Part 5 (1/2)

The English Government now proposed that all the Italian States should be admitted to the Congress, and that Austria as well as Piedmont should he invited to disarm. On April 17 Cavour sent a note agreeing to this plan. It was a tremendous risk; but it was the only way to prevent Piedmont from being deserted and left to its fate. If Austria also consented, all was lost: there would be peace. Could the G.o.ds be trusted to make her mad? Cavour's nervous organisation was strained at a tension that nearly snapped the cord. It is believed that he was on the brink of suicide. On April 19 he shut himself up in his room and gave orders that no one should be admitted. On being told of this, his faithful friend, Castelli, who was one of the few persons not afraid of him, rushed to the Palazzo Cavour, where his worst fears were confirmed by the old major-domo, who said, ”The Count is alone in his room; he has burnt many papers; he told us to let no one pa.s.s; but for heaven's sake, go in and see him at whatever cost.” When he went in, Castelli saw a litter of torn-up papers; others were burning on the hearth. He said that he knew no one was to pa.s.s and that was why he had come. Cavour stared at him in silence. Then he went on, ”Must I believe that Count Cavour will desert the camp on the eve of battle; that he will abandon us all?” And, unhinged by excitement and by his great affection for the man, he burst into tears. Cavour walked round the room looking like one distraught. Then he stopped opposite to Castelli and embraced him, saying, ”Be tranquil; we will face it all together,” Castelli went out to rea.s.sure those who had brought him the alarming news. Neither he nor Cavour afterwards alluded to this strange scene.

At the very moment that Cavour thought he had lost the game, he had won it. On the same day, April 19, Count Buol,--somewhat, it is said, against his better judgment, but yielding to the Emperor, who again yielded to the military party,--sent off a contemptuous rejoinder to the English proposals. Ignoring all suggestions, the Austrian Minister said that _they would themselves call upon Piedmont to disarm_. Here, then, was the famous _acte d'agression_. Napoleon could not escape now.

The fact that this happened simultaneously with Sardinia's submission to the will of Europe was a wonderful piece of luck, which, as Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio said, could happen only once in a century. When the Austrian Government took the irrevocable step, it did not know yet that the whole onus of breaking the peace would fall upon it. Nor, it must be remembered, did it know the test of the treaty between France and Sardinia, and in view of the French Emperor's recent conduct it may well have become convinced that no treaty at all existed. Hence it is probable that Austria flattered herself that she would only have to deal with weak Sardinia.

The Chamber of Deputies was convoked on April 23 to confer plenary powers on the king. Many deputies were so overcome that they wept.

Just as the President of the Chamber announced the vote, a sc.r.a.p of paper was handed to Cavour, on which were written the words in pencil: ”They are here; I have seen them.” It was from a person whom he had instructed to inform him instantly when the bearers of the Austrian Ultimatum arrived. They were come; angels of light could not have been more welcome! Cavour went hastily out, while the House broke into deafening cries of ”Long live the king!” He said to the friend who brought the message, ”I am leaving the last sitting of the last Piedmontese Chamber.” The next would represent the kingdom of Italy.

The Sardinian army to be placed on a peace-footing, the volunteers to be dismissed, an answer of ”Yes” or ”No” required within three days--these were the terms of the Ultimatum. If the answer were not fully satisfactory His Majesty would resort to force. Cavour replied that Piedmont had given its adhesion to the proposals made by England with the approval of France, Prussia and Russia, and had nothing more to say. No one who saw the statesman's radiant face would have guessed that less than a week before he had pa.s.sed through so frightful a mental crisis. He took leave of Baron von Kellersberg with graceful courtesy, and then, turning to those present, he said, ”We have made history; now let us go to dinner.”

The French Amba.s.sador at Vienna notified to Count Buol that his sovereign would consider the crossing of the frontier by the Austrian troops equivalent to a declaration of war.

Lord Malmesbury was so favourably impressed by Sardinia's docility and so furious with the Austrian _coup de tete_ that he became in those days quite ardently Italian, which he a.s.sured Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio was his natural state of mind; and such it may have been, since cabinet ministers are constantly employed in upholding, especially in foreign affairs, what they most dislike. He hoped to stop the runaway Austrian steed by proposing mediation in lieu of a Congress; but the result was only to delay the outbreak of the war for a week, much to the disadvantage of the Austrians, as it gave the French time to arrive and the Piedmontese to flood the country by means of the ca.n.a.ls of irrigation, thus preventing a dash at Turin, probably the best chance for Austria. Baron von Kellersberg and his companion, during their brief visit, had done nothing but pity ”this fine town so soon to be given over to the horrors of war.” Their solicitude proved superfluous.

For the present the statesman's task was ended. He had procured for his country a favourable opportunity for entering upon an inevitable struggle. When Napoleon said to Cavour on landing at Genoa, ”Your plans are being realised,” he was unconsciously forestalling the verdict of posterity. The reason that he was standing there was because Cavour had so willed it. In spite of the Emperor's fits of Italian sympathy and the various circ.u.mstances which impelled him towards helping Italy, he would not have taken the final resolution had not some one saved him the trouble by taking it for him. As a French student of history has lately said, in 1859, as in 1849, there was a Hamlet in the case; but Paris, not Turin, was his abode.

Napoleon needed and perhaps desired to be precipitated. Look at it how we may, it must be allowed that he was doing a very grave thing: he was embarking on a war of no palpable necessity against the sentiment, as the Empress wrote to Count Arese, of his own country. A stronger man than he might have hesitated.

The natural discernment of the Italian ma.s.ses enlightened them as to the magnitude of Cavour's part in the play, even in the hour when the interest seemed transferred to the battlefield, and when an emperor and a king moved among them as liberators. At Milan, after the victory of Magenta had opened its gates, the most permanent enthusiasm gathered round the short, stout, undistinguished figure in plain clothes and spectacles--the one decidedly prosaic appearance in the pomp of war and the glitter of royal state. Victor Emmanuel said good-humouredly that when driving with his great subject, he felt just like the tenor who leads the prima donna forward to receive applause.

Success followed success, and this to the popular imagination is the all-and-all of war. Milan was freed, though the battle of Magenta was not unlike a drawn one; Lombardy was won, though the fight for the heights of Solferino could hardly have resulted as it did if the Austrians had not blundered into keeping a large part of their forces inactive. Would the same fortune be with the allies to the end?

Cavour does not appear to have asked the question. He watched the war with no misgivings. It was to him a supreme satisfaction that the Sardinian army, which he had worked so hard to prepare, did Italy credit. He took a personal pride in the romantic exploits of the volunteers, though for political reasons he carefully concealed that he had been the first to think of placing them in the field. He made an indefatigable minister of war (having taken the office when La Marmora went to the front). The work was heavy; the problem of finding even bread enough for the allied armies was not a simple one. On one occasion the French Commissariat asked for a hundred thousand rations to make sure of receiving fifty thousand; the officer in charge was surprised to see one hundred and twenty thousand punctually arrive on the day named. Cavour's thoughts were not, however, only with the troops in Lombardy. The whole country was in a ferment, and instead of accelerating events the question now was to keep pace with them.

When Ferdinand II died, and a young king, the son of a princess of the House of Savoy, ascended the throne, Cavour invited him to join in the war with Austria. The invitation has been blamed as insincere and unpatriotic, but the best Neapolitans seconded it. Poerio said he was willing to go back to prison if King Francis would send his army to help Piedmont. Faithful to his primary object of expelling the Austrians, Cavour would have taken for an ally any one who had troops to give. Moreover, an alliance between Naples and Sardinia meant the final shelving of a scheme which had caused him anxiety, off and on, for many years: that of a Muratist restoration. Though he had always recognised that, were it accepted by the Neapolitans themselves, it would be impossible for him to oppose it, he understood that to place a Murat on the throne of Naples would be to move in the old vicious circle by subst.i.tuting one foreign influence for another. There is no doubt that the idea was attractive to Napoleon. One of his first cares after he became Emperor had been to find an accomplished Neapolitan tutor for the young sons of Prince Murat. About the time of the Paris Congress emissaries were actively working on behalf of the French pretender in the kingdom of Naples. The propaganda was in abeyance during the war, because Russia made it a condition of her neutrality that the king of Naples should be let alone, but the simple fact that Napoleon had undertaken to liberate Italy was a splendid advertis.e.m.e.nt of the claims of his cousin. These considerations tended to make Cavour hold out his hand to the young Bourbon king. There is much evidence to show that the first impulse of Francis was to take it, but the counter influences around him were too strong. When he refused, he sealed his own doom, though the time for the crisis was not yet come.

In Central Italy the crisis came at once. This had been foreseen by Cavour all along. At Plombieres he made no secret of his expectation that the defeat of the Austrians would entail the immediate union of Parma, Modena, and Romagna, with Piedmont. Napoleon did not then seem to object. To him Cavour did not speak of Tuscany, but he expected that there, too, the actual government would be overthrown; what he doubted was what would happen after. Many well-informed persons thought that the Grand Duke, who would have maintained the const.i.tution of 1848 but for the threats of Austria, would seize the first opportunity of restoring it. Fortunately Leopold II. looked beneath the surface: he saw that an Austrian prince in Italy was henceforth an anachronism. The indignities which he suffered when his Italian patriotism--possibly quite sincere--caused him to be disowned by his relations were not forgotten. He had no heart for a bold stroke, and the exhortations of the English Government to remain neutral were hardly needed. If he wavered, it was only for a moment; nor did he care to place his son in the false position he declined for himself. The Grand Duke left Florence, openly, at two o'clock on April 27, 1859, carrying with him the personal good wishes of all. The chief boulder in the path of Italian unity was gone, but for reasons internal and external much would have to be done before Tuscany became the corner-stone of New Italy. The Tuscans clung to their autonomy.

Though Victor Emmanuel was invited to a.s.sume the protectorate, it was explained that this was only meant to last during the war. The French Emperor thought that there was an opening for a new kingdom of Etruria with Prince Napoleon at the head. All sorts of intrigues were set afoot by all the great powers except England to re-erect Tuscany as a dam to stem the flood of unity midway. Cavour was determined to defeat them. It was against his rule to discuss remote events. He once said to a novice in public life, ”If you want to be a politician, for mercy's sake do not look more than a week ahead.” Every time, however, that there arose a present chance of making another step towards unity, Cavour was eagerly impatient to profit by it. He now strove with all the energy he possessed to procure the immediate annexation of Tuscany to Piedmont. The object was good, but what he did not see was, that the slightest appearance of wis.h.i.+ng to ”rush” Tuscany would so offend the munic.i.p.al pride and intellectual exclusiveness of the polished Tuscans, that the seeds would be laid of a powerful and, perhaps, fatal reaction. It was at this critical juncture that Baron Bettino Ricasoli began his year of autocracy. His programme was: neither fusions nor annexations, but union of the Italian peoples under the const.i.tutional sceptre of Victor Emmanuel. It was Tuscany's business, he said, to make the new kingdom of Italy. He looked upon himself as providentially appointed to carry that business into effect. He was called Minister of the Interior, and he was, in fact, dictator. When any one tried to overawe him, his answer was that he had existed for twelve centuries. He had not wished for foreign help, and he was not afraid of foreign threats. He often disagreed with Cavour, and he was the only man who never gave in to him. When Ricasoli took office he and the republican baker, Dolfi, who was his invaluable auxiliary, were possibly the only two thorough-going unionists-at-all-costs in Tuscany; when he resigned it twelve months later there was not a partisan of autonomy left in the province. This was the work of the ”Iron Baron.”

In the other three states, where the first shock to the power of Austria overturned the Government, there were no such complicated questions as in Tuscany. Parma and Modena returned to their allegiance of 1848, and in Romagna those who were not in favour of an Italian kingdom were not autonomists but republicans, who were willing to sacrifice their own ideal to unity. The revolution in the States of the Church was foiled at Ancona, and put down with much bloodshed at Perugia: it is curious to speculate what would have been the result if it had spread to the gates of Rome, as without this check it would have done. Cavour sent L.C. Farini to Modena, and Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio to Bologna, to take over what was called the ”protectorate,” and special commissioners were also appointed at Parma and Florence, but at Florence the real ruler was Ricasoli.

On July 5 Cavour told Kossuth that European diplomacy was very anxious to patch up a worthless peace, but still he had no fears. He did not guess that they were on the verge of seeing realised Mazzini's prophecy of six months before: ”You will be in the camp in some corner of Lombardy when the peace which betrays Venice will be signed without your knowledge.” In proportion as Cavour had placed faith in Napoleon's promises, so great was his revulsion of feeling when he learnt that on July 6 General Fleury went to the Emperor of Austria's headquarters at Verona with proposals for a suspension of hostilities.

The pa.s.sionate nature which was generally kept under such rigorous control that few suspected its existence for once a.s.serted itself unrestrained. Those around Cavour were in apprehension for his life and his reason. In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, it is probable that Napoleon's resolution, though not unpremeditated, was of recent date. When he entered Milan, he seems to have really contemplated pus.h.i.+ng the war beyond the Mincio; there is proof, however, that he was thinking of peace the day before the battle of Solferino, which disposes of the semi-official story that he changed his mind under the impression left on him by the scene of carnage after that battle. Between the beginning and the end of June, reasons of no sentimental kind acc.u.mulated to make him pause. Events in Central Italy had gone farther than he looked for, and his private map of the kingdom of Upper Italy was growing smaller every day. Why was this? He cannot have been seized with a warm interest in the unattractive despotism of the Duke of Modena, or the chronic anarchy kept down by Austrian bayonets at Bologna. But it was becoming apparent that if Modena and Romagna were joined to the new Italian kingdom, Tuscany would come too, and this Napoleon had not expected and did not want. He was clever enough to see that with Tuscany the unity of Italy was made. A great political genius would have said, So be it! Never was there worse policy than that of helping to free Italy, and then deliberately rooting out grat.i.tude from her heart.

Whatever Napoleon thought himself, he was alarmed by the news from France; the Empress and the clerical party were in despair at the revolution in the Roman States, and the country was indignant at the prospect of an Italy strong enough to have a voice of her own in the councils of Europe.

Besides all this, there was still graver news from Germany. Six Prussian army corps were ready to move for the Rhine frontier. The history of Prussian policy in 1859 has not yet been fully written out, but the gaps in the narrative are closing up. That policy was directed by the Prince Begent, and it gives the measure of the success which would have attended subsequent efforts if the day had not arrived when he surrendered himself body and soul into the hands of a greater man.

So much for the present German Emperor's theory that the men in the councils of his grandfather only executed great things because they did their master's will. It is true that William I. aimed at the same end as that which Count Bismarck had already in view, and which he was destined to achieve--the ousting of Austria from Germany, as a preliminary to sublimer doings. But while the Prince Regent would not fight Austria, and hoped to get rid of her by political conjuring, the future Chancellor comprehended that the problem could only be settled by the argument _ferro et igni_. Bismarck's policy in 1859 would have been neutrality, with a certain leaning towards Napoleon. This advice, given by every post from St. Petersburg to Berlin, caused him to be accused of selling his soul to the devil, on which he dryly remarked that, if it were so, the devil was Teutonic, not Gallic.

The Prince Regent tried to prevent the Diet from going to war, because, in a federal war, Prussia's ruler would only figure as general of the armies of the confederation--which meant of Austria.

His plan was to let Austria get into very bad difficulties, and then come forward singly to save her. By means of this ”armed mediation” he would be able afterwards to dictate what terms he chose to the much indebted Austrian Emperor. It looked well on paper, but the armistice of Villafranca spoilt everything. The Emperor Francis Joseph did not wish to be ”saved.” This, and only this, can explain his readiness to make peace when, from a military point of view, his situation was far from desperate. No one knew this better than Napoleon. Before the allied armies lay the mouse-trap of the Quadrilateral, so much easier to get into than to get out of. The limelight of victory could not hide from those who knew the facts the complete deficiency of organisation and discipline which the war had revealed in the French army. According to Prince Napoleon, the men considered their head and their generals incapable, and had lost all confidence in them.

Nevertheless they fought well; no troops ever fought better than the French when storming the heights of Solferino, but on the very day after that battle, when the Austrians were miles away in full retreat, an extraordinary, though little known, incident occurred. On a report spreading from the French outposts that the enemy was upon them, there was an universal _sauve qui peut_--officers, men, sick and sound, gendarmes, infantry, cavalry, artillery trains--in one word, every one made off. What would be the effect of a single defeat on such an army?

It must always appear strange that none of these things struck Cavour.

He only saw the immense, immeasurable disappointment. When he rushed to the king's headquarters near Desenzano, it was to advise him to refuse Lombardy and abdicate, or to continue the war by himself.

Cavour had never loved the king, or done justice to his statesmanlike qualities; a bitter scene took place between them, which Victor Emmanuel closed abruptly. Afterwards he met Prince Napoleon, who replied to his reproaches, ”_Mais enfin_, do you want us to sacrifice France and our dynasty to you?”

At that juncture it was the king, not the minister, to whom the task of pilot fell. Cut to the heart as he was, he kept his temper. He signed the preliminaries ”pour ce qui me concerne,” and, as on the morrow of Novara, he prepared to wait. The terms on which the armistice was granted seemed like a nightmare: Venice abandoned; Tuscany, Romagna, Modena, to be handed back to their former masters; the Pope to be made honorary president of a confederation in which Austria was to have a place. Cavour stood before Italy responsible for the war, and when he said to M. Pietri in the presence of Kossuth, ”Your Emperor has dishonoured me--yes, dishonoured!” he meant the words in their most literal sense. But the white heat of his pa.s.sion burnt out the dishonour, and Cavour, foiled and furious, was the most popular man in the country. His grief was so genuine that even his enemies could not call its sincerity in question. In three days he appeared to have grown ten years older. His first thought was to go and get killed at Bologna, if, as was expected, there was fighting there. Then, as always happened with him, he was calmed by the idea of action: ”I will take Solaro de la Margherita by one hand and Mazzini by the other; I will become a conspirator, a revolutionist, but this treaty shall not be carried out.” When he said this, he had resigned office; he was simply a private citizen, but all the consciousness of his power had returned to him. Some delay occurred in forming a new ministry. Count Arese was first called, but his position as a personal friend of the Emperor disqualified him for the task. Rattazzi succeeded better, but during the interregnum of eight or nine days Cavour was obliged to carry on the Government, and it thus devolved on him to communicate the official order to the Special Commissioners to abandon their posts. He accompanied the order by a private telegram telling them to stay where they were, and work with all their might for an Italian solution. Farini telegraphed from Modena that if the Duke, ”trusting to conventions of which he knew nothing,” were to attempt to return, he should treat him as an enemy to the king and country. Cavour's answer ran: ”The minister is dead; the friend applauds your decision.” Aurelio Saffi well said that ”in these supreme moments you would have called Cavour a follower of Mazzini.”