Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861




There is no evidence that any European power was about to interfere in
behalf of Austria. Prussia, it is true, had taken a stern attitude, and
showed a disposition to place herself at the head of those German States
which were for beginning a march upon Paris at once, though M. le
Marechal Duc de Malakoff was ready with two hundred thousand men to
receive them, and Paris itself was not the feeble place it had been in
1814 and 1815. It is altogether likely that Prussia was, as is usual
with her at every European crisis, shamming. She had no interest in the
maintenance of Austria's territorial integrity, and it was rather late
in the day to assume that Berlin was affected by the mortifications of
Vienna. Could the hearts of kings and the counsels of cabinets be known
with that literal exactness which is so desirable in politics, and
yet so unattainable, we should probably find that Prussia's apparent
readiness to lead Germany was owing to her determination that German
armies should be led nowhere to the assistance of Austria. England
had just changed her Ministry, the Derby Cabinet giving way to Lord
Palmerston's, which was recognized on all sides as a great gain to the
cause of Italian independence; and Lord John Russell had written one of
those crusty notes to the Prussian government for which he is so famous,
and which was hardly less Italian in its sentiments than that in which,
written in October last, he upheld the course of Garibaldi and Victor
Emanuel. Russia had evinced no disposition to interfere in behalf of
Austria, and perhaps the news of Magenta and Solferino was as agreeable
to the dwellers in St. Petersburg and Moscow as it was to the citizens
of New York and Boston. She was, indeed, believed to be backing France.
Politically, so far as we can judge, there was no cause or occasion for
the throwing up of the cards by the French, after Solferino.

Nor were the military reasons for the cessation of warlike operations of
a nature to convince men of their irresistible weightiness. A great
deal was said about the strength of "the Quadrilateral," and of the
impregnability of the position which it formed,--as if there ever had
existed a military position which could not be carried or turned, or out
of which its defenders could not be bought, or forced, or starved!
The strength of the Quadrilateral was as well known to the Emperor
in January as it was in July, and he must have counted its powers of
resistance before he resolved upon war. Victory he had organized, like
Carnot; and victory in Lombardy was sure to take his army to the Mincio.
Verona and Venetia were to be the complement of Milan. Then there was
the story that he frightened the Kaiser into giving his consent to the
truce by proving to him that the fortresses upon which he relied were
not in good defensible condition, his commissaries having placed the
funds in their pockets that should have been devoted to the purchase
of stores,--a story that wears a very probable air, in view of the
discovery subsequently made of the malversations of some of the highest
persons at Vienna, and which had much to do with the suicide of the
Minister of Finance. It is known, too, that the force which Napoleon
III. had assembled in the Adriatic was very strong, and could have been
so used as to have promoted an Hungarian insurrection in a sense not at
all pleasant to the Austrians, to have attacked Dalmatia and Istria, and
to have aided in the deliverance of Venice. That force was largely naval
in its character, and the French navy was burning to distinguish itself
in a war that had been so productive of glory to the sister-service: it
would have had a Magenta and a Palestro of its own, won where the Dorias
and the Pisani had struggled for fame and their countries' ascendency.
Instead of the Quadrilateral being a bar to the French, it would have
been a trap to the Austrians, who would have been taken there after the
manner in which Napoleon I. took their predecessors at Ulm. After the
war was over, it came out that Verona was not even half armed.

If Napoleon III. was bent upon carrying that imitation of his uncle, of
which he is so fond, to the extent of granting a magnanimous peace to a
crushed foe, he may be said to have caricatured that which he sought
to imitate. The first Napoleon's magnanimity after Austerlitz has been
attributed to the craft of the beaten party,--he allowing the Russians
to escape when they had extricated themselves from the false position in
which their master's folly had caused them to be placed. But the third
Napoleon did allow the Austrians to avoid the consequences of their
defeat, and so disappointed Italy and the world. He _was_ magnanimous,
and most astonishing to the minds of men was his magnanimity. Most
people called it stupidity, and strange stories were told of his
nervous system having been shattered by the sights and sounds of those
slaughter-fields which he had planned and fought and won!

We live rapidly in this age, when nations are breaking up all around us,
when unions are dissolving, when dynasties disappear before the light
like ghosts at cock-crowing, and when emperors and kings rely upon
universal suffrage, once so terrible a bugbear in their eyes, for the
titles to their crowns. Opinion is rapidly formed, and is as rapidly
dismissed. We may be as much astonished now at the peace of Villafranca
as we were on the day when first it was announced, and while looking
upon it only as a piece of diplomacy intended to put an end to a contest
costly in blood and gold; but we cannot say, as it was common then
to say, that the war which it closed has decided nothing. That war
established the freedom and nationality of Italy, and the peace so much
condemned was the means of demonstrating to the world the existence of
an _Italian People_. How far the French Emperor was self-deceived, and
to what extent he believed in the practicability of the arrangements
made at Villafranca and Zurich, are inscrutable mysteries. _Que
sais-je_? might be the form of his own answer, were any one entitled to
question him concerning his own opinion on his own acts of 1859. But
of the effects of his attack on Austria there can be no doubt. That
Lorraines and Bourbons have ceased to reign in Italy,--that the
Kingdom of Victor Emanuel has increased from six millions of people to
twenty-four millions,--that the same constitutional monarch who ruled at
Turin is now acknowledged in Milan, in Ancona, in Florence, in Naples,
and in Palermo, being King of Lombards, and Tuscans, and Romans, and
Neapolitans, and Sicilians,--and that the Austrians are no longer the
rulers of the Peninsula,--these things are all due to the conduct of the
French Emperor. Had the peace of Europe not been broken by France, the
Austrian power in Italy would have been unbroken at this moment, and
Naples have been still under the dominion of that mad tyrant whose
supreme delight it was to offend the moral sense of the world, and who
found even in the remonstrances of his brother-despots occasion for
increasing the weight of the chains of his victims, and of adding to the
intensity and the exquisiteness of their tortures.

These solid advantages to Italy, this freedom of hers from domestic
despotism and foreign control, are the fruits of French intervention;
and they could have been obtained in no other way. There was no nation
but France to which Italy could look for aid, and to France she did not
look in vain. Of the motives of her ally it would be idle to speak, as
there is no occasion to go beyond consequences; and those consequences
are just as good as if the French Emperor were as pure-minded and
unselfish as the most perfect of those paladins of romance who went
about redressing one class of wrongs by the creation of another.
What Italy desired, what alone she needed, was freedom from foreign
intervention; and that she got through the interposition of French
armies, and that she could have got from no other human source. This
single fact is an all-sufficient answer to the myriads of sneers that
were called forth by the failure of Napoleon III. to redeem his pledge
to make Italy free from the Alps to the Adriatic. What other potentate
did anything for that country in 1859, or has done anything for it since
that memorable year? Neither prince nor people, leaving Napoleon III.
and the French aside, has so much as lifted a hand to promote the
regeneration of Italy. America has enough to do in the way of attending
to domestic slavery, without concerning herself about the freedom of
foreigners; and she has given the Italians her--sympathies, which are of
as much real worth to her as would be a treatise on the Resolutions of
'98 to a man who should happen to tumble into the Niagara, with the
Falls close upon him. England would have had Italy submit to that
Austrian rule which had been established over her by English influence
in 1814, when even the perverse, pig-headed Francis II. could see sound
objections to it; and all because want of submission on her part would
disturb the equilibrium of Europe, and might tend to the aggrandizement
of France,--two things which she by no means desired to see happen.
Russia, like America, gave Italy her sympathies; but she had a better
excuse than we had for being prudent, as her monarch was engaged in
planning at least the freedom of the serfs. If the Russians desired the
overthrow of the Austrians, it was not because they loved the Italians,
but from hatred of their oppressors; and that hatred had its origin in
the refusal of Austria to join Russia when she was so hard pressed by
France and England, Turkey and Piedmont. Prussia, us we have seen, sided
with Austria; and though it is impossible to believe in her sincerity,
her moral power, so far as it went, was adverse to the Italian cause.
The other European nations were of no account, having no will of their
own, and being influenced only by the action of the members of the
Pentarchy. Save France, Italy had no friend possessed of the disposition
and the ability to afford her that assistance without which she must
soon have become in name, as she was fast becoming in fact, a mere
collection of Austrian provinces.

We dwell upon those well-known facts because an opinion seems to prevail
that no nation or government shall interfere for the protection of the
weak against the strong, unless it shall be able to show that it is
perfect itself, and that its intentions are of the most unselfish
nature. Peoples are to be delivered from oppression only as the
Israelites were delivered, by the direct and immediate interposition of
Heaven in human affairs; and the delivering agent must be as high-minded
and generous as Moses, who was allowed merely to gaze upon the Promised
Land. Men who thus reason about human action, and the motives of actors
on the great stage of life, must have read history to very little
purpose, and have observed the making of history round about them to no
purpose at all. The instruments of Providence are seldom perfect men,
and the broad light in which they live brings out their faults in full
force. Napoleon III. is not above the average morality of his time; and
if he had been so, probably he never would have become Emperor of the
French. But in this respect differs he much from those men who have
wrought great things for the world, and whom the world is content to
reverence? Robert Bruce, who saved Scotland from the misery that befell
Ireland; Henry IV., who renewed the life of France; Maurice of Saxony,
who prevented the Reformation from proving a stupendous failure; and
William III., without whose aid the Constitutionalists of England must
have gone down before the Stuarts: not one of these men was perfect;
and yet what losses the world would have experienced, if they had never
lived, or had failed in their great labors! It has been claimed for
Gustavus Adolphus that he was the only pure conqueror that ever lived;
but his purity may safely be placed to the account of the balls of
Luetzen: he was not left unto temptation. We should extend to Napoleon
III. the same charity that we extend to men who have long been
historical characters, and judge him by his actions and their results,
and not criticise him by the canons of faction.

Italy was delivered by the war of 1859, and that war was terminated by
the peace of Villafranca. For the moment, it seemed as if there were
to be a restoration of the petty princes who had fled from Tuscany and
Parma and Modena, and that an Italian Confederation had been resolved
upon, in which the noxious influences of Austria and Naples and Papal
Rome should stifle the pure principles upheld by Sardinia. A few months
sufficed to show that these evils existed in apprehension only. The
Italians, by the withdrawal of the French, were thrown upon their own
resources, and by their conduct they dissipated the belief that they
were unequal to the emergency. Had the war been continued, had Venetia
been conquered, and had the last of the Austrians been driven beyond the
Isonzo, Italy would have been the prize of French valor and genius; for
all this must have been done on the instant, and before the Italians,
less the Sardinians, could have taken an effective part in the war. The
most devoted believer in the patriotism and bravery of the Italians must
perforce admit that they had little to do with the war of 1859. Leaving
the Sardinians aside, the Italian element in that contest was scarcely
appreciable. This we say without meaning any reflection on the Italians.
There were many good reasons why they should remain quiet. In common
with the rest of the world, even France herself, the war took them by
surprise, Austria bringing it on weeks, if not months, before Napoleon
III. had meant it to begin. They, too, had seen their country so often
abused by those who had conquered there, that they had some excuse for
waiting the progress of events. The most industrious and studied efforts
had been made to convince them that the object of the ruler of France
was the realization of another Napoleonic idea, namely, the restoration
of that Kingdom of Italy which perished in 1814; and though the rule of
Napoleon I. was the best that Italy had known for three hundred years,
it was hardly worth while to enter upon a doubtful fight for its
restoration. Hence the majority of the people of Italy were not so
active as they might have been; and their coolness is said to have had
much effect on the mind of the victor, who must have thought that the
people he had come to deliver were taking things very easily, and who
could not have felt much flattered, when assured, in the politest
terms, that those people believed him to be a selfish liar. His work,
therefore, was but partially performed. Instead of halting on the shores
of the historical Adriatic, his armies drew up on the banks of the
classic Mincius. Trance had done her part; let Italy do the rest, if
it were to be done. Thus abdicating his original purpose, and probably
feeling much as William III. felt when the English were so slow in
joining him that he talked of returning to his ships, Napoleon III.
gave up his power to dictate the future of Italy. He had no right,
thereafter, to say that the Bourbons should continue to govern in the
Two Sicilies, that the Dukes should be restored to their Duchies, and
that Venetia should be guarantied to Austria. He felt this, as the terms
of the treaties that were made very clearly show; for he was careful to
abstain from pledging himself to anything of a definite character. If
he had perfected his original work, and been possessed of the power to
effect a new settlement of Italy, he would, we presume, have stipulated
for the continuance of the Bourbon power in the southern portion of the
Peninsula and in Sicily; while the much talked-of purpose of creating an
Italian Kingdom or Duchy for Prince Napoleon would probably have been
carried out, and that gentleman have been established on the Arno. To
the Sardinian monarchy would have been assigned the spoils taken from
Austria,--Venice and Lombardy. The change in his political plans was the
consequence of the change in his military plan,--though either change
may be pronounced the cause or the effect, according to the point from
which the observer views the entire series of transactions. Thus the
peace of 1859 may be considered to have been a benefit to Italy, just
as the war it terminated had been. The war freed her from Austrian
dominion; the peace, from its character, and from the circumstances
under which it was made, left her people at liberty to act as they
pleased in the fair field that had been won for their exertions by the
skill and courage of the French and Sardinian armies.

The destinies of Italy being placed in her own hands, the Italians were
as prompt as politic considerations would allow them to be in promoting
the unification of their country. Central Italy soon became a part of
the constitutional monarchy which had grown up under the shadow of the
Alps. This could not have happened, if Napoleon III. had chosen to veto
the proceedings of the Italians, which had virtually nullified one of
his purposes. That he consented to this large addition to the power of
Sardinia on the condition of receiving Savoy and Nice is by no means
unlikely; and we do not think that Victor Emanuel was either unwise or
wanting in patriotism in parting with those countries for the benefit of
Italy. Taking advantage of the troubles in Sicily, Garibaldi led a
small expedition to that island, which there landed, and began those
operations which had their appropriate termination, in five months, in
the addition of all the territories of the wretched Francis II., except
Gaeta, to the dominions of the Sardinian King. The importance of
Garibaldi's undertaking it is quite impossible to overrate; but of what
account could it have been, if the Austrians had stood to Italy in the
same position that they held at the opening of 1859? Of none at all.
Garibaldi is preeminently a man of sense, and he would never have
thought of moving against Francis II., if Francis Joseph had been at
liberty to assist that scandalous caricature of kings. Or, if he had
been tempted to enter upon the project, he would have been "snuffed
out" as easily as was Murat, when, in 1815, he sought to recover the
Neapolitan throne. If Austrian ships had not prevented him from landing
in Sicily, Austrian troops would have destroyed him in that island. Nay,
it is but reasonable to believe that Bomba's navy and army would have
been amply sufficient to do their master's work. That his men were not
wanting in courage and conduct has been proved by their deeds since the
tyrant left his capital, on the Volturno and around Capua and at Gaeta.
It was not want of bravery that led to their failure in Sicily, but the
belief that their employer's system had failed, and that he and they
were given up to the vengeance of Italy, supposing the Italians to be
strong enough to do justice on them. They took courage when European
circumstances led them to conclude that Austria would be advised, at
the Warsaw Conference, to use her forces for the restoration of the old
order of things in Italy, and receive the support of Russia and Prussia.
To deserve such aid from the North, the Neapolitan army struggled hard,
but in vain. The Absolutist cause was lost in Naples when the sovereigns
met in the Polish capital; and though, forty years earlier, this would
have been held an additional reason for the entrance of the barbarians
into Italy, the successes of the patriots must have had their proper
weight with the Prince Regent of Prussia and the Czar, who are
understood to have been as deaf as adders to the charming of their young
brother from Vienna. What was resolved upon at Warsaw the world has no
positive means of knowing, and but little reliance is to be placed upon
the rumors that have been so abundant; but, as Austria has not
moved against the Italians, and as the instructions to her new
commander-in-chief in Venetia (Von Benedek) are reported to be strong
on the point of non-intervention, we are at liberty to infer that she
accepts all that has been done as accomplished facts, and means to
stand upon the defensive, in the hope of gaining moral support by her
moderation in being outwardly content with less than half the spoil
which was given to her at the expense of Italy, when Europe was
"settled," for the time, four-and-forty years ago.

The action of the Sardinian government, in sending its soldiers against
the legal banditti whom Lamoriciere had sought to drill into the
semblance of an army, which was a direct attack on the Pope, and the
subsequent employment of those soldiers, and of the Sardinian fleet,
against the forces of Francis II., were model pieces of statesmanship,
and worthy of the great man whose name and fame have become indissolubly
associated with the redemption of Italy. The decision thus to act could
not have been taken without the consent of Napoleon III. having first
been had and obtained; and there is probably much truth in the story,
that, when Lamoriciere had the coolness to threaten his conquerors with
the vengeance of the Emperor, they told him, half-laughingly, that, they
had planned the campaign with that illustrious personage at Chambery,
which must have convinced him that the cause of the Keys had nothing to
expect from France beyond the sort of police aid which General Goyon was
affording to it in the name of his master. Lamoriciere also expected
help from Austria, and professed to be able to number the few days at
the expiration of which the white-coats would be at Alessandria, which
would have been a diversion in his favor, that, had it been made, must
have saved him from the mortification of surrendering to men whom he
affected to despise, but who brought him and his army under the yoke.
The faith of the commander of the rabble of the Faith in Austrian
assistance was a Viennese inspiration, and was meant to induce him to
resist to the last. Nor was it altogether false; for the Kaiser and
Count Rechberg appear to have believed that they could induce the
governments of Russia and Prussia to support them in a crusade in behalf
of Rome and Naples, which was to rely upon Lutherans and supporters of
the Eastern Church for the salvation of the Western Church and its worst
members. The first interview between Rechberg and Gortschakoff, if we
can believe a despatch from Warsaw, led quickly to a quarrel, which must
have taken place not long after their chiefs, the Kaiser and the Czar,
had been locked in each other's arms at the railway-station. It is but
just to the Austrians to state, that they probably had received from St.
Petersburg some promises of assistance, which Alexander found himself
unable to redeem, so determined was Russian opinion in its expression of
aversion to Austria when its organs began to suspect that the old game
was to be renewed, and that Alexander contemplated doing in 1861
what Nicholas had done in 1849,--to step between Francis Joseph and
humiliation, perhaps destruction. If it be true that the Czar has
ordered all Russians to leave Italy, that piece of pitiful spite would
show how he hates the Italian cause, and also that it is not in his
power seriously to retard its progress at present. Instead of ordering
Russians from Italy, he would send them to that country in great masses,
could he have his way in directing the foreign policy of his empire.

The entire success of Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi has brought Italian
matters to a crisis. Carrying out the policy of Cavour, the King and the
Soldier have all but completed the unification of their country, at
the very time when the United States are threatened with disunion. The
Kingdom of Italy exists at this time, virtually, if not in terms, and
contains about twenty-four million people. It comprises the original
territories of Victor Emanuel, _minus_ Savoy and Nice, the Two Sicilies,
Lombardy, almost the whole of the Papal States, and Tuscany, Parma, and
Modena. If we except the fragment of his old possessions yet held by the
Pope, and the Austrian hold on Venetia, all Italy now acknowledges
the rule of Victor Emanuel, who is to meet an _Italian_ Parliament
in January, 1861. No political change of our century has been more
remarkable than this, whether we look to its extent, or have regard to
the agencies by which it has been brought about. Two years ago, there
was more reason to believe that the King of Sardinia would be an exile
than that the Bourbon King of Naples would be on his travels. No man
would have dared to prophesy that the former would be reigning over
seven-eighths of the Italians, while the latter should be reduced to one
town, garrisoned by foreign mercenaries. That these changes should be
wrought by universal suffrage, had it been predicted, would have been
thought too much to be related as a dream. Yet it is the voice of the
Italian People, speaking under a suffrage-system apparently more liberal
than ever has been known in America, which has accomplished all that has
been done since the summer of 1859 in the Peninsula and in Sicily. It
was because Napoleon III. would not place himself in opposition to the
opinion of the people of Central Italy, that the petty monarchs of
that country were not restored to their thrones, and that they became
subjects of Victor Emanuel; and the voting in Sicily and Naples
has confirmed the decision of arms, and made it imperative on the
reactionists to attack the people, should their policy lead them to
seek a reversal of the decrees of 1860. The new monarch of the Italians
expressly bases his title to reign on the will of the people, expressed
through the exercise of the least restricted mode of voting that ever
has been known among men; and the people of Southern Italy never could
have had the opportunity to vote their crown to him, if Garibaldi
had not first freed them from the savage tyranny of Francis II.; and
Garibaldi himself could not have acted for their deliverance, if Italy
had not previously been delivered from the Austrians by France. Thus we
have the French Emperor, designated as a _parvenu_ both in England and
America, and owing his power to his name,--the democrat Garibaldi, whose
power is from his deeds, and whose income is not equal to that of an
Irish laborer in the United States,--the rich and noble Cavour, whose
weekly revenues would suffice to purchase the fee-simple of Garibaldi's
island-farm,--the King of Sardinia, representing a race that was
renowned before the Normans reigned in England,--and the masses of the
Italian people,--all acting together for the redemption of a country
which needs only justice to enable it to assume, as near as modern
circumstances will permit, its old importance in the world's scale.
That there should have been such a concurrence of foreign friendship,
democratic patriotism, royal sagacity, aristocratic talent, and popular
good sense, for Italy's benefit, must help to strengthen the belief that
the Italians are indeed about to become a new _Power_ in Europe, and
in the world, and that their country is no more to be rated as a mere
"geographical expression."

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