would do more for Italy than all that had been done by those who thought to effect her regeneration by rhetoric.

When Cavour spoke of himself in public, it was generally in a light tone, and half in jest. Thus in the debate on the treaty, he said that Brofferio and his friends could not be surprised at his welcoming the English alliance when they had once done nothing but tax him with Anglomania, and had given him the nickname of Milord Risorgimento. He could easily have aroused enthusiasm if, instead of this banter, he had spoken the words of pa.s.sionate earnestness in which he alluded to his part in the transaction in a letter to Mme. de Circourt. He felt, he said, the tremendous responsibility which weighed on him, and the dangers which might arise from the course adopted, but duty and honour dictated it. Since it had pleased Providence that Piedmont, alone in Italy, should be free and independent, Piedmont was bound to make use of its freedom and independence to plead before Europe the cause of the unhappy peninsula. This perilous task the king and the country were resolved to persevere in to the end. Those French liberals and doctrinaires who were now weeping over the loss of liberty in France, after helping to stifle it in Italy, might consider his policy absurd and romantic; he exposed himself to their censures, sure that all generous hearts would sympathise with the attempt to call back to life a nation which for centuries had been shut up in a horrible tomb. If he failed, he reckoned on his friend reserving him a place among the ”eminent vanquished” who gathered round her; in any case she would take the vent he had given to his feelings as the avowal _that all his life was consecrated to one sole work, the emanc.i.p.ation of his country_. This was not a boast uttered to bring down the plaudits of the Senate; it was a confession which escaped from Cavour in one of the rare moments when, even in private, he allowed himself to say what he felt. But it speaks to posterity with a voice which silences calumny.

After the point had been gained and the war embarked upon, the anxieties of the minister who was solely responsible for it did not decrease. The House of Savoy had survived Novara; one royal sacrifice served the purpose of an ancient immolation; it propitiated fate.

But a Novara in the East would have been serious indeed. What Cavour feared, however, was not defeat--it was inaction, of which the moral effect would have been nearly as bad. What if the laurels he had spoken of were never won at all? The position of the Sardinian contingent on the first line was not secured without endless diplomacy; Napoleon wished to keep it out of sight as a reserve corps at Constantinople. When, with the aid of England, it was s.h.i.+pped for Balaclava, there still seemed a disposition to hold it back. Cavour wrote bitterly of the prospect of the Sardinian troops being sent by the allies to perish of disease in the trenches while they advanced at the pace of a yard a month. He described himself and his colleagues as waiting with cruel impatience for tidings of the first engagement: ”Still no news from the army; it is distracting!” Meanwhile the ”Reds”

and the ”Blacks” were happy. Cavour did not fear the first, except, perhaps, at Genoa; but he did fear the deeply-rooted forces of reaction, which were only too likely to regain the ascendant if things went wrong with the war.

At last the long-desired, almost despaired-of news arrived. On August 16 the Piedmontese fought an engagement on the Tchernaia; it was not a great battle, but it was a success, and the men showed courage and steadiness. It was hailed at Turin as a veritable G.o.dsend. The king, jaded and worn out by the trials which this year had brought him, rejoiced as sovereign and soldier at the prowess of his young troops.

The public underwent a general conversion to the war policy; every one thought in secret he had always approved of it. The little flash of glory called attention to the other merits of the Piedmontese soldier besides those he displayed in the field. These merits were truly great. The troops bore with the utmost patience the terrible scourge of the cholera, which cost them 1200 lives. Their English allies were never tired of admiring the good organisation and neatness of their camp, which was laid out in huts that kept off the burning sun better than tents, intersected with paths and gardens. The little army was fortified by the feeling that after all it was serving no alien cause but its own. ”Never mind,” said a soldier, as they were struggling in the slough of the trenches, ”of this mud Italy will be made.” They all shared the hope which the king expressed in a letter to La Marmora, ”Next year we shall have war where we had it before.”

Victor Emmanuel's visit to the courts of Paris and London was not without political significance. Cavour first intended that only D'Azeglio should accompany him; he always put the Marquis forward when he wished the country to appear highly respectable and anti-revolutionary; at the last moment he decided to go himself as well. In Paris the king was dismayed at observing that Napoleon, in presence of Austria's inaction, was bent on making peace. Cavour had also counted on the continuance of the war, but he found encouragement in the fact that when he left, the Emperor told him to write confidentially to Walewski what, in his opinion, he could do for Piedmont and Italy. In England the king was most cordially received, and, if he was rather embarra.s.sed when a portion of the English religious world hailed him as a kind of new Luther, he could not help being struck by the real friendliness shown to him by all cla.s.ses.

Cavour made a strongly favourable impression on Prince Albert, and the Queen expressed so much sympathy with his aims that he called her ”the best friend of Piedmont in England.” He carried away a curious souvenir of his visit to Windsor. When Victor Emmanuel was made Knight of the Garter, the Queen wished that he should know the meaning of the oath he took; whereupon Lord Palmerston at once wrote down a translation of the words into Italian, and handed it to the king.

When Cavour heard of this, he asked the king to give him the paper to preserve in the Sardinian archives.

The preliminaries of the peace were signed in February 1856. It was a great blow to Victor Emmanuel, who had felt confident that if the war lasted long enough for Russia to be placed in real danger, Austria would he obliged to go to her a.s.sistance. The heavy bill for war expenditure, largely exceeding the estimate, damped people's spirits, buoyed up for an instant by victory, and they asked once more, what was the good of it all? Time was to answer the question; but before showing how an issue, which even Cavour viewed with disappointment, proved, nevertheless, fruitful of more good than the most sanguine advocate of the war had ventured to hope for, a short account must be given of the home politics of Piedmont in the year 1855.

”Battles long ago” never wholly lose their interest. The mere words, ”There was once a battle fought here” make the traveller stop and think, even if he does not know by what men of what race it was fought. But the parliamentary struggles of one generation seem pa.s.sing stale and unprofitable to the next. Yet the history of nations depends as much on their civil as on their warlike contests. In Piedmont the strife always turned on the same point: whether the State or the Church should predominate. Free inst.i.tutions do not settle the question; it is most manifestly rife to-day in a free country, Canada.