Chapter Two

From Geographical Expression to Political Consciousness: Italy in the Age of Metternich

During his occupation of Italy, Napoleon burdened the country with heavy financial and military obligations. Thus many applauded the departure of the French, but their joy was to prove short-lived. Alongside resentment of Gallic exactions was an appreciation of their well-ordered administration, equality under the law, as well as the primacy of the civil over the religious order. For almost two decades the peninsula had benefited from the material improvements and institutional changes introduced by Paris, and although the Italian sense of nationality had not been consistently promoted or encouraged during the Napoleonic period, it was not stifled and offended as in the subsequent age of Metternich. The Austrian Foreign Minister played a crucial part in the coalition that defeated Napoleon, and a major one at the Congress of Vienna. Metternich argued that the Italians were not a people; his secretary, Friedrich von Gentz concurred, claiming that the vast majority were not prepared to accept a large Italian state.¹

Metternich’s Austria played a key role in the reorganization of Central Europe at the Congress of Vienna, where the Italians, with the exception of the Pope, were not represented. The resulting edifice rested on the Habsburg domination of Italy and Germany. These two people were denied the political existence patriots craved. In Italy, Austrian influence extended from the canals of Venice into the Bay of Naples. Lombardy and Venetia were combined into the Lombardo-Veneto Kingdom ruled by a viceroy of the Austrian Emperor, the younger brother of Franz, the Archduke Rainier. Tuscany, Parma-Piacenza, and Modena likewise had Habsburg rulers. In the small territory of the former Republic of Lucca Metternich permitted the return of the ‘Spanish’ Bourbons, without threat to Habsburg domination.

At the Congress of Vienna Metternich sought to extend Austrian dominion in Italy to the Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, Forli and Ravenna, by wresting them from the Papal States, and to the other side of the River Ticino – at the expense of the Kingdom of Sardinia. When both schemes failed to materialize, Metternich devised other means to expand Austrian influence in Italy. He concocted agreements with the various restored petty monarchs, and envisioned an Italian league within its headquarters in Milan. The Austrian-Neapolitan Accord of 12 June 1815 represented the Foreign Minister’s first major Italian diplomatic initiative. In its two secret provisions Ferdinando pledged not to introduce changes in his state that would conflict with the principles of the Lombardo-Veneto Kingdom, controlled by the Austrians, not to enter any agreement contrary to their convention, or the proposed Austrian league.

The league never materialized, blocked as it was by the opposition of the Papal States and Sardinia, as well as the reservations of the Austrian Emperor. The Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, which most resented the preponderant Austrian influence in Italy, and sought to pursue an independent course, was far from liberal or enlightened. King Vittorio Emanuele I, whose conservatism had intensified during his long years of exile, entered his capital in 1814 wearing his perruque with pigtail, determined to restore the ancien régime.² The army returned to aristocratic control, and education to the supervision of the Church. Ecclesiastical immunities were restored, and canon law enforced by the state. Across the River Ticino neither the Lombards nor the Venetians were allowed any real autonomy, as Italian civil servants were replaced by Slavs and Austrians, and German was imposed as the language of the administration. Travel to and from the region was restricted, and the press and journals screened.

Pope Pius VII, the beneficiary of a degree of popularity because of his refusal to bow to Napoleon’s demands, was enthusiastically greeted upon his return to Rome in 1814. Under the influence of Cardinal Consalvi, his Secretary of State, a reform programme was drafted which sought to modernize and laicize the administration of the Papal States. The programme confronted difficulties from the first, having to deal with the Pope, who restored the Society of Jesus by a Bull of 7 August 1814, and condemned bible societies in 1817. The zelanti, the ultra-conservative faction of the curia undermined the position of Consalvi, and therefore his reforms. Under their pressure French legislation was abandoned, toleration terminated as the Jews were shut in the ghetto, and the clerical domination of the administration resumed.

Reformism in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which constituted some three-eighths of the entire peninsula, did not fare better. True enough, Naples did not witness the excesses of the sanfedisti, the irregular forces of the Army of the Holy Faith, or the bloodbath of 1799. Moderation prevailed following the restoration, as the Code Napoleon and the French financial administration were preserved, if arbitrarily applied. Under the inspiration of the Duke of Canosa, prefect of police, the tone, if not the policies, of the ancien régime reemerged. In the Southern Kingdom, as elsewhere, the pre-war authority, influence and almost universal presence of the Catholic Church was resurrected as the Jesuits returned to the realm, reviving old hostilities. Religious discontent, economic dislocation, and political dissatisfaction, combined with the resentment of the fierce suppression of all national sentiment to arouse discontent that soon translated into opposition to the status quo.

Although the great mass of Italians remained dormant and submissive, a minority had awoken to the plight of the peninsula. The secret society of the Adelfi, which organized and united various leftist groups against Bonapartism at the end of the eighteenth century, after 1814 directed its opposition against Austrian domination and the petty despotism of the conservative Italian regimes. Inspired and organized by Filippo Buonarroti (1761–1837), the Adelfi understood that the Italian problem had to be solved within the broader international context. Like the other societies, such as the Filadelfi and the Veri Italiani, which the Tuscan revolutionary inspired, the Adelfi proved strongest in northern Italy. Likewise the Federati, formed in 1818 from the union of nationalist and liberal organizations in Piedmont and Lombardy, concentrated in the north. The Federati sought independence and constitutionalism, and therefore called for the expulsion of the Austrians who blocked both programmes. In North and Central Italy, groups such as the Cavalieri della Libertà and the Decisi also demanded liberty and concessions for the oppressed Italians.

The Carbonari, or charcoal-burners, on the other hand, arose in southern Italy during the reign of Joachim Murat, spreading to central Italy after the restoration. They intermingled with the secret societies formed by Buonarroti, and called for unity of organization and purpose in the battle against Austria. Grouped in vendite (shops), the clubs with their elaborate ritual provided a place for social interaction as well as a vehicle for political change. Their membership ranged from dissatisfied aristocrats to literate peasants, but found its broadest support among the beleaguered middle classes. In Naples the Carbonari penetrated the military, following the Bourbon restoration, so there were thousands under arms. Likewise in Piedmont, Carbonarism made headway among the younger army officers clamouring for change. Spread as it was throughout the peninsula, the diffusion and dissatisfaction of the Carbonari created a potentially explosive situation.

Metternich periodically received reports on the Carbonari and the other secret societies, but discounted the danger they represented, concluding that their divisions rendered them incapable of organized revolutionary action. Furthermore, he doubted their resolve. The Italians liked to talk but seldom acted, he confided to Gentz on 7 May 1819.³ Nevertheless, despite his confident words, Metternich kept a watchful eye on the peninsula.

Few vehicles of protests against the status quo were permitted by the Austrians, their Habsburg satellites in Italy, or even by the independent sovereigns of the peninsula. Thus Lord Leigh’s invocation to the Italians to arise but to avoid violence, proved impossible. Piedmont-Sardinia, which had an army and chafed at the Austrian domination, was not inclined to champion the causes either of constitutionalism or of national liberation. In Lombardy the weekly newspaper, Il Conciliatore, published between September 1818 and October 1819, ran foul of the Austrian censors, as its editor, Silvio Pellico, turned to Italian themes, providing a focus for intellectual opposition. Warned repeatedly about the political tone of its content, Pellico suspended publication, eliminating one of the few places where reform could be openly advocated. The Congregations of Lombardy and Venetia, the sole representative voice of these provinces, could only petition the court of Vienna, but were not encouraged to do so. Into the vacuum created by the Austrians stepped the Carbonari, who played a key role in the revolutions of 1820–21.

In 1820, the year of the first liberal revolution in Italy, the Austrians remained confident that order could be preserved. In his May 1820 report to the Emperor Franz on the State of Political Affairs, Metternich showed no concern about conditions in the peninsula.⁴ Shortly afterwards, on 1 July 1820, Morelli and Silvati, two officers in the Neapolitan army, encouraged by the successful revolt of the army in Spain, demanded a constitution for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. As the cry ‘God, the King and the Constitution’ spread throughout the realm, and the Carbonarist General Gugliemo Pepe assumed control of the military, a frightened Ferdinando granted a constitution, swearing allegiance to it on 13th July. This revolution was the result of a Carbonarist-military conspiracy rather than a broad, popular movement.

News of the Neapolitan revolution shattered Metternich’s complacency, and he was shocked to learn that the Carbonarist government of Naples dispatched emissaries to Piedmont to incite revolution there.⁵ Metternich took immediate steps to repair the damage. Presenting Austria as the natural protector of the public peace in the peninsula, he warned that his state hoped to preserve order by legal and administrative means, but would resort to more vigorous measures if necessary.⁶

Metternich proved true to his promise, drawing the powers to Troppau in October 1820, while denouncing the revolution in Naples as the latest manifestation of a universal threat. Supported by the conservative monarchies of Russia and Prussia. Austria insisted upon its right and duty to intervene to preserve the European peace. Metternich dreaded the example set by Naples for the rest of Italy. He learned from Starhemberg, the Austrian representative at Turin, that a revolutionary ferment prevailed throughout the peninsula, and the upheaval in Naples echoed in Piedmont. Still, the Austrian Ambassador in Turin did not expect the revolution to explode there. Vittorio Emanuele I, the Piedmontese king, was less sanguine, and pressed the Austrians to reinforce their military presence in Italy. Conservatives on both shores of the River Ticino were upset by the outpouring of constitutional manifestos in Turin, allegedly encouraged, if not abetted, by the French Ambassador.⁷

Although Metternich boasted that the great European powers supported his stance vis-à-vis the Neapolitan revolution,⁸ at Troppau the English questioned the propriety and wisdom of the proposed Austrian intervention against the constitutional regime. While Prussia and France joined Austria in condemning the Neapolitan revolution, they did not intend to abandon the entire peninsula to her control, and after consulting the Papal States and Sardinia, refused the Austrian request to occupy Alessandria, Civitavecchia, and Ancona to prevent the spread of revolution. The controversy led the powers to invite the Neapolitan king to a congress in Laibach (January 1821), to sound out his opinion. With the approval of Ferdinando and the conservative powers, the Austrians massed a large force to restore order to the disaffected region. Notwithstanding English reservations, and the Papal Envoy’s argument that peaceful mediation was preferable, the Austrians marched on Naples to restore absolutism. On 7 March 1821 the forces of Guglielmo Pepe were overwhelmed by a superior Austrian force in the mountains near Rieti. Two days afterwards, the Austrians assailed the strong position of Antrodrovoco, opening the road to Naples. Ferdinando, meanwhile, hastened to ensure that his country’s institutions complied with the Austro-Neapolitan treaty of June 1815, which had belatedly been made public.

Metternich had barely put out one fire when another flared up in Piedmont, where public opinion, if not the monarchy, was clearly anti-Austrian. Encouraged by the departure of the Austrian army from the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom to Naples, the standard of revolt was raised in Turin, Alessandria, and other cities in Piedmont. The Carbonari hoped to proclaim a Kingdom of Northern Italy under the Savoyards, and were supported by army officers from some of Piedmont’s best families in their call for a constitution and war against Austria.⁹ Almost half the Sardinian army backed the demands, which were opposed by the Powers still in congress at Laibach, who warned Vittorio Emanuele not to surrender to the revolutionaries.

Unable and unwilling to satisfy the popular call for a constitution, Vittorio Emanuele I abdicated on 13 March 1821. Since his brother and heir, Carlo Felice, was then in Modena, Carlo Alberto, his nephew, was appointed regent. Metternich hoped the regent would find the means to combat the revolution, threatening that if he proved unequal to the task, the Austrian and Russian emperors would find the means to do so. His worst fears materialized as Carlo Alberto, letting others believe he had the approval of King Carlo Felice, granted the constitution sought by the army. The Austrian Ambassador, frightened by the public animosity against his country, fled from Turin.¹⁰

Neither Metternich nor Carlo Felice accepted Carlo Alberto’s concession of constitutionalism. Metternich claimed that the ‘babel of confusion’ assumed the weakness of a man of strong character (Carlo Felice), and the will of an inexperienced youth (Carlo Alberto), and were disappointed on both counts.¹¹ Carlo Felice, who firmly believed in his divine right to rule, ordered Carlo Alberto and those troops which had remained loyal to absolutism, to Novara. At Novara, Carlo Alberto was forced into exile in Tuscany, while the loyalist and Austrian troops overcame the constitutionalist forces. With the defeat of the revolution, liberals and constitutionalists scrambled abroad, and among them was Cesare Balbo (1789–1853), who had advised the regent during the stormy events of 1821. When he returned home in 1824, he turned to the pen rather than the sword, hoping to influence public opinion by his historical writing.

Santorre di Santarosa, the guiding spirit behind the revolution in Piedmont, initially had no contacts with the Carbonari, or any other secret societies, which he considered the blight of Italy. Only when he realized that the Piedmontese government had neither the means nor the will to resist Austrian domination, did he seek their assistance. Santarosa concluded that a military movement would be impotent if not supported by a popular uprising, which would require the participation of the secret societies.¹² Thus, during the period of preparation for the future wars of independence, some Piedmontese patriots concluded that the public authority required the support of popular sentiment to overcome Austrian hegemony.

In Austrian-controlled Lombardy, where the military worked to suppress rather than support change, the secret societies represented the only hope for patriots. Fearful of a possible explosion, an imperial decree of 1820 provided for the confiscation of property and the death penalty for all those who joined the Carbonari. In the autumn of 1820, Pietro Maroncelli and Silvio Pellico were arraigned as Carbonari, and Count Arrivabene of Mantua was arrested as an accomplice. The noted philosopher, jurist and writer, Gian Carlo Romagnosi (1761–1833), was forbidden to teach, accused of treason and placed under house arrest. Having learned that the Carbonari in Milan conspired to persuade Carlo Alberto to lead his army into Lombardy, the Austrians arrested Gaetano Castiglia, the Marquis Giorgio Pallavicino, who assumed the responsibility for the abortive mission to Turin, and eventually Count Federico Confalonieri, architect of the projected uprising. The count joined Pellico in the Spielberg, the Austrian political prison in Bohemia, where Pellico gathered material for Le mie prigioni, a book that popularized the Italian dilemma. It revealed that Lombardy and Venetia were subjugated by the iron hand which wielded the bastone tedesco (German club).

Following the restoration of 1820–21, Metternich reached the apogee of his power, as princes and statesmen competed for his advice. At this juncture he again produced his proposal for an Italian league, but, as earlier, it was not favourably received. Metternich resorted to other means to combat the ‘opponents of order’. The failure of the revolutionary upheaval of 1820–21 in Italy was provoked both by military weakness and an immaturity of political conception. The miscarriage proved costly, contributing to a deterioration of conditions for patriots, who witnessed trials, executions and confiscation of property. In Piedmont-Sardinia, Carlo Felice prosecuted the rebels, expanded police power and increased the influence of the Church. Even Carlo Alberto abandoned his liberal and national inclinations. Men such as Camillo di Cavour, who sought reform from above, grew increasingly disenchanted with monarchical policies, yet shunned radical alternatives as counterproductive.¹³

In Naples the liberalism of Francesco I, who succeeded Ferdinando in 1825, vanished with his youth. Corruption, inefficiency and repression marked his reign (1825–30), which culminated in the savage suppression of the uprising in Cilento in 1828. Throughout much of the South, sanfedisti organizations, which supported ‘throne and altar’ and attacked liberalism and nationalism, were encouraged. Conservatives in Rome feared that the example of Naples and Sardinia might stimulate discontent in the Eternal City, but their fears proved unfounded during 1820–21. Cardinal Consalvi believed that two developments, one internal, the other external, threatened the security of the Papal States. At home, the Carbonari programme worked to undermine the very basis of the Papal States, while abroad, the Holy Alliance, and especially Austria, sought to control Papal policies.

In the Papal States, the death of Pius VII in 1823 brought Annibale Sermattei della Genga to power, as Leo XII (1823–29), the zelante Pope. The reformism of Consalvi was officially terminated as Leo sought to restore the pre-revolutionary administration. His close alliance with conservatives at home, and collaboration with the forces of the Holy Alliance abroad, enraged liberals and encouraged revolutionary discontent. Leo XII excommunicated members of the secret societies, while his successor, Pius VIII (March 1829-December 1830), imposed the death penalty on them. Nevertheless, the Carbonari proliferated in the Legations, especially during the brief pontificate of Pius VIII.

For patriots in Italy, the decade 1820–30 proved discouraging. Metternich continued to pull the diplomatic strings from Vienna, and, with the collaboration of conservative princes in Italy, imposed order on the peninsula. Some, such as Francesco Lampato, the director of the Annali Universali di Statistica, founded in Milan in 1824, sought to address economic and technical problems, rather than the political ones, censored by the Austrian government.

From their various places of exile abroad, and especially from Paris, liberal Italians appreciated the need for assistance in containing Austria and the loyalist forces. Just as Cavour in the 1850s sought the aid of Imperial France, Italian radicals in the later 1820s counted upon the resurgence of revolutionary France. Under the inspiration of the entrepreneur and liberal conspirator, Ciro Menotti (1789–1831), a plan was conceived for the carbonarist clubs to gain control of one of the smaller Italian states, and utilize its army to spark a broader national uprising and a war of liberation. The Modenese lawyer, Enrico Misley (1801–63), served as Menotti’s agent to Italian exiles in Paris and London, and chief contact with the international revolutionary committee which served to coordinate their efforts.

Menotti and Misley, knowing that Francesco IV, Duke of Modena, had ambitions which transcended his small duchy, sought to enlist his aid in their revolutionary scheme, promising him the rule of the larger central Italian state which they envisaged. The central committee in Paris looked for simultaneous revolutions in France, Italy and Spain. Within the peninsula there would be risings in the duchies and the legations, culminating in their inclusion into a constitutional kingdom which would embrace the whole of northern central Italy. In 1830 Italian conspirators were buoyed by the outbreak of the July Revolution in Paris, followed by the French proclamation of nonintervention, which seemed to suggest that the new, constitutional regime in Paris would not tolerate Austrian interference in Italy. Even moderate Italians, such as Camillo di Cavour, were elated by the ‘glorious July Revolution’ but distressed by the fact that while the rest of Europe seemed to move ahead, Italy remained crushed beneath the weight of political and religious oppression.¹⁴

In early February 1831, as Menotti and his followers planned the final arrangements for the central Italian revolutionary upheaval, Francesco had the leadership of the group arrested. Despite this decisive action, the revolution erupted as planned. Francesco was forced to flee his duchy for Austrian-held Mantua, dragging along Menotti, whom he later had hanged. In Modena the liberal Biagio Nardi established a provisional government. Expecting French support, which would prevent Austrian intervention, the revolution spread from Modena to Parma, where Count Filippo Linati replaced Marie Louise, and to the northern tier of the Papal States. As the cardinals closeted themselves in Rome, in order to elect a successor to Pius VIII, delegates from northern central Italy convened in Bologna and proclaimed the independence of the United Italian Provinces. The Bolognese appealed to their brothers in Lombardy to follow their example and cast-off Austrian domination, but their appeal went unanswered. Tuscany, which possessed the most tolerant government in the peninsula, likewise proved immune to the revolutionary fervour of 1831.

The Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Tommaso Bernetti, chosen by the new Pope (Gregory XVI), strove to avoid the opprobrium certain to accompany Austrian intervention, by appealing to France and Naples for assistance. Their reluctance to act, coupled with the inadequacy of Papal forces to effect a restoration, constrained Bernetti to appeal for Austrian arms. The French opposition to Austrian intervention was neutralized by Metternich who convinced Louis Philippe that the revolution in Italy was inspired by Bonapartism which threatened the French monarchy. He also claimed to have the moral, and if required, the military support of Russia and Prussia. Once the threat of French intervention was removed, Austria proved capable of crushing the revolutions and restoring the status quo. By March 1831, Modena was occupied and Bologna pacified. The events of 1831, and the continued unrest thereafter, made the Italian question a European, rather than a purely Austrian, affair. Louis Philippe, criticized for the weakness of his policy in Italy vis-à-vis Austria, demanded that a conference of the major powers – Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia – be held in Rome, to advise the Pope on the reforms required to avoid further disruption.

The Austrian Chancellor, Metternich, concurred that certain changes in the administration of the Papal States were essential, proposing the motu proprio of Pius VII, of 1816, as the basis for the reforms. In May 1831, the Conference of Ambassadors submitted a Memorandum to Gregory XVI, cataloguing the changes deemed essential, including the admission of lay people to all administrative and judicial functions, the revival of some of the provincial liberties which had earlier existed in the Papal States, and the maintenance of sound finance and credit by creating a board to supervise the audit of public accounts. The Memorandum also proposed the creation of a national consultative assembly to advise the Pope on governmental and administrative affairs.¹⁵ Bernetti objected to the latter, branding it incompatible with the special nature of the pontifical regime. In July Gregory issued an edict promising to implement most of the other recommendations. In fact, the Memorandum of the Powers remained a dead letter. Only English pressure, Cavour observed, could help the Romagnols acquire a reasonable government.¹⁶

Gregory XVI, suspicious of revolution, identified the interests of the Church with the existing regimes in the peninsula. The ‘Catechism on Revolution’, published in 1831, enquired ‘Does the Holy Law of God permit rebellion against the legitimate temporal sovereign?’ and answered, ‘No, never, because the temporal power comes from God.’ It proclaimed that since one had to submit to God, likewise one had to remain subject to the prince, who was his minister.¹⁷ Gregory’s encyclical, Mirari vos, of 1832, condemned the entire liberal movement. This conservative attitude encouraged sanfedisti violence, and the outbreak of new revolutionary disturbances. Austrian forces were thus constrained to return to Bologna, and the French, to preserve some balance, garrisoned Ancona. This dual foreign occupation of the Papal States continued until the winter of 1838. Cardinal Luigi Lambruschini, who succeeded Bernetti as Papal Secretary of State, favoured conservatism at home, and alignment with Vienna abroad. The reaction in Rome persisted throughout the Pontificate of Gregory XVI (1831–46), while conditions elsewhere in the peninsula produced little to encourage patriots.

The suppression of the revolutions of 1831, following the failures of 1820–21, brought the first stage of the Risorgimento struggle to a close. The revolutionary fires lit by the radicals proved to be fuelled by straw, rapidly sparked, but just as easily extinguished. The Carbonari and the other secret societies, unable to achieve their liberal and national aspirations, had kept alive the notion of national independence, and provided inspiration for the new leadership which emerged in the 1830s. Giuseppe Mazzini, who wrote for the Indicator Genovese until the Turin government suppressed it, decided to accept an invitation to join the ranks of the Carbonari. The man who was destined to become the most influential leader of the national revolution, recognized that Carbonarism represented war to the monarchy, and little else, but deemed this better than complete inactivity.¹⁸

In 1830, while initiating a member into the Carbonari, Mazzini was entrapped by the police and imprisoned in the fortress of Savona for six months. On his release he was given the choice of internment in a small village in Piedmont, or exile abroad, and chose the latter, finding his way to Marseilles. In October 1831 he formed a new organization, Giovane Italia, to inspire Italians and lead the people’s revolution that would liberate and unite the peninsula. The call for a republican Italy with its capital in Rome was issued in the society’s journal, La Giovane Italia, published irregularly from Marseilles and smuggled into Italy. Finding its initial appeal in Lombardy and Piedmont in the 1830s and 1840s, Young Italy spread throughout the peninsula, replacing the Carboneria as the major organization of opposition to Austrian domination. Unlike the earlier secret societies, Giovane Italia did not place its hope in a revolutionary elite, but upon the broad nationalism of an informed Italian people.

The reorganization of Italy, Mazzini insisted, must be undertaken by the Italian masses. Revolution by and for the people, he wrote, summed up their whole doctrine. He scorned diplomatic and military solutions which required the initiative of one or another of the Italian states, which he distrusted, opting instead for a popular insurrection supported by the Italian people. Nonetheless, in April 1831, when Carlo Alberto replaced Carlo Felice on the throne of Piedmont-Sardinia, Mazzini, inspired by the accession of one ‘who had been a carbonaro in 1821’, urged the new king to lead the movement for Italian independence. He warned his enigmatic sovereign that if it did not meet his national responsibility, others would act without him, even against him.¹⁹

Carlo Alberto responded by ordering Mazzini’s arrest, should he venture into his kingdom. Angered by the king’s ‘betrayal’, in 1833 Mazzini planned an invasion of Savoy to correspond with an internal insurrection. The Piedmontese learned of the scheme and Carlo Alberto responded energetically to the Mazzinian threat. The police moved quickly to arrest and deliver the conspirators for trial before special military tribunals. Twelve were found guilty and executed. Jacopo Ruffini, Mazzini’s long-standing friend who was taken prisoner, committed suicide. Thus the Young Italy organization in Piedmont was dealt a blow from which it never recovered.

Mazzini’s attempt in 1834 to overturn the Piedmontese monarchy proved equally disastrous. Count Cavour deplored the republican conspiracies, convinced that the plots of ‘confused souls’ would only reinforce the government’s repression and bring it into a closer relationship with Metternich’s Austria. Condemning both the reactionaries and the revolutionaries, he sought a juste milieu between these dangerous extremes.²⁰ One of the few positive results of the fiasco was its impact on Giuseppe Garibaldi, who decided to devote himself to Mazzini and the national cause. Father Vincenzo Gioberti, implicated in the plot, fled to Belgium where he pondered the failure and sought a more practical means of achieving unification.

Under the banner of ‘God and the People’ Mazzini continued to press for education and insurrection from his second home England, scheming energetically and incessantly to effect both. His invocations struck a responsive chord in a revolutionary élite. Uprisings occurred in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1837 and 1841, but were brutally repressed by the forces of Ferdinando II. In 1843 general uprisings were planned in Naples, the Romagna and Tuscany, but the projected rebellion was stillborn. In 1844 Emilio and Attillo Bandieri, brothers from Venice who had organized a branch of Young Italy, led an expedition for the liberation of Calabria, which ended in dismal failure and their execution. Insurrections in the Papal States in Viterbo in 1837, and the Legations in 1845, proved no more successful.²¹

Moderate constitutionalists, realizing that the latter uprising in Rimini was doomed to failure, issued a ‘Manifesto of Rimini’ which denounced before the tribunal of Europe the political bankruptcy of the Papal regime. Massimo D’Azeglio’s Degli Ultimi casi di Romagna (1846) condemned both the Mazzinians, who sought to overturn the Papal government, and the reactionary policies of Rome, which encouraged revolution. The inability of Mazzini’s popular insurrections to liberate the peninsula led D’Azeglio, and other moderates, to propose alternative means of realizing their national ambitions.

The moderate constitutional party deplored the abortive revolutions of the Carbonari and Young Italy, which, they maintained, only increased repression. Other forces and means were needed to effect the regeneration of Italy. Figures such as the Lombard Carlo Cattaneo preached the need for economic preparation and integration to pave the way for eventual unification. Likewise, the Venetian Daniele Manin believed that economic and educational changes had to precede political initiatives. Their technical approach was implemented by the annual scientific congresses which were initiated by the Tuscan government in 1839, drawing representatives from most states of the peninsula. Meeting first in Pisa (1839), they subsequently convened in Turin (1840), Florence (1841), Padua (1842), Lucca (1843), Milan (1844), Naples (1845), Genoa (1846), and Venice (1847). Only the Duke of Modena and Pope Gregory XVI prohibited their subjects from attending, fearing the meetings would inspire nationalist unrest.

Cesare Balbo described the eighth congress held in Genoa as the first real Italian parliament. Branding it inconsequential in its scientific mission, Balbo perceived it as a serious school of preparation in the political realm. Other means were found to spread the gospel of the moderates. L’Antologia Italiana, initiated in 1846, had the collaboration of a large number of moderate liberal writers in Piedmont. It advanced not only scientific and literary progress, but an awakening and nourishment of national sentiments, and its moderate message was echoed in a series of books.

As early as 1836, Nicolò Tommaseo, in his Delle nuove speranze d’Italia, urged priests and princes in the peninsula to participate in the national movement. Those who relied upon the princes to assume leadership came to be known as secular moderates, while those who looked to the priests, and above all to the Pope, were dubbed Neo-Guelphs. The latter movement came to the fore with the publication in 1843 of Vincenzo Gioberti’s Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani.

While in exile in Paris and Brussels, Gioberti abandoned his Mazzinian and revolutionary leanings, turning instead to history and philosophy for a better understanding of the plight of his country. Influenced by Daniel O’Connell (the Irish nationalist known as ‘The Liberator’ who founded the Catholic Association which opposed the Act of Union) and Félicité de Lamennais (the French Catholic priest who sought to reconcile Catholicism and political liberalism), he dedicated himself to achieving national aims by peaceful and legal means. In 1843 he submitted his conclusions to the princes and the public in his Primato, which called for the creation of an Italian confederation under the aegis of the Papacy and with the military cooperation of Piedmont-Sardinia. Offering as it did an alternative to the ‘insanities’ of the radicals, while satisfying national sentiments by the peaceful formation of a confederation, the book and programme gained wide approval. However, not all were convinced.

Cesare Balbo, who favoured a federal over a unitary solution, explained that the Papacy could not provide either national liberation or political unification for the Italians. Profoundly Catholic, and dedicated to the Papacy, Balbo, in his Delle Speranze d’Italia (1844), insisted that Piedmont-Sardinia, rather than the Pope, had to assume the initiative on behalf of the nation, once Austria was diverted by diplomacy into the Balkans. Massimo D’Azeglio and Cavour – fellow Piedmontese – concurred, sharing the conviction that only the Piedmontese monarchy possessed the military and diplomatic clout to liberate Italy. If he were Carlo Alberto’s minister, Cavour prophesied, he would know what to do, making Austria tremble while astonishing the world.²²

The Piedmontese, or at least Carlo Alberto, seemed to lack the will to implement the liberal and national programme, as his soul and psyche were torn between the conflicting sentiments of religious mysticism and towering national aspirations. The reformism which the king began in 1837 represented something of a break with the conservative course he had pursued since 1831, but no one was certain of his final destination. Some believed that the Albertine Codes were the precursors of the long-awaited Piedmontese national initiative. Others argued that only the death of the conservative Gregory XVI would usher in a new Pope and a new age. Thus, in the 1840s the clash between those who championed Piedmont and those who looked to the Papacy for national liberation continued. The competition would be resolved only during the course of the First War of National Independence.

Notes

1. Golo Mann, Secretary of Europe: the life of Friedrich von Gentz, Enemy of Napoleon, trans. William W. Woglom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), p. 220; G. de Bertier de Sauvigny, Metternich and his Times, trans. Peter Ryde (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1962), p. 190.

2. Antonio Monti, La politica degli stati italiani durante il Risorgimento (Milan: Casa Editrice Francesco Vallardi, 1948), pp. 30–1; E.E.Y. Hales, Revolution and Papacy, 1769–1846 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1966), p. 237.

3. Prince Richard Metternich-Winneburg (ed.), Memoirs of Prince Metternich, trans. Mrs Alexander Napier (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970), III, pp. 99, 279.

4. Ibid, III, p. 432.

5. Narcisco Nada (ed.), Le relazioni diplomatiche fra l’Austria e il Regno di Sardegna. I Serie: 1814–1830, Volume Secondo (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per L’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1968), p. 65.

6. Metternich, III, p. 434.

7. Nada, pp. 23–5, 36–7.

8. Ibid, p. 51.

9. Ibid, pp. 82–3, 148.

10. Ibid, pp. 168–9, 176.

11. Metternich, III, p. 493.

12. Piero Gobetti, Risorgimento senza eroi e altri scritti storici (Turin: Einaudi, 1969), p. 237.

13. Metternich, IV, pp. 182–3; Pasquale Villari, ‘The Youth of Count Cavour’, in Studies Historical and Critical, Chiala (ed), Lettere edite ed inedite di Camillo Cavour (Turin: Roux e Favale, 1883–87), V, pp. 21–2.

14. Villari, p. 122.

15. Angelo Filipuzzi, Pio IX e la politica austriaca in Italia dal 1815 al 1848 (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1958), pp. 100–5; Luigi Rodelli, La Repubblica Romana del 1849 (Pisa: Domus Mazziniana, 1955), pp. 35–6; Alexandre de Saint-Albin, Pie IX (Paris: E. Dentu, 1860), p. 35.

16. Carlo Ghisalberti, ‘Il Consiglio di Stato di Pio IX: Nota storia giuridica’, Studi Romani, anno, I (1954), p. 56; Edgar Quinet, La question romaine devant l’histoire. 1848 a 1867 (Paris: Armand Le Chevalier, 1868), p. 16; Chiala, v, p. 22.

17. Catechismo Sulle Rivoluzioni (1832), Archivio Segreto del Vaticano. Fondo Particolare Pio IX, cassetta 5, busta 4.

18. Giuseppe Mazzini, Note autobiografiche, ed. Mario Menghini (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1944, 2nd edn), p. 12.

19. Giuseppe Mazzini, Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini, 6 vols (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1864–70), I, pp. 60, 106.

20. Villari, p. 126.

21. Giacomo Antonelli to Filippo Antonelli, 7 September 1837, Archivio di Stato di Roma, Fondo Famiglia Antonelli, busta 1, fascicolo 125; Posthumous Papers of Jessie White Mario, ed. Duke Litta Visconti-Arese (New York: Scribners, 1909), p. 67.

22. Frank J. Coppa, Camilli di Cavour (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973), pp. 51–3.