in 1829, and the mild, religious Pius VIII. (Cardinal Castiglioni)
only reigned until 1830, when Gregory XVI. (Cardinal Cappellari)
was elected through Austrian influence, and proved another
Revolutions of 1830.
zelante. The July revolution in Paris and the declaration
of the new king, Louis Philippe, that France, as
a Liberal monarchy, would not only not intervene
in the internal affairs of other countries, but would
not permit other powers to do so, aroused great hopes among the
oppressed peoples, and was the immediate cause of a revolution
in Romagna and the Marches. In February 1831 these provinces
rose, raised the red, white and green tricolor (which henceforth
took the place of the Carbonarist colours as the Italian flag),
and shook off the papal yoke with surprising ease.[1] At Parma
too there was an outbreak and a demand for the constitution;
Marie Louise could not grant it because of her engagements
with Austria, and, therefore, abandoned her dominions. In
Modena Duke Francis, ambitious of enlarging his territories,
coquetted with the Carbonari of Paris, and opened indirect
negotiations with Menotti, the revolutionary leader in his state,
believing that he might assist him in his plans. Menotti, for
his part, conceived the idea of a united Italian state under the
duke. A rising was organized for February 1831; but Francis
got wind of it, and, repenting of his dangerous dallying with
revolution, arrested Menotti and fled to Austrian territory with
his prisoner. In his absence the insurrection took place, and
Biagio Nardi, having been elected dictator, proclaimed that
“Italy is one; the Italian nation one sole nation.” But the
French king soon abandoned his principle of non-intervention
on which the Italian revolutionists had built their hopes; the
Austrians intervened unhindered; the old governments were
re-established in Parma, Modena and Romagna; and Menotti
and many other patriots were hanged. The Austrians evacuated
Romagna in July, but another insurrection having broken out
immediately afterwards which the papal troops were unable
to quell, they returned. This second intervention gave umbrage
to France, who by way of a counterpoise sent a force to occupy
Ancona. These two foreign occupations, which were almost
as displeasing to the pope as to the Liberals, lasted until 1838.
The powers, immediately after the revolt, presented a memorandum
to Gregory recommending certain moderate reforms,
but no attention was paid to it. These various movements
proved in the first place that the masses were by no means ripe
for revolution, and that the idea of unity, although now advocated
by a few revolutionary leaders, was far from being generally
accepted even by the Liberals; and, secondly, that, in spite of
the indifference of the masses, the despotic governments were
unable to hold their own without the assistance of foreign
bayonets.
On the 27th of April 1831, Charles Albert succeeded Charles Felix on the throne of Piedmont. Shortly afterwards he received a letter from an unknown person, in which he was exhorted with fiery eloquence to place himself at the head of the movement for liberating and uniting Mazzini and “Young Italy.” Italy and expelling the foreigner, and told that he was free to choose whether he would be “the first of men or the last of Italian tyrants.” The author was Giuseppe Mazzini, then a young man of twenty-six years, who, though in theory a republican, was ready to accept the leadership of a prince of the house of Savoy if he would guide the nation to freedom. The only result of his letter, however, was that he was forbidden to re-enter Sardinian territory. Mazzini, who had learned to distrust Carbonarism owing to its lack of a guiding principle and its absurd paraphernalia of ritual and mystery, had conceived the idea of a more serious political association for the emancipation of his country not only from foreign and domestic despotism but from national faults of character; and this idea he had materialized in the organization of a society called the Giovane Italia (Young Italy) among the Italian refugees at Marseilles. After the events of 1831 he declared that the liberation of Italy could only be achieved through unity, and his great merit lies in having inspired a large number of Italians with that idea at a time when provincial jealousies and the difficulty of communications maintained separatist feelings. Young Italy spread to all centres of Italian exiles, and by means of literature carried on an active propaganda in Italy itself, where the party came to be called “Ghibellini,” as though reviving the traditions of medieval anti-Papalism. Though eventually this activity of the Giovane Italia supplanted that of the older societies, in practice it met with no better success; the two attempts to invade Savoy in the hope of seducing the army from its allegiance failed miserably, and only resulted in a series of barbarous sentences of death and imprisonment which made most Liberals despair of Charles Albert, while they called down much criticism on Mazzini as the organizer of raids in which he himself took no part. He was now forced to leave France, but continued his work of agitation from London. The disorders in Naples and Sicily in 1837 had no connexion with Mazzini, but the forlorn hope of the brothers Bandiera, who in 1844 landed on the Calabrian coast, was the work of the Giovane Italia. The rebels were captured and shot, but the significance of the attempt lies in the fact that it was the first occasion on which north Italians (the Bandieras were Venetians and officers in the Austrian navy) had tried to raise the standard of revolt in the south.
Romagna had continued a prey to anarchy ever since 1831; the government organized armed bands called the Centurioni (descended from the earlier Sanfedisti), to terrorize the Liberals, while the secret societies continued their “propaganda by deeds.” It is noteworthy that Romagna was the only part of Italy where the revolutionary movement was accompanied by murder. In 1845 several outbreaks occurred, and a band led by Pietro Renzi captured Rimini, whence a proclamation drawn up by L. C. Farini was issued demanding the reforms advocated by the powers’ memorandum of 1831. But the movement collapsed without result, and the leaders fled to Tuscany.
Side by side with the Mazzinian propaganda in favour of a united Italian republic, which manifested itself in secret societies, plots and insurrections, there was another Liberal movement based on the education of opinion and on economic development. In Piedmont, in spite of the government’s reactionary Liberalism and economic development. methods, a large part of the population were genuinely attached to the Savoy dynasty, and the idea of a regeneration of Italy under its auspices began to gain ground. Some writers proclaimed the necessity of building railways, developing agriculture and encouraging industries, before resorting to revolution; while others, like the Tuscan Gino Capponi, inspired by the example of England and France, wished to make the people fit for freedom by means of improved schools, books and periodicals. Vincenzo Gioberti (q.v.) published in 1843 his famous treatise Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani, a work, which, in striking contrast to the prevailing pessimism of the day, extolled the past greatness and achievements of the Italian people and their present virtues. His political ideal was a federation of all the Italian states under the presidency of the pope, on a basis of Catholicism, but without a constitution. In spite of all its inaccuracies and exaggerations the book served a useful purpose in reviving the self-respect of a despondent people. Another work of a similar kind was Le Speranze d’Italia (1844) by the Piedmontese Count Cesare Balbo (q.v.). Like Gioberti he advocated a federation of Italian states, but he declared that before this could be achieved Austria must be expelled from Italy and compensation found for her in the Near East by making her a Danubian power—a curious forecast that Italy’s liberation would begin with an eastern war. He extolled Charles Albert and appealed to his patriotism; he believed that the church was necessary and the secret societies harmful; representative government was undesirable, but he advocated a consultative assembly. Above all Italian character must be reformed and the nation educated. A third important publication was Massimo d’Azeglio’s Degli ultimi casi di Romagna, in which the author, another Piedmontese nobleman, exposed papal misgovernment while condemning the secret societies and advocating open resistance and protest. He upheld the papacy in principle, regarded Austria as the great enemy of Italian regeneration, and believed that the means of expelling her were only to be found in Piedmont.
Besides the revolutionists and republicans who promoted conspiracy and insurrection whenever possible, and the moderates or “Neo-Guelphs,” as Gioberti’s followers were called, we must mention the Italian exiles who were learning the art of war in foreign countries—in Spain, in Greece, in The Italian exiles. Poland, in South America—and those other exiles who, in Paris or London, eked out a bare subsistence by teaching Italian or
- ↑ Among the insurgents of Romagna was Louis Napoleon, afterwards emperor of the French.
