Part 8

In the midst of the embarrassments which perplexed and surrounded the dictator, Mazzini made his appearance at Naples. Garibaldi, however, would have nothing to do with the zealous republican, and held his lot with the royalists, as he was now the acknowledged representative of the Sardinian government. Mazzini was even requested to leave Italy, which he refused to do. Whether it was from jealousy that Garibaldi held aloof from Mazzini,--vastly his intellectual superior,--or from the conviction that his republican ideas were utterly impracticable, cannot be known. We only know that he sought to unite the north and the south of Italy under one government, as a preparation for the conquest of central Italy, which he was impatient to undertake at all hazards.

At last the King of Naples prepared to make one decisive struggle for his throne. From his retreat at Gaeta he rallied his forces, which were equal to those of Garibaldi,--about forty thousand men. On the 1st of October was fought the battle of Volturno, as to which Garibaldi, after fierce fighting, was enabled to send his exultant dispatch, "Complete victory along the whole line!" Francis II. retired to his strong fortress of Gaeta to await events.

Meanwhile, on the news of Garibaldi's successes, King Victor Emmanuel set out from Turin with a large army to take possession of the throne of Naples, which Garibaldi was ready to surrender. But the king must needs pass through the States of the Church,--a hazardous undertaking, since Rome was under the protection of the French troops. Louis Napoleon had given an ambiguous assent to this movement, which, however, he declined to assist; and, defeating the papal troops under General Lamoricière, Victor Emmanuel pushed on to Naples. As the King of Piedmont advanced from the north, he had pretty much the same experience that Garibaldi had in his march from the south. He met with no serious resistance. On passing the Neapolitan frontier he was met by Garibaldi with his staff, who laid down his dictatorship at his sovereign's feet,--the most heroic and magnanimous act of his life. This was also his proudest hour, since he had accomplished his purpose. He had freed Naples, and had united the South with the North. On the 10th of October the people of the Two Sicilies voted to accept the government of Victor Emmanuel; and the king entered Naples, November 7, in all the pomp of sovereignty.

Garibaldi's task was ended on surrendering his dictatorship; but he had one request to make of Victor Emmanuel, to whom he had given a throne. He besought him to dismiss Cavour, and to be himself allowed to march on Rome,--for he hated the Pope with terrible hatred, and called him Antichrist, both because he oppressed his subjects and was hostile to the independence of Italy. But Victor Emmanuel could not grant such an absurd request,--he was even angry; and the Liberator of Naples retired to his island-home with only fifteen shillings in his pocket!

This conduct on the part of the king may seem like ingratitude; but what else could he do? He doubtless desired that Rome should be the capital of his dominions as much as Garibaldi himself, but the time had not come. Victor Emmanuel could not advance on Rome and Venice with an "army of red shirts;" he could not overcome the armed veterans of Austria and France as Garibaldi had prevailed over the discontented troops of Francis II.,--he must await his opportunity. Besides, he had his hands full to manage the affairs of Naples, where every element of anarchy had accumulated.

To add to the embarrassments of Victor Emmanuel, he was compelled to witness the failing strength and fatal illness of his prime minister. The great statesman was dying from overwork. Although no man in Europe was capable of such gigantic tasks as Cavour assumed, yet even he had to succumb to the laws of nature. He took no rest and indulged in no pleasures, but devoted himself body and soul to the details of his office and the calls of patriotism. He had to solve the most difficult problems, both political and commercial. He was busy with the finances of the kingdom, then in great disorder; and especially had he to deal with the blended ignorance, tyranny, and corruption that the Bourbon kings of Naples had bequeathed to the miserable country which for more than a century they had so disgracefully misgoverned. All this was too much for the overworked statesman, who was always at his post in the legislative chamber, in his office with his secretaries, and in the council chamber of the cabinet. He died in June, 1861, and was buried, not in a magnificent mausoleum, but among his family relations at Santena.

Cavour did not, however, pass away until he saw the union of all Italy--except Venice and Rome--under the sceptre of Victor Emmanuel. Lombardy had united with Piedmont soon after the victory at Solferino, by the suffrages of its inhabitants. At Turin, deputies from the States of Italy,--except Venice and Rome,--chosen by the people, assembled, and formally proclaimed Italy to be free. The population of four millions, which comprised the subjects of Victor Emmanuel on his accession to the throne, had in about thirteen years increased to twenty-two millions; and in February, 1861, Victor Emmanuel was by his Senate and Chamber of Deputies proclaimed King of Italy, although he wisely forbore any attempt actually to annex the Venetian and Papal States.

Rome and Venice were still outside. The Pope remained inflexible to any reforms, any changes, any improvements. Non possumus was all that he deigned to say to the ambassadors who advised concessions. On the 7th of September, 1860, Victor Emmanuel sent an envoy to Rome to demand from his Holiness the dismissal of his foreign troops; which demand was refused. Upon this, the king ordered an army to enter the papal provinces of Umbria and the Marches. In less than three weeks the campaign was over, and General Lamoricière, who commanded the papal troops, was compelled to surrender. Austria, Prussia, and Russia protested; but Victor Emmanuel paid little heed to the protest, or to the excommunications which were hurled against him. The Emperor of the French found it politic to withdraw his ambassador from Turin, but adhered to his policy of non-intervention, and remained a quiet spectator. The English government, on the other hand, justified the government of Turin in thus freeing Italian territory from foreign troops.

Garibaldi was not long contented with his retirement at Caprera. In July, 1862, he rallied around him a number of followers, determined to force the king's hand, and to complete the work of unity by advancing on Rome as he had on Naples. His rashness was opposed by the Italian government,--wisely awaiting riper opportunity,--who sent against him the greatest general of Italy (La Marmora), and Garibaldi was taken prisoner at Aspromonte. The king determined to do nothing further without the support of the representatives of the nation, but found it necessary to maintain a large army, which involved increased taxation,--to which, however, the Italians generously submitted.

In 1866, while Austria was embroiled with Prussia, Victor Emmanuel, having formed an alliance with the Northern Powers, invaded Venetia; and in the settlement between the two German Powers the Venetian province fell to the King of Italy.

In 1867 Garibaldi made another attempt on Rome, but was arrested near Lake Thrasimene and sent back to Caprera. Again he left his island, landed on the Tuscan coast, and advanced to Rome with his body of volunteers, and was again defeated and sent back to Caprera. The government dealt mildly with this prince of filibusters, in view of his past services and his unquestioned patriotism. His errors were those of the head and not of the heart. He was too impulsive, too impatient, and too rash in his schemes for Italian liberty.

It was not until Louis Napoleon was defeated at Sedan that the French troops were withdrawn from Rome, and the way was finally opened for the occupation of the city by the troops of Victor Emmanuel in 1870. A Roman plebiscite had voted for the union of all Italy under the constitutional rule of the House of Savoy. From 1859 to 1865 the capital of the kingdom had been Turin, the principal city of Piedmont; with the enlargement of the realm the latter year saw the court removed to Florence, in Tuscany; but now that all the States were united under one rule, Rome once again, after long centuries had passed, became the capital of Italy, and the temporal power of the Pope passed away forever.

On the fall of Napoleon III. in 1870 Italian nationality was consummated, and Victor Emmanuel reigned as a constitutional monarch over united Italy. To his prudence, honesty, and good sense, the liberation of Italy was in no small degree indebted. He was the main figure in the drama of Italian independence, if we except Cavour, whose transcendent abilities were devoted to the same cause for which Mazzini and Garibaldi less discreetly labored. It is remarkable that such great political changes were made with so little bloodshed. Italian unity was effected by constitutional measures, by the voice of the people, and by fortunate circumstances more than by the sword. The revolutions which seated the King of Piedmont on the throne of United Italy were comparatively bloodless. Battles indeed were fought during the whole career of Victor Emmanuel, and in every part of Italy; but those of much importance were against the Austrians,--against foreign domination. The civil wars were slight and unimportant compared with those which ended in the expulsion of Austrian soldiers from the soil of Italy. The civil wars were mainly popular insurrections, being marked by neither cruelty nor fanaticism; indeed, they were the uprising of the people against oppression and misrule. The iron heel which had for so many years crushed the aspirations of the citizens of Venice, of Milan, and Rome, was finally removed only by the successive defeats of Austrian armies by Prussia and France.

Although the political unity and independence of Italy have been effected, it is not yet a country to be envied. The weight of taxation to support the government is an almost intolerable burden. No country in the world is so heavily taxed in proportion to its resources and population. Great ignorance is still the misfortune of Italy, especially in the central and southern provinces. Education is at a low ebb, and only a small part of the population can even read and write, except in Piedmont. The spiritual despotism of the Pope still enslaves the bulk of the people, who are either Roman Catholics with mediaeval superstitions, or infidels with hostility to all religion based on the Holy Scriptures. Nothing there as yet flourishes like the civilization of France, Germany, and England.

And yet it is to be hoped that a better day has dawned on a country endeared to Christendom for its glorious past and its classic associations. It is a great thing that a liberal and enlightened government now unites all sections of the country, and that a constitutional monarch, with noble impulses, reigns in the "Eternal City," rather than a bigoted ecclesiastical pontiff averse to all changes and improvements, having nothing in common with European sovereigns but patronage of art, which may be Pagan in spirit rather than Christian. The great drawback to Italian civilization at present is the foolish race of the nation with great military monarchies in armies and navies, which occupies the energies of the country, rather than a development of national resources in commerce, agriculture, and the useful arts.

AUTHORITIES.

Alison's History of Europe; Lives of Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi; Fyffe's Modern Europe; Mackenzie's History of the Nineteenth Century; Biography of Marshal Radetsky; Annual Register; Biography of Charles Albert; Ellesmere, as quoted by Alison; Memoirs of Prince Metternich; Carlo Botta's History of Italy.

CZAR NICHOLAS.

1796-1855.

THE CRIMEAN WAR.

For centuries before the Russian empire was consolidated by the wisdom, the enterprise, and the conquests of Peter the Great, the Russians cast longing eyes on Constantinople as the prize most precious and most coveted in their sight.

From Constantinople, the capital of the Greek empire when the Turks were a wandering and unknown Tartar tribe in the northern part of Asia, had come the religion that was embraced by the ancient czars and the Slavonic races which they ruled. To this Greek form of Christianity the Russians were devotedly attached. They were semi-barbarians, and yet bigoted Christians. In the course of centuries their priests came to possess immense power,--social and political, as well as ecclesiastical. The Patriarch of Moscow was the second personage of the empire, and the third dignitary in the Greek Church. Religious forms and dogmas bound the Russians with the Greek population of the Turkish empire in the strongest ties of sympathy and interest, even when that empire was in the height of its power. To get possession of those principalities under Turkish dominion in which the Greek faith was the prevailing religion had been the ambition of all the czars who reigned either at Moscow or at St. Petersburg. They aimed at a protectorate over the Christian subjects of the Porte in Eastern Europe; and the city where reigned the first Christian emperor of the old Roman world was not only sacred in their eyes, and had a religious prestige next to that of Jerusalem, but was looked upon as their future and certain possession,--to be obtained, however, only by bitter and sanguinary wars.

Turkey, in a religious point of view, was the certain and inflexible enemy of Russia,--so handed down in all the traditions and teachings of centuries. To erect again on the lofty dome of St. Sophia the cross, which had been torn down by Mohammedan infidels, was probably one of the strongest desires of the Russian nation; and this desire was shared in a still stronger degree by all the Russian monarchs from the time of Peter the Great, most of whom were zealous defenders of what they called the Orthodox faith. They remind us of the kings of the Middle Ages in the interest they took in ecclesiastical affairs, in their gorgeous religious ceremonials, and in their magnificent churches, which it was their pride to build. Alexander I. was, in his way, one of the most religious monarchs who ever swayed a sceptre,--more like an ancient Jewish king than a modern political sovereign.

But there was another powerful reason why the Russian czars cast their wistful glance on the old capital of the Greek emperors, and resolved sooner or later to add it to their dominions, already stretching far into the east,--and this was to get possession of the countries which bordered on the Black Sea, in order to have access to the Mediterranean. They wanted a port for the southern provinces of their empire,--St. Petersburg was not sufficient, since the Neva was frozen in the winter,--but Poland (a powerful kingdom in the seventeenth century) stood in their way; and beyond Poland were the Ukraine Cossacks and the Tartars of the Crimea. These nations it was necessary to conquer before the Muscovite banners could float on the strongholds which controlled the Euxine. It was not until after a long succession of wars that Peter the Great succeeded, by the capture of Azof, in gaining a temporary footing on the Euxine,--lost by the battle of Pruth, when the Russians were surrounded by the Turks. The reconquest of Azof was left to Peter's successors; but the Cossacks and Tartars barred the way to the Euxine and to Constantinople. It was not until the time of Catherine II. that the Russian armies succeeded in gaining a firm footing on the Euxine by the conquest of the Crimea, which then belonged to Turkey, and was called Crim Tartary. The treaties of 1774 and 1792 gave to the Russians the privilege of navigating the Black Sea, and indirectly placed under the protectorate of Russia the territories of Moldavia and Wallachia,--provinces of Turkey, called the Danubian principalities, whose inhabitants were chiefly of the Greek faith.

Thus was Russia aggrandized during the reign of Catherine II., who not only added the Crimea to her dominions,--an achievement to which Peter the Great aspired in vain,--but dismembered Poland, and invaded Persia with her armies. "Greece, Roumelia, Thessaly, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the islands of the Archipelago swarmed with her emissaries, who preached rebellion against the hateful Crescent, and promised Russian support, Russian money, and Russian arms." These promises however were not realized, being opposed by Austria,--then virtually ruled by Prince Kaunitz, who would not consent to the partition of Poland without the abandonment of the ambitious projects of Catherine, incited by Prince Potemkin, the most influential of her advisers and favorites. She had to renounce all idea of driving the Turks out of Turkey and founding a Greek empire ruled over by a Russian grand duke. She was forced also to abandon her Greek and Slavonic allies, and pledge herself to maintain the independence of Wallachia and Moldavia. Eight years later, in 1783, the Tartars lost their last foothold in the Crimea by means of a friendly alliance between Catherine and the Austrian emperor Joseph II., the effect of which was to make the Russians the masters of the Black Sea.

Catherine II., of German extraction, is generally regarded as the ablest female sovereign who has reigned since Semiramis, with the exception perhaps of Maria Theresa of Germany and Elizabeth of England; but she was infinitely below these princesses in moral worth,--indeed, she was stained by the grossest immoralities that can degrade a woman. She died in 1796, and her son Paul succeeded her,--a prince whom his imperial mother had excluded from all active participation in the government of the empire because of his mental imbecility, or partial insanity. A conspiracy naturally was formed against him in such unsettled times,--it was at the height of Napoleon's victorious career,--resulting in his assassination, and his son Alexander I. reigned in his stead.

Alexander was twenty-four when, in 1801, he became the autocrat of all the Russias. His reign is familiar to all the readers of the wars of Napoleon, during which Russia settled down as one of the great Powers. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814 the duchy of Warsaw, comprising four-fifths of the ancient kingdom of Poland, was assigned to Russia. During fifty years Russia had been gaining possession of new territory,--of the Crimea in 1783, of Georgia in 1785, of Bessarabia and a part of Moldavia in 1812. Alexander added to the empire several of the tribes of the Caucasus, Finland, and large territories ceded by Persia. After the fall of Napoleon, Alexander did little to increase the boundaries of his empire, confining himself, with Austria and Prussia, to the suppression of revolutionary principles in Europe, the weakening of Turkey, and the extension of Russian influence in Persia. In the internal government of his empire he introduced many salutary changes, especially in the early part of his reign; but after Napoleon's final defeat, his views gradually changed. The burdens of absolute government, disappointments, the alienation of friends, and the bitter experiences which all sovereigns must learn soured his temper, which was naturally amiable, and made him a prey to terror and despondency. No longer was he the frank, generous, chivalrous, and magnanimous prince who had called out general admiration, but a disappointed, suspicious, terrified, and prematurely old man, flying from one part of his dominions to another, as if to avoid the assassin's dagger. He died in 1825, and was succeeded by his brother,--the Grand Duke Nicholas.

The throne, on the principles of legitimacy, properly belonged to his elder brother,--the Grand Duke Constantine. Whether this prince shrank from the burdens of governing a vast empire, or felt an incapacity for its duties, or preferred the post he occupied as Viceroy of Poland or the pleasures of domestic life with a wife to whom he was devoted, it is not clear; it is only certain that he had in the lifetime of the late emperor voluntarily renounced his claim to the throne, and Alexander had left a will appointing Nicholas as his successor.