Italy (1850-1870)

Italy (1850-1870)

Unification

The role of Piedmont

In Piedmont  Victor Emmanuel II governed with a parliament whose democratic majority refused to ratify the peace treaty with Austria. This wasan exception to the general course of reaction. The skillfully worded Proclamation of Moncalieri (Nov. 20, 1849) favourably contrasted Victor Emmanuel’s policies with those of other Italian rulers and permitted elections. The victorious liberals installed a new cabinet under  Massimo d’Azeglio, a moderate trusted by the king. D’Azeglio introduced the Siccardi law, which curtailed the power of ecclesiastical courts. In October 1850 another prominent moderate, Camillo Benso di  Cavour, entered the cabinetand from that time forward directed a laissez-faire economic policy. He formulated international commercial treaties and drew on foreign capital to reduce the public debt, stimulate economic growth, and develop a railroad system. Cavour’s dynamism was viewed with suspicion by conservatives and even by d’Azeglio. In 1852, through an alliance with centre-left deputiesthat became known as the connubio (“marriage”), Cavour displaced d’Azeglio as head of the cabinet. Despite disagreements between Cavour and the king (who was influenced by the clerical party and occasionally displayed absolutist tendencies), various ecclesiastical, judicial, and fiscal reforms were introduced.

Piedmont’s prestige in Italy and abroad was reinforced by a number of events. In March 1854 France and England intervened in support of the Ottoman Empire against Russia in the  Crimea. To obtain Austrian support, they were prepared to guarantee the status quo in Italy. Only Piedmont was in a position to disrupt it at that time, and Cavour negotiated an alliance with the Western powers. In May he sent to the Crimea an army that performed brilliantly. As a result, Piedmont was able to assume a place among the victors at the Congress of Paris (February 1856). From this platform Cavour, achieving a diplomatic coup for Piedmont and Italy, declared that the only threat to peace in Italy, and the root cause of subversive plots, was the burdensome Austrian overlordship.

Meanwhile, Mazzini’s democratic and republican movement was crumbling. In February 1853 an insurrection against the Austrians failed in Milan. The discovery and execution at Belfiore (1852–53) of the leaders of a conspiracy in Mantua, as well as abortive insurrections in Cadore and Lunigiana, discredited the democratic movement and discouraged its most dedicated adherents. Mazzini’s isolation was complete when it became known that he had supported an expedition to the southern mainland to incite insurrection, known as the Sapri expedition (June–July 1857), in which the Neapolitan republican and socialist Carlo Pisacane and some 300 companions lost their lives. The democrats were divided and unable to carry on the revolutionary struggle; nothing was to be expected from the restored governments. In Lombardy-Venetia, Austria carried out stern repressive measures. Pius IX, now under the influence of the reactionary Giacomo Cardinal Antonelli, refused to grant any reforms in Rome. Liberal Catholicism could not remain viable without reforms in the Papal States. In Naples and the duchies, reaction became pervasive, though the grand duke of Tuscany sought to make his subjects forget that he owed his throne to Austrian military intervention. Only in Piedmont was there any hope left for the reformers.

The war of 1859

In  1857 Cavour sponsored the formation of the monarchist-unionist Italian National Society. Under the presidency of Manin and the vice presidency of Garibaldi, the society achieved wider appeal than it would have achieved had it been led entirely by moderates. Although not outlawing conspiratorial movements, Cavour was determined to solve the Italian question by international politics rather than by revolution. At a secret conference held at Plombières, Fr., in July 1858 he arranged with Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (now Emperor  Napoleon III) for  French military intervention in the event of Austrian aggression against Piedmont. Cavour’s goal was the completeexpulsion of Austrian troops from the peninsula. The price for this help was the cession of Savoy and Nice to France and the outlawing of the Mazzinian movement; wrongly, Napoleon III held Mazzini’s followers responsible for an attempt on his life made by the anarchist Felice Orsini in Paris on Jan. 14, 1859. Despite that event, a Franco-Piedmontese alliance was sealed in January 1859. With Napoleon’s approval, Victor Emmanuel II made a speech from his throne in which he declaredhimself ready to hear “il grido di dolore” (“the cry of woe”) against Austrian oppression that arose from every part of Italy.

Meanwhile, the Austrian military leadership and its sympathizers at court urged  Francis Joseph to declare war on Piedmont. On April 23 an insulting and unacceptable ultimatum demanded the demobilization of Piedmontese troops. Piedmont rejected the ultimatum, and Austria declared war three days later. As Cavour had hoped and planned, France honoured its alliance with Piedmont. InJune 1859 the allies won bloody battles at Magenta, Solferino, and San Martino. But, with the Austrian army in retreat, Napoleon III suddenly signed an armistice with the Austrians at  Villafranca. This sudden change of policy was prompted partly by the outcry of French public opinion against the loss of life in the Italian campaign and partly by events in Italy itself, where political unification seemed imminent. On April 27 Leopold II of Tuscany had been overthrown by insurgents, and moderate political leaders headed by Baron Bettino Ricasoli had formed a provisional government. In June Parma, Modena, and the Papal Legations (the northern Papal States) had rebelled. Only in the Marche and Umbria were papal troops able to suppress the insurgents. Plebiscites in the liberated states urged unification with Piedmont, but France opposedthis outcome.

At Villafranca Napoleon III agreed to accept the cession of Lombardy from Austria, which he passed, in turn, to Piedmont. He also agreed that the legitimate rulers of Modena and Tuscany would be restored to power and permitted to join an Italian confederation. These events marked a serious political defeat for Cavour, who resigned in July 1859 and was replaced by Urbano Rattazzi. England, however, was opposed to the restoration of conservative governments in Modena and Tuscany, and Napoleon III, with his position at home strengthened by the acquisition of Savoy andNice, reconsidered his position. As a result, Cavour’s policy prevailed, and he was returned to office on Jan. 21, 1860. New plebiscites in the duchies and the Papal Legations reconfirmed popular sentiment in favour of union with Piedmont. It was fear of a democratic revolution, the need to weaken Austria, and England’s desire to set up a strong Italian state as a counterweight to French influence that induced the European powers to assist the Piedmontese monarchy in obtaining thisgreat success.

Garibaldi and the Thousand

The democratic movement refused to acknowledge that the national revolution was in any way complete so long as parts of the peninsula remained under the old sovereigns.  Sicily, where autonomist opposition to the Bourbon government was endemic and extreme, was the most obvious place for a democratic revival. In April 1860 a Mazzinian-inspired insurrection broke out in Palermo (the Gancia revolt), and, although it was quickly quelled, it spread throughout the island. After the insurrection, Sicilian democrats gave evidence that they could overcome their deep divisions of ideology and class. In May they had the opportunity to assist  Garibaldi’s Expedition of the  Thousand, a volunteer force that had set sail from Liguria to free the Italian south from Bourbon rule.

Despite scant preparations and a shortage of weapons, Garibaldi’s volunteers landed at Marsala on May 11, 1860, and in less than three months conquered the entire island of Sicily. Garibaldi’s daring and skill and the indigenous revolutionary ferment accounted for the success of the expedition. Still, the attitude of the Sicilian peasants was ambivalent. They initially welcomed the invading force but then quickly became disillusioned because of Garibaldi’s reluctance to order thebreakup of secular, landed estates. Although Garibaldi declared on May 14 that he ruled “in the name of Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy,” he entrusted the Sicilian provisional government to his associate, Francesco Crispi, who came into serious conflict with Cavour’s emissaries on the island. Cavour feared the implications of a republican coup d’état. Meanwhile, as the European powers attempted mediation, the new king of the  Two Sicilies,  Francis II, granted a constitution and promised amnesty to Sicilian rebels. At this point, without the consent of Victor Emmanuel II and perhaps even against his wishes, Garibaldi crossed the Straits of Messina on Aug. 19, 1860, and by September 7 made a triumphant entry into Naples. Francis II fled to Gaeta, and on October 1 the last serious resistance of the Bourbon army was overcome at the battle of the Volturno near Caserta.

The prestige of Garibaldi and the democrats had risen so high that Cavour felt compelled to seize the initiative once again. Having persuaded Napoleon III to limit his opposition to lodging a perfunctory protest, Cavour proceeded to occupy Umbria and the Marche. Rome and its surrounding region (Latium) were to remain under the pope, but the remainder of the Italian peninsula was to become one kingdom under a moderate constitution. On Oct. 26, 1860, Victor Emmanuel II met with Garibaldi on Neapolitan soil and was greeted as “king of Italy.” During October and November, plebiscites in the former papal and Bourbon provinces overwhelmingly endorsed annexation to the Kingdom of Italy.

The Kingdom of Italy was officially proclaimed on March 17, 1861, by a parliament assembled in Turin. Soon afterward Cavour asserted that Rome must become the capital of the new state withina context of separation between secular and religious authority. However, because of Cavour’s untimely death on June 6, 1861, the Roman question remained unresolved.

Condition of the Italian kingdom

In 1861 the kingdom had 26 million inhabitants, 78 percent of whom were illiterate. With some 70 percent of the adult population engaged in agriculture, it seemed unlikely that Italy could achieve the economic progress made by other European countries in that period. The group winning the majority in Parliament in 1861 was from the moderate-conservative right. The coalition was based principally on an alliance of a Piedmontese group, which was led by  Giovanni Lanza and  Quintino Sella and controlled manufacturing and banks, with Ricasoli’s Tuscan group, which was interested in commerce and transportation. This elite political grouping wanted a centralized government structure that would allow Parliament, and hence the executive branch, to control local administration, especially where there was any danger of democratic predominance. By a series of laws enacted in 1865, these moderate notables effected legislative unification and established firmcentral control over the provinces and the communes through the appointment of handpicked regional prefects. Their democratic opposition, preoccupied with the issue of bringing Rome and Venetia into the new state, put up little resistance to these centralizing and authoritarian tendencies.

The serious economic imbalance between north and south was ultimately intensified by the kingdom’s centralized administration. The free-trade policy of the moderate governments ruined or badly harmed the weak and unprotected industries of the south, especially the woolen-cloth manufacturing in the Salerno area, which had previously been sheltered under the Bourbon government. Moreover, railroad construction in southern regions was beset with corruption in the issuance of contracts. Relief for the poor and public education remained miserably inadequate. Naples, the largest city in Italy in 1861, with about 447,000 inhabitants to Turin’s 205,000, was plagued with poverty and distrusted in the small provincial capitals.

Poverty was most acute and widespread in rural areas, where peasant families had gained nothing from the breakup of large feudal estates. Many peasants espoused an especially violent form of brigandage, which, though fomented and often assisted by emissaries of the exiled Francis II, was a form of class warfare against the agrarian bourgeoisie. The Italian army’s savage suppression of this lawlessness resulted in the execution of at least 5,000 peasants. Even so, the brigandage was not brought under control until 1865.

In the country at large, public opinion remained preoccupied with the issue of completing territorial unification. The democrats, who were most interested in solving the Roman question, saw an opportunity to act in March 1862 when  Urbano Rattazzi replaced Bettino Ricasoli as prime minister. Garibaldi assembled a volunteer force in July and August and began a march from the south into Latium and Rome. Fearful of Austrian reaction and of a military confrontation with the French garrison in Rome, Rattazzi mobilized the regular army. Garibaldi was wounded in the ensuing fighting and was arrested on Aug. 29, 1862, at Aspromonte in Calabria. The subsequent public outrage brought down Rattazzi’s government. In 1864  Marco Minghetti, another moderate,negotiated a compromise solution in the September Convention, which called for the withdrawal of French troops from Rome in exchange for an Italian pledge to respect the pope’s temporal sovereignty and to remain out of Rome. A secret clause in the agreement also bound Italy to transfer its capital from Turin to Florence, thus implicitly abandoning the Cavourian claim to Rome.When this clause became known, severe riots occurred in Turin (September 21–22), leaving 30 people dead and causing the fall of the Minghetti government.

The acquisition of  Venetia and  Rome

Two years later, in June 1866, the outbreak of  war between Austria and Prussia diverted attention from Rome to Venice. The Italian government under Alfonso  La Marmora, taking advantage of Vienna’s problems elsewhere, attacked  Austrian-held Venetia, only to be defeated both on land at Custozza (June 24) and at sea near Lissa (July 20). A few Garibaldian volunteers operating in the Trento area were the sole Italians to achieve some moderate success. Yet, through the mediation of Napoleon III, Italy obtained Venetia in the Treaty of Vienna (Oct. 3, 1866). In the spring of 1867, Rattazzi returned to power and gave tacit consent to the stationing of Garibaldian volunteers alongthe papal border. However, a renewed attempt to march on Rome merely brought back  French troops, who defeated Garibaldi at Mentana on November 3. Arrested once again, he was sentencedto house arrest on the remote island of Caprera, between Sardinia and Corsica, where he owned some property. Italy suffered a marked loss of prestige politically and militarily, and the internal situation was far from favourable. Separatist revolts occurred in Palermo in 1866. In 1869 Parma and other cities rose in rebellion against the macinato (“grist tax”) and other taxes levied to finance the reorganization of the armed forces.

The  Lanza-  Sella government, formed in December 1869, was perhaps the most typical among the centre-right cabinets of this period. It repressed Mazzinian opposition, advocated free trade, and was cautious in foreign affairs, carefully maintaining a pro-French bias. Yet, despite its lack of brilliance and its subservience to France (revealed in its near acquiescence to the king’s desire to intervene in the  Franco-Prussian war), the Lanza-Sella government resolved the Roman question. Napoleon III’s defeat and abdication deprived the pope of French military protection. Therefore, onSept. 20, 1870, following a symbolic armed resistance by the papal army, Italian troops opened a breach in the city’s walls at Porta Pia and entered Rome. Refusing to accept Italy’s occupation of the city, Pius IX withdrew to his palace and declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican, a position maintained by his successors until 1929.