Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth Century

"When I arrived at the St. Pancrazio gate, the Villa Pamphili, the Villa Corsini, and the Villa Valentini alone remained in our hands. Now the Villa Corsini being taken was an enormous loss to us; for as long as we were masters of that, the French could not draw their parallels. At any price, then, that must be retaken: it was for Rome a question of life or death. The firing between the cannoneers of the ramparts, the men of the Vascello, and the French of the Villa Corsini and the Villa Valentini, increased. But it was not a fusillade or a cannonade that was necessary; it was an assault, a terrible but victorious assault, which might restore the Villa Corsini to us. For a moment the Villa Corsini was ours. That moment was short, but it was sublime! The French brought up all their reserve, and fell upon us altogether before I could even repair the disorder inseparable from victory. The fight was renewed more desperately, more bloodily, more fatally than ever. I saw repass before me, repulsed by those irresistible powers of war, fire and steel, those whom I had seen pass on but a minute before, now bearing away their dead.

"There could no longer be any idea of saving Rome. From the moment an army of 40,000 men, having thirty-six pieces of siege cannon, can perform their works of approach, the taking of a city is nothing but a question of time; it must one day or other fall. The only hope it has left is to fall gloriously. As long as one of our pieces of cannon remained on its carriage, it replied to the French fire; but on the evening of the 29th the last was dismounted."

Garibaldi was summoned before the Assembly, and this is his history of what happened: -

"Mazzini had already announced to the Assembly the position we now stood in: there remained, he said, but three parts to take – to treat with the French; to defend the city from barricade to barricade; or to leave the city, assembly, triumvirate, and army, carrying away with them the palladium of Roman liberty.

"When I appeared at the door of the chamber all the deputies rose and applauded. I looked about me and upon myself to see what it was that awakened their enthusiasm. I was covered with blood; my clothes were pierced with balls and bayonet thrusts. They cried, 'To the tribune! to the tribune!' and I mounted it. I was interrogated on all sides.

"'All defense is henceforth impossible,' replied I, 'unless we are resolved to make Rome another Saragossa.' On the 9th of February I proposed a military dictatorship, that alone was able to place on foot a hundred thousand armed men. The living elements still subsisted; they were to be sought for, and they would have been found in one courageous man. If I had been attended to, the Roman eagle would again have made its eyrie upon the towers of the Capitol; and with my brave men – and my brave men know how to die, it is pretty well seen – I might have changed the face of Italy. But there is no remedy for that which is done. Let us view with head erect the conflagration of which we no longer are the masters. Let us take with us from Rome all of the volunteer army who are willing to follow us. Where we shall be, Rome will be. I pledge myself to nothing; but all that my men can do that I will do; and whilst it takes refuge in us our country shall not die."

In the end the following order was issued: -

"The Roman Republic, in the name of God and the People. The Roman Constituent Assembly discontinues a defense which has become impossible. It has its post. The Triumvirate are charged with the execution of the present decree."

NOTE 5

An attempt has recently been made to give to the so-called Moderate party the merit of planning a United Italy. Mr. Stansfield, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, whose recent efforts to reform his department have already earned for him the gratitude of the English people, says: "Italy has already accomplished of her unity so much that no policy save that of an absolute completion of the task is any longer to be dreamed of or suggested, and considering, too, how predominantly the credit and the practical fruits of that success have, in the opinion of the world and in the possession of power, inured to the benefit of the Moderate party, it would seem natural to imagine that they too must have had the unity of their country long in view, and that they can have differed only from the National party as to the policy best adapted to the attainment of a common object; and yet I believe the acceptance of the idea of Italian unity, as an object of practical statesmanship, by the leaders of the Moderate party, must be admitted to be of a very recent date. I will go back to Gioberti, who was the founder of that party. In the Sardinian Chambers on the 10th of February, 1849, on the eve of the short campaign which ended in the defeat of Novara, Gioberti said: 'I consider the unity of Italy a chimera; we must be content with its union. And if you look to the writings, the speeches, the acts of all the leading men of the Moderate party until a very recent period, you will find them all, without exception, not only not propounding or advocating unity, or directed to its accomplishment, but explicitly directed to a different solution. You will find the proof of what I say in Balbo's 'Hopes of Italy;' in Durando's 'Essay on Italian Nationality,' advocating three Italies, north, centre, and south; in Bianchi Gioviners work entitled 'Mazzini and his Utopias;' and in Gualterio's 'Revolutions of Italy.' Minghetti, Ricasoli, Farini each and all have been the advocates of a confederation of princes rather than of a united Italy. Let me come to Cavour. An attempt has recently been made to claim for him the credit of having since the days of his earliest manhood conceived the idea of making himself the minister of a future united Italy. In an article in the July Quarterly, by a well-known pen, a letter of Cavour, written about 1829 or 1830, is cited in implied justification of this claim. He had been placed under arrest a short time in the Fort de Bard, on account of political opinions expressed with too much freedom. In a letter to a lady who had written condoling with him on his disgrace, he says: – 'I thank you, Madame la Marquise, for the interest which you take in my disgrace; but believe me, for all that, I shall work out my career. I have much ambition – an enormous ambition; and when I become minister I hope to justify it, since already in my dreams I see myself Minister of the Kingdom of Italy.' Now this is, I need not say, a most remarkable letter, and of the greatest interest, as showing the confidence in his own future, at so early an age, of one of the greatest statesmen of our times. But no one acquainted with the modern history of Italy, and familiar with its recognized phraseology, could read in this letter the prophecy of that unity which is now coming to pass. The 'Kingdom of Italy,' is a well-known phrase borrowed from the time of Napoleon, and has always meant, until facts have enlarged its significance, that the kingdom of Northern Italy, whose precedent existed under Napoleon, which was the object of Piedmontese policy in '48 and '49, and one of the explicit terms of the contract of Pombier's in '59. It is rather a curious inconsistency in the article in question, that in itself furnishes ample evidence that the unity of Italy was not part of the practical programme of the Moderate party. 'Cavour,' we are told, founded in 1847 with his friends, Cesare Balbo, Santa Rosa, Buoncampagni, Castelli, and other men of moderate constitutional views, the Risorgimento, of which he became the editor; and the principles of the new periodical were announced to be 'independence of Italy, union between the princes,' and the people's progress in the path of reform, and a league between the Italian States." Again, after saying that it was Ricasoli and the leaders of the constitutional party who recalled (in '49) the Grand Ducal family to Tuscany, and that Geoberti proposed the return of the Pope to Rome, the writer goes on to say, "It was an immense advantage to the restored princes to have been thus brought back by the most intelligent and moderate of their subjects. All that the wisest and most influential men in Italy asked, was a federal union of the different states in the Peninsula, upon a liberal and constitutional basis, from which even the House of Austria was not to be excluded."

I must trouble you with one more quotation. At the Conference of Paris in 1855, after the Crimean war, Piedmont was represented by Cavour, who brought before the assembled statesmen the condition of Italy, but unable to enter fully into the Italian question, he addressed two state papers on it to Lord Clarendon. His plan – at any rate, for the temporary settlement of the question – was a confederation of Italian States with constitutional institutions, and a guaranty of complete independence from the direct interference and influence of Austria; and the secularization of the legations with a lay vicar under the suzerainty of the Pope. At that time he would have been even willing to acquiesce in the occupation of Lombardy by Austria, had she bound herself to keep within the limits of the treaty of 1815.

Now you can not, I think, have failed to note the glaring inconsistency of these praises of what is called the moderation of Cavour, with the assumption to him and to his party of the whole credit of Italian unity, and the theory, now too prevalent, that no other party has contributed any thing but follies and excesses, impediments, not aids, to the accomplishment of the great task. I believe such ideas to be as profoundly ungenerous and unjust as they are evidently self-contradictory, and I believe that they will be adjudged by history to be, so far as they are in any degree in good faith, superficial, partial, and utterly incapable of serving as any explanation of the method of the evolution of the great problem of Italian nationality.

Now let another witness be called into court, the late Prime Minister of Italy, Farina, on the authority of the Turin Times correspondent, who wrote September 12,1861: "You have not forgotten that in the Jemilia, Farina used, with great bitterness, to complain of the worthlessness of the Moderate party in time of trial and strife."[5 - Count Cavour wrote from Paris In 1866 to M. Rattazzi the following "I have seen Mr. Manin. He is a very good man, but he always talks about the unity of Italy, and such other tomfooleries." Also La Larina, Cavour's agent in Italy in 1860, published in that year the following explanation of his differences with General Garibaldi: – He stated, "I believed, and still believe, that the only salvation for Sicily is the constitutional government of Victor Emanuel." This explanation was published before Garibaldi crossed to the main land; and had Cavour gained his point, and obtained annexation, the kingdom of Naples would now have been under Bourbon rule.] —From "Garibaldi and Italian Unity" by Lieut. – Col. Chambers, 1864.

END

notes

1

Some were discovered among Garibaldi's Zouave prisoners at Monte Rotonda.

2

It is painful to state it, but one man, hopelessly wounded, was killed so that he should not be in the enemy's power, who usually cut the throats of those they found alive on the field,

3

An historical fact.

4

See "Vicissitudes of Families," by Sir Bernard Burke, pp. 294, 395. See also "The Autobiography of an Italian Rebel," by Riccalde, from p. 5.

5

Count Cavour wrote from Paris In 1866 to M. Rattazzi the following "I have seen Mr. Manin. He is a very good man, but he always talks about the unity of Italy, and such other tomfooleries." Also La Larina, Cavour's agent in Italy in 1860, published in that year the following explanation of his differences with General Garibaldi: – He stated, "I believed, and still believe, that the only salvation for Sicily is the constitutional government of Victor Emanuel." This explanation was published before Garibaldi crossed to the main land; and had Cavour gained his point, and obtained annexation, the kingdom of Naples would now have been under Bourbon rule.