1844-1847

Events leading to the Election of Pius IX. The Petty Princes Charles
Albert, Leopold and Ferdinand.

The day is drawing near when the century which witnessed the liberation of Italy will have passed away. Already a generation has grown up which can but faintly realise the passionate hopes and fears with which the steps that led through defeat to the ultimate victory were watched, not only by Italians, but by thousands who had never set foot in Italy. Never did a series of political events evoke a sympathy so wide and so disinterested, and it may be foretold with confidence that it never will again. Italy rising from the grave was the living romance of myriads of young hearts that were lifted from the common level of trivial interests and selfish ends, from the routine of work or pleasure, both deadening without some diviner spark, by a sustained enthusiasm that can hardly be imagined now. There were, indeed, some who asked what was all this to them? What were the ’extraneous Austrian Emperor,’ or the ‘old chimera of a Pope’ (Carlyle’s designations) to the British taxpayer? Some there were in England who were deeply attached still to the ’Great Hinge on which Europe depended,’ and even to the most clement Spanish Bourbons of Naples, about whom strangely beautiful things are to be read in old numbers of the Quarterly Review. But on the whole, English men and women in mind half Italian, whether they will it or not, from the day they begin to read their own literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Shakespeare to Shelley, from Shelley to Rossetti and Swinburne were united at that time in warmth of feeling towards struggling Italy as they have been united in no political sentiment relating to another nation, and in few concerning their own country.

It would be vain to expect that the record of Italian vicissitudes during the years when the fate of Italy hung in the balance can awake or renew the spellbound interest caused by the events themselves. The reader of recent history is like the novel reader who begins at the last chapter he is too familiar with how it all ended to be keenly affected by the development of the plot. Yet it is plain that we are in a better position to appreciate the process of development than was the case when the issue remained uncertain. We can estimate more accurately the difficulties which stood in the way, and judge more impartially the means that were taken to remove them. One outcome of this fuller knowledge is the conviction that patriotism was the monopoly of no single Italian party. The leaders, and still more their henchmen, were in the habit of saying very hard things about each other. It was natural and unavoidable; but there is no excuse now for failing to recognise that there were pure and devoted patriots on the one side as well as on the other men whose only desire was the salvation of Italy, to effect which no sacrifice seemed too great. Nor were their labours unfruitful, for there was work for all of them to do; and the very diversity of opinion, though unfortunate under some aspects, was not so under all. If no one had raised the question of unity before all things, Italy might be still a geographical expression. If no one had tried to wring concessions from the old governments, their inherent and irremediable vices would never have been proved; and though they might have been overturned, they would have left behind a lasting possibility of ignorant reaction.

The Great Powers had presented to the Court of Rome in 1831 a memorandum, in which various moderate reforms and improvements were proposed as urgently necessary to put an end to the intolerable abuses which were rife in the states of the Church, and, most of all, in Romagna. The abolition of the tribunal of the Holy Office, the institution of a Council of State, lay education, and the secularisation of the administration were among the measures recommended. In 1845 a certain Pietro Renzi collected a body of spirited young men at San Marino, and made a dash on Rimini, where he disarmed the small garrison. The other towns were not prepared, and Renzi and his companions were obliged to retire into Tuscany; but the revolution, partial as it had been, raised discussion in consequence of the manifesto issued by its promoters, in which a demand was made for the identical reforms vainly advocated by European diplomacy fourteen years before. If these were granted, the insurgents engaged to lay down their arms. The manifesto was written by Luigi Carlo Farini, who was destined to play a large part in future affairs. It proved to Europe that even the most conservative elements in the nation were driven to revolution by the sheer hopelessness of the dead-lock which the Italian rulers sought by every means to prolong. Massimo d’Azeglio, who was then known only as a painter of talent and a writer of historical novels, first made his mark as a politician by the pamphlet entitled Gli ultimi casi di Romagna, in which his arguments derived force from the fact that, when travelling in the district, he had done all in his power to induce the Liberals to keep within the bounds of legality. But he confessed that, when someone says: ‘I suffer too much,’ it is an unsatisfactory answer to retort: ‘You have not suffered enough.’ Massimo d’Azeglio had lived for many years an artist’s life in Rome and the country round, where his aristocratic birth and handsome face made him popular with all classes. The transparent integrity of his nature overcame the diffidence usually inspired by strangers among a somewhat suspicious people, and he got to know more thoroughly than any other North Italian the real aspirations of the Pope’s subjects. He listened to their complaints and their plans, and if they asked his advice, he invariably replied: ’Let us speak clearly. What is it that you wish and I with you? You wish to have done with priestly rule, and to send the Teutons out of Italy? If you invite them to decamp, they will probably say, “No, thank you!” Therefore you must use force; and where is it to be had? If you have not got it, you must find somebody who has. In Italy who has it, or, to speak more precisely, who has a little of it? Piedmont, because it, at least, enjoys an independent life, and possesses an army and a surplus in the treasury.’ His friends answered: ‘What of Charles Albert, of 1821, of 1832?’ Now, there was no one who felt less trust in Charles Albert than Massimo d’Azeglio; he admitted it with something like remorse in later years. But he believed in his ambition, and he thought it madness to throw away what he regarded as the sole chance of freeing Italy on account of private doubts of the King of Sardinia’s sincerity.

Charles Albert had reigned for fourteen years, and still the mystery which surrounded his character formed as impenetrable a veil as ever. The popular nickname of Re Tentenna (King Waverer) seemed, in a sense, accepted by him when he said to the Duke d’Aumale in 1843: ’I am between the dagger of the Carbonari and the chocolate of the Jesuits.’ He chose, as bride for his eldest son, an Austrian princess, who, however, had known no country but Italy. His internal policy was not simply stationary, it was retrograde. If his consent was obtained to some progressive measure, he withdrew it at the last moment, or insisted on the introduction of modifications which nullified the whole. His want of stability drove one of his ministers to jump out of a window. In spite of the candid reference to the Jesuit’s cup of chocolate, he allowed the Society of Jesus to dictate its will in Piedmont. Victor Amadeus, the first King of Sardinia, took public education out of the hands of the Jesuits, after receiving the following deathbed communication from one of the Order who was his own confessor: ’Deeply sensible of your many favours, I can only show my gratitude by a final piece of advice, but of such importance that perhaps it may suffice to discharge my debt. Never have a Jesuit for confessor. Do not ask me the grounds of this advice, I should not be at liberty to tell them to you.’ The lesson was forgotten now. Charles Albert was not content to wear a hair-shirt himself; he would have liked to see all his subjects furnished with the same garment. The result was, that Piedmont was not a comfortable place for Liberals to live in, nor a lively place for anyone. Yet there is hardly anything more certain than that all this time the King was constantly dreaming of turning the Austrians out of Italy. His government kept its attention fixed on two points: the improvement of the army, and the accumulation of a reserve fund to be available in case of war. Drill and thrift, which made the German Empire out of Prussia, if they did not lead straight to equally splendid results south of the Alps, were still what rendered it possible for Piedmont to defy Austria when the time came. In 1840, Charles Albert wrote to his Minister of War: ’It is a fine thing to win twenty battles; as for me, I should be content to win ten on behalf of a cause I know of, and to fall in the tenth then, indeed, I would die blessing the Lord.’ A year or two later, he unearthed and reassumed the ancient motto of the House of Savoy: ‘J’attends mon astre.’ Nevertheless, to the outward world his intentions remained enigmatical, and it was therefore with extreme surprise that Massimo d’Azeglio (who, on his return from the Roman states, asked permission to inform the King of the impressions made on him by his travels) received the injunction to tell his Liberal friends ’that when the occasion presented itself, his life, the life of his sons, his treasure, and his army would all be spent for the Italian cause.’

The fifteen years’ pontificate of Gregory XVI. ended on the 1st June of 1846. In spite of the care taken by those around him to keep the aged pontiff in a fool’s paradise with regard to the real state of his dominions, a copy of The Late Events in Romagna fell into his hands, and considerably disturbed his peace of mind. He sent two prelates to look into the condition of the congested provinces, and their tour, though it resulted in nothing else, called forth new protests and supplications from the inhabitants, of which the most noteworthy was an address written by Count Aurelio Saffi, who was destined to pass many honourable years of exile in England. This address attacked the root of the evil in a passage which exposed the unbearable vexations of a government based on espionage. The acknowledged power of an irresponsible police was backed by the secret force of an army of private spies and informers. The sentiment of legality was being stamped out of the public conscience, and with it religion and morality. ’Bishops have been heard to preach civil war a crusade against the Liberals; priests seem to mix themselves in wretched party strife, egging on the mob to vent its worst passions. There is not a Catholic country in which the really Christian priest is so rarely found as in the States of the Church.’

If Gregory XVI. was not without reasons for disquietude in his last hours, he could take comfort in the fact that he had succeeded in keeping railways out of all parts of his dominions. Gas and suspension bridges were also classed as works of the Evil One, and vigorously tabooed. Among the Pope’s subjects there was a young prelate who had never been able to make out what there was subversive to theology in a steam-engine, or why the safety of the Papal government should depend on its opposing every form of material improvement, although in discussing these subjects he generally ended by saying: ’After all I am no politician, and I may be mistaken.’ This prelate was Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti, Bishop of Imola. Born in 1792 at Sinigaglia, of a good though rather needy family, Count Giovanni Maria Mastai was piously brought up by his mother, who dedicated him at an early age to the Virgin, to whom she believed that she owed his recovery from an illness which had been pronounced fatal. Roman Catholic writers connect the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception with this incident of childhood. After entering the priesthood, young Mastai devoted most of his energies to active charity, and remained, as he said, ‘no politician,’ being singularly ignorant of the world and of public affairs, though full of amiable wishes that everyone should be happy. Some years spent in missionary work in South America failed to enlarge his practical knowledge, the limits of which he was the first to recognise a fact that tended to make him all his life the instrument, not of his own will, but of the wills of men whom he honestly thought cleverer and more experienced than himself. His chief friends in his Romagnol diocese, friends on the intimate basis of social equality and common provincial interests, were sound patriots, though not revolutionists, and the future Pio Nono involuntarily adopted their ideas and sympathies. He saw with his eyes certain abuses so glaring that they admitted of no two opinions, and these helped to convince him of the truth of his friends’ arguments in favour of a completely new order of things. One such abuse was the encouragement given by government to the Society of the Centurioni, the latest evolution of the Calderai; the Centurions, recruited among roughs and peasants, were set upon the respectable middle classes, over which they tyrannised by secret accusations or open violence: it was well understood that anyone called a Liberal, or Freemason, or Carbonaro could be beaten or killed without inquiries being made.

The Bishop of Imola was frequently in the house of the Count and Countess Pasolini, who kept their friend well supplied with the new books on Italian affairs; thus he read not only D’Azeglio’s Cast di Romagna, but also Cesare Balbo’s Le Speranze d’Italia, which propounded a plan for an Italian federation, and Gioberti’s Primato morale e civile degli Italiani, in which this plan was elaborately developed. Gioberti indicated the Supreme Pontiff as the natural head of the Italian Union, and the King of Sardinia as Italy’s natural deliverer from foreign domination. The eternal fitness of things, and the history of many centuries, proved the Pope to be the proper paramount civil authority in Italy, ’which is the capital of Europe, because Rome is the religious metropolis of the world.’ An ex-member of ‘Young Italy,’ a Piedmontese by birth, a priest by ordination, Gioberti’s profession of faith was derived from these three sources, and it attracted thousands of Italians by its apparent reconciliation of the interests of the papacy, and of the Sardinian monarchy, with the most advanced views of the newest school. History, to which Gioberti appealed, might have told him that a reversal of the law of gravity was as likely to happen as the performance by the papacy of the mission he proposed to it; but men believe what they wish to believe, and his work found, as has been said, thousands of admirers, among whom none was more sincere than Cardinal Mastai. The day on which Count Pasolini gave him a copy of Il Primato he created that great, and under some aspects pathetic illusion, the reforming Pope.

The Conclave opened on the 14th of June 1846. During the Bishop of Imola’s journey to Rome a white pigeon had perched several times on his carriage. The story became known; people said the same thing had occurred to a coming Pope on former occasions, and the augury was accepted with joy and satisfaction. He was, in fact, elected after the Conclave had lasted only two days, while the Conclave which elected his predecessor lasted sixty-four. The brevity of that to which Pius IX. owed the tiara was looked upon by the populace as something miraculous, but it was the result of the well-considered determination of the Italian Cardinals not to allow time for Austrian intrigues to obtain the election of a Pope who would be ruled from Vienna. When the new Pope appeared on the balcony of the Quirinal to give his first benediction, the people, carried away by his youthful yet majestic bearing, and by the hopes which already centred in him, broke into frantic cries of: ‘We have a Pope! He loves us! He is our Father!’ If they had cried: ‘We have a new heaven and a new earth,’ they would but have expressed the delirium which, starting from Rome, spread throughout Italy.

On the night of the 6th of December 1846, the whole line of the Apennines from Liguria to Calabria was illuminated. A hundred years before, a stone thrown by the child Balilla had given the signal for the expulsion of the Austrians from Genoa: this was the memory flashed from height to height by countless beacons, but while celebrating the past, they were the fiery heralds of a greater revolution.

The upheaval of Europe did not become a fact, however, for another year. Meantime, the Roman States attracted more attention than any other part of the peninsula, from the curiosity awakened by the progress of the experiment of which they were the scene. It is not doubtful that at the first moment Pius IX. was under the impression that the problem he had taken in hand was eminently simple. A little goodwill on the part of everybody, an amnesty to heal old sores, and a few administrative reforms, ought, he thought, to set everything right. Such was not the opinion of intelligent onlookers who were students of politics especially if they were foreigners, and could therefore keep their heads moderately cool in the prevailing excitement. The wave of a wand may seem to effect marvels, but long and silent causes prepare the way for each event. Now what had been going on for years in the Roman States was not the process of gradual growth, but the process of rapid disintegration. The Temporal Power of the Popes had died without anyone noticing it, and there was nothing left but a body in the course of dissolution. Every foreigner in Rome during the reign of Gregory XVI. bore witness that his government depended for its existence absolutely on the Swiss Guards. In 1845, Count Rossi told Guizot that without the Swiss regiments the government in the Legations and the Marches ’would be overthrown in the twinkling of an eye.’ The British agent in Rome, writing during the Conclave, bore this out by the statement, which applied not to one portion of the Roman states, but to all, that ’the government could not stand without the protection of Austria and the immediate presence of the Swiss.’ On the accession of Pius IX., the props, such as they were, which had prevented an earlier collapse of the Temporal Power, were either removed or rendered useless. The Swiss might as well have been disbanded at once as retained merely to be a bone of contention between the new government and the people, since it was understood that a vigorous use of their services would never be resorted to; while Austrian protection was transferred from the Pope to the disaffected party in the Church, which consisted in a large proportion of the cardinals and of the inferior clergy who were afraid that, with the reform of abuses, they would lose their influence over the lower class of their flocks. The English diplomatic agents in Italy also firmly believed that Austria coupled with her support of the ultramontane malcontents the direct encouragement of the disorderly elements of the population. To resist all these contrary forces, Pius IX. had only a popularity which, though for the time immense, was founded almost completely on imagination. ‘It was,’ said Mr Petre, ’the name and known views of Pius, rather than his acts, which aroused so much interest.’ If for ‘known views’ be substituted ‘supposed views,’ the remark exactly describes the situation.

Popularity is very well, but a government cannot long subsist on the single fact of the popularity of the sovereign. When the Roman mob began to cry: ‘Viva Pio Nono solo,’ the fate of the experiment was sealed. Real control slipped from the hands that nominally wielded it. ‘The influence,’ Mr Petre wrote to Sir George Hamilton, ’of one individual of the lower class, Angelo Brunetti, hardly known but by his nickname of Ciceruacchio, has for the last month kept the peace of the city more than any power possessed by the authorities, from the command which he exerts over the populace.’ It was Ciceruacchio who preserved order when in July 1847 the air was full of rumours of a vast reactionary plot, which aimed at carrying off the Pope, and putting things back as they were under Gregory. That such a plot was ever conceived, or, at anyrate, that it received the sanction of the high personages whose names were mentioned in connection with it, is generally doubted now; but it was believed in by many of the representatives of foreign Powers then in Italy. The public mind in Rome was violently disturbed. Austria made the excitement the excuse for occupying the town of Ferrara, where, by the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of Vienna, she had only the right to garrison the fortress. This aggression called forth a strong remonstrance from the Pope’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Ferretti; and though a compromise was arrived at through the mediation of Lord Palmerston, the feeling against Austria grew more and more exasperated in the Roman states, and the Pope consented, not, it seemed, much against the grain, to preparations being taken in hand with a view to the possible eventuality of war.

At this date the Italian question was better apprehended at Vienna than in any other part of Europe. A man of Prince Metternich’s talents does not devote a long life to statecraft without learning to distinguish the real drift of political currents. While Lord Palmerston still felt sure that reforms, and nothing but reforms, were what Italy wanted, Prince Metternich saw that two real forces were at work from the Alps to the Straits of Messina, and two only: desire for union, hatred of Austria. Nor was it his fault if the English Cabinet or the rest of the world remained unenlightened. Besides enlarging on this truth in frequent diplomatic communications, he caused it to be continually dwelt upon in the Vienna Observer, the organ of the Austrian Government, which printed illustrative quotations from the writings of Mazzini, of whom it said that ’he has the one merit of despising hypocrisy, and proceeding firmly and directly to his true end. Persons who are versed in history will know that this is exactly the same end as that at which Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi formerly aimed. The only difference is, that the revolutionary dream has in the course of centuries gained in self-reliance and confidence.’ It may truly be affirmed after this that Metternich ’had the one merit of despising hypocrisy.’ Exactly the same end as Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi who better could have described the scheme of Italian redemption?

In the course of the summer of 1847, the Prince said more than once to the British Ambassador: ’The Emperor is determined not to lose his Italian dominions.’ It was no idle boast, the speaker felt confident, that the troops in Lombardy and Venetia could keep those provinces from taking an active part in the ‘revolution’ which he declared to be already complete over all central Italy, though the word revolution had never yet been mentioned. Nor was it only in the Austrian army that he trusted; Metternich was persuaded that neither in Lombardy nor in Venetia was there any fear of a really popular and, therefore, formidable movement. He believed that Austria’s only enemy was the aristocracy. He even threw out hints that if the Austrian Government condescended to do so, it could raise a social or peasants’ war of the country people against their masters. This is the policy which has been elaborately followed by the Russians in Poland. The Austrians pointed to their virtue in not resorting to it; but some tentative experiments in such a direction had not given results of a kind to encourage them to go on. The Italian peasant, though ignorant, had a far quicker innate intelligence than his unfortunate Polish brother. He did not dislike his masters, who treated him at least with easy familiarity, and he detested foreigners those foreigners, no matter of what nation, who for two thousand years had brought the everlasting curse of war upon his fields. The conscription, which carried off his sons for eight years into distant lands, of which he could not pronounce the name, was alone enough to alienate him from the Austrian Government. In hoping to find a friend in the Italian peasant, Metternich reckoned without his host. On the other hand, he was strictly correct in his estimate of the patriotism of the aristocracy. The fact always seemed to the Prince a violation of eternal laws. According to him, the fore-ordained disaffected in every country were drawn from the middle classes. What business had noblemen with ancient names and fine estates to prefer Spielberg to their beautiful palaces and fairy-like villas on the Lombard lakes? Was it on purpose to spite the best of governments, and the one most favourable to the aristocratic principle, which had always held out paternal hands to them? Could anything be imagined more aggravating?

This feature in Italian liberation has been kept mostly in the background. Democratic chroniclers were satisfied to ignore it, and to the men themselves their enormous sacrifices seemed so natural that they were very willing to let them pass out of mind. It is in the works of those who, while sympathising with Italy, are not Italians, that the best record of it is to be found; nowhere better than in a recent book by a French writer, M. Paul Bourget, in which occurs the following just and eloquent tribute: ’We must say in praise of the aristocracy on this side of the Alps that the best soldiers of independence were nobles. If Italy owes the final success to the superior capabilities of Victor Emmanuel and Cavour, and to the agitating power of the General of the Thousand, it is well not to forget the struggles sustained for years by gentlemen whose example did so much to raise partisans among the humble. These aristocrats, passionate for liberty, have (like our own of the eighteenth century) done more for the people than the people itself. The veritable history of this Risorgimento would be in great part that of the Italian nobility in which the heroic blood of feudal chiefs revolted against the oppressions and, above all, the perpetual humiliation, born of the presence of the stranger.’

When Prince Metternich looked beyond the borders of those provinces which he said that his Sovereign did not intend to lose, he saw sooner than most people that a ball was set rolling which would not stop half way down the hill. The one element in the situation which came as a surprise to him, was that introduced by Pius IX. ’A liberal Pope is an impossible being!’ he exclaimed. Nevertheless this impossible being was a reality which had to be dealt with. He hoped all along, however, that Pius would fall a victim to the Frankenstein he had called into existence, and his only real anxiety lay where it had always lain on the side of Piedmont. ‘Charles Albert ought to let us know,’ he wrote to the Austrian Minister at Turin, ’whether his reign has been only a mask under which was hidden the Prince of Carignano, who ascended the throne through the order of succession re-established in his favour by the Emperor Francis.’ Considering all things, the endeavour to make it appear that the King was indebted for his crown to Austria was somewhat venturesome. Charles Albert, Metternich went on to say, had to choose between two systems, the system now in force, or ’the crassest revolution.’ He wrote again: ’The King is sliding back upon the path which he enters for the second time in his life, and which he will never really quit.’ Words of a bitter enemy, but juster than the ‘Esecrato o Carignano,’ hurled for a quarter of a century at Charles Albert by those who only saw in him a traitor.

The constant invocation of the revolutionary spectre by the Austrian statesman convinced the King that the wish was father to the thought, and, afraid of introducing the thin end of the wedge, he showed himself more than ever averse to reforming the antiquated machinery of the Sardinian Government. Instead of being the first of Italian princes to yield to popular demands, he was almost the last. He believed that the question of nationality, of independence, could be separated from the question of free institutions. Of all the chimerical ideas then afloat, this was the most chimerical. Even the example of the Pope, for whom Charles Albert felt a romantic devotion, was not enough to induce him to open the road to reforms. The person who seems first to have impressed him with their absolute necessity was Lord Minto, whose visit to Turin, in October 1847, coincided with the dismissal of Count della Margherita, the minister most closely associated with the absolutist and Jesuitical regime. Lord Minto was sent to Italy to encourage in the ways of political virtue those Italian princes who were not entirely incorrigible. His mission excited exaggerated hopes on the part of the Liberals, and exaggerated wrath in the retrograde party both failing to understand its limitations. The hopes died a natural death, but long afterwards, reactionary writers attributed all the ‘troubles’ in Italy to this estimable British diplomatist. What is not doubtful is, that, accustomed as they were to being lectured and bullied by foreign courts, the Italians derived the greatest encouragement from the openly expressed sympathy of well-known English visitors, whether they came in an official capacity like Lord Minto, or unofficially like Mr Cobden, who travelled as a missionary of Free Trade, and was received with rapture with which, it is to be feared, Free Trade had little to do by the leading Liberals in Italy: Massimo d’Azeglio at Genoa, Mancini at Naples Cavour and Scialoja at Turin, Minghetti at Bologna, Ridolfi at Florence, and Manin and Tommaseo at Venice.

Towards the end of 1847, there was a curious shuffling of the cards in the small states of Lucca and Parma, resulting in much irritation, which, in an atmosphere so charged with revolutionary electricity, was not without importance. The dissolute Bourbon prince who reigned in Lucca, Charles Ludovico, had but one desire, which was to increase his civil list. He hit upon an English jockey named Ward, who came to Italy in the service of a German count, and this person he made his Chancellor of the Exchequer. By various luminous strokes, Ward furthered his Sovereign’s object without much increasing the taxation, and when matters began to grow complicated, and here, too, a cry was raised for a Constitution (which had been solemnly guaranteed to the people of Lucca at the Congress of Vienna, but had never been heard of since), he proposed the sale of the Duchy off-hand to Tuscany, with which it would, in any case, be united, when, on the death of the ex-Empress Marie-Louise, the Duchy of Parma devolved on the Duke of Lucca. At the same time, by a prior agreement, a district of Tuscany called the Lunigiana was consigned, one-half to the Duchess of Parma, and the other to the Duke of Modena. The indignation of the population, which was made, by force, subject to the Duke of Modena, was intense, and the whole transaction of handing about Italians to suit the pleasure of princes, or to obey the articles of forgotten treaties, reminded the least sensitive of the everyday opprobrium of their lot.

The bargain with Tuscany had been struck only eight days when Marie-Louise died unlamented, since the latter years of her reign formed a sad contrast to the earlier. Marie-Louise had not a bad disposition, but she always let her husband of the hour govern as he chose; of the four or five of these husbands, the last two, and particularly the hated Count de Bombelles, undid all the good done by their more humane predecessors. The Parmese petitioned their new Duke to send the man away, and to grant them some measure of freedom. The answer he gave was the confirmation of Bombelles in all his honours, and the conclusion of a treaty with Austria, securing the assistance of her arms. A military force had been sent to Parma to escort the body of the late Duchess to Vienna; but on the principle that the living are of more consequence than the dead, it remained there to protect the new Duke from his subjects. Marie-Louise and her lovers, Charles Ludovico and his jockey-minister, are instructive illustrations of the scandalous point things had reached in the small states of Italy.

There was, indeed, one state in which, though the dynasty was Austrian, the government was conducted without ferocity and without scandal. This was Tuscany. The branch of the Hapsburg-Lorraine family established in Tuscany produced a series of rulers who, if they exhibited no magnificent qualities, were respectable as individuals, and mild as rulers. Giusti dubbed Leopold II. ’the Tuscan Morpheus, crowned with poppies and lettuce leaves,’ and the clear intelligence of Ricasoli was angered by the languid, let-be policy of the Grand-Ducal government, but, compared with the other populations of Italy, the Tuscans might well deem themselves fortunate. Only on one occasion had the Grand Duke given up a fugitive from the more favoured provinces, and the presence of distinguished exiles lent brilliancy to his capital. Leopold II. hesitated between the desire to please his subjects and the fear of his Viennese relations, who sent him through Metternich the ominous reminder, ’that the Italian Governments had only subsisted for the last ten years by the support they received from Austria’ an assertion at which Charles Albert took umbrage, but he was curtly told that he was not intended. In spite of his fears, however, the Grand Duke instituted a National Guard on the 4th of September, which was correctly judged the augury of further concessions. In August, the Austrian Minister had distinctly threatened to occupy Tuscany, or any other of the Italian duchies where a National Guard was granted; its institution was therefore interpreted as a decisive act of rebellion against the Imperial dictatorship. The red, white and green tricolor, not yet permitted in Piedmont, floated already from all the towers of the city on the Arno.

Where there were no signs of improvement was in the government of the Two Sicilies. King Ferdinand undertook a journey through several parts of the country, but as Lord Napier, the British Minister, expressed it: ’Exactly where the grace of the royal countenance was principally conferred, the rebels sprung up most thickly.’ A revolution was planned to break out in all the cities of the kingdom, but the project only took effect at Messina and at Reggio, and in both places the movement was stifled with prompt and barbarous severity. When the leader of the Calabrian attempt, Domenico Romeo, a landed proprietor, was caught on the heights of Aspromonte, his captors, after cutting off his head, carried it to his young nephew, whom they ordered to take it to Reggio with the cry of ‘Long live the King.’ The youth refused, and was immediately killed. In the capital, Carlo Poerio and many patriots were thrown into prison on suspicion. Settembrini had just time to escape to Malta.

The year 1847 closed amid outward appearances of quiet.