voted: “Venice resists the Austrians at all costs,” and the
citizens and soldiers, strengthened by the arrival of volunteers
from all parts of Italy, including Pepe, who was given the chief
command of the defenders, showed the most splendid devotion
in their hopeless task. By the end of May the city was blockaded
by land and sea, and in July the bombardment began. On the
24th the city, reduced by famine, capitulated on favourable
terms. Manin, Pepe and a few others were excluded from the
amnesty and went into exile.
Thus were despotism and foreign predominance re-established throughout Italy save in Piedmont. Yet the “terrible year” was by no means all loss. The Italian cause had been crushed, but revolution and war had strengthened the feeling of unity, for Neapolitans had fought for Venice, Lombards for Rome, Piedmontese for all Italy. Piedmont was shown to possess the qualities necessary to constitute the nucleus of a great nation. It was now evident that the federal idea was impossible, for none of the princes except Victor Emmanuel could be trusted, and that unity and freedom could not be achieved under a republic, for nothing could be done without the Piedmontese army, which was royalist to the core. All reasonable men were now convinced that the question of the ultimate form of the Italian government was secondary, and that the national efforts should be concentrated on the task of expelling the Austrians; the form of government could be decided afterwards. Liberals were by no means inclined to despair of accomplishing this task; for hatred of the foreigners, and of the despots restored by their bayonets, had been deepened by the humiliations and cruelties suffered during the war into a passion common to all Italy.
When the terms of the Austro-Piedmontese armistice were announced in the Chamber at Turin they aroused great indignation, but the king succeeded in convincing the deputies that they were inevitable. The peace negotiations dragged on for several months, involving two changes Piedmont after the war. of ministry, and D’Azeglio became premier. Through Anglo-French mediation Piedmont’s war indemnity was reduced from 230,000,000 to 75,000,000 lire, but the question of the amnesty remained. The king declared himself ready to go to war again if those compromised in the Lombard revolution were not freely pardoned, and at last Austria agreed to amnesty all save a very few, and in August the peace terms were agreed upon. The Chamber, however, refused to ratify them, and it was not until the king’s eloquent appeal from Moncalieri to his people’s loyalty, and after a dissolution and the election of a new parliament, that the treaty was ratified (January 9, 1850). The situation in Piedmont was far from promising, the exchequer was empty, the army disorganized, the country despondent and suspicious of the king. If Piedmont was to be fitted for the part which optimists expected it to play, everything must be built up anew. Legislation had to be entirely reformed, and the bill for abolishing the special jurisdiction for the clergy (foro ecclesiastico) and other medieval privileges aroused the bitter opposition of the Vatican as well as of the Piedmontese clericals. This Cavour. same year (1850) Cavour, who had been in parliament for some time and had in his speech of the 7th of March struck the first note of encouragement after the gloom of Novara, became minister of agriculture, and in 1851 also assumed the portfolio of finance. He ended by dominating the cabinet, but owing to his having negotiated a union of the Right Centre and the Left Centre (the Connubio) in the conviction that the country needed the moderate elements of both parties, he quarrelled with D’Azeglio (who, as an uncompromising conservative, failed to see the value of such a move) and resigned. But D’Azeglio was not equal to the situation, and he, too, resigned in November 1852; whereupon the king appointed Cavour prime minister, a position which with short intervals he held until his death.
The Austrians in the period from 1849 to 1859, known as the decennio della resistenza (decade of resistance), were made to feel that they were in a conquered country where they could have no social intercourse with the people; for no self-respecting Lombard or Venetian would even speak to an Austrian. Austria, Austrian rule after 1849. on the other hand, treated her Italian subjects with great severity. The Italian provinces were the most heavily taxed in the whole empire, and much of the money thus levied was spent either for the benefit of other provinces or to pay for the huge army of occupation and the fortresses in Italy. The promise of a constitution for the empire, made in 1849, was never carried out; the government of Lombardo-Venetia was vested in Field-Marshal Radetzky; and although only very few of the revolutionists were excluded from the amnesty, the carrying of arms or the distribution or possession of revolutionary literature was punished with death. Long terms of imprisonment and the bastinado, the latter even inflicted on women, were the penalties for the least expression of anti-Austrian opinion.
The Lombard republicans had been greatly weakened by the events of 1848, but Mazzini still believed that a bold act by a few revolutionists would make the people rise en masse and expel the Austrians. A conspiracy, planned with the object, among others, of kidnapping the emperor while on a visit to Venice and forcing him to make concessions, was postponed in consequence of the coup d’état by which Louis Napoleon became emperor of the French (1852); but a chance discovery led to a large number of arrests, and the state trials at Mantua, conducted in the most shamelessly inquisitorial manner, resulted in five death sentences, including that of the priest Tazzoli, and many of imprisonment for long terms. Even this did not convince Mazzini of the hopelessness of such attempts, for he was out of touch with Italian public opinion, and he greatly weakened his influence by favouring a crack-brained outbreak at Milan on the 6th of February 1853, which was easily quelled, numbers of the insurgents being executed or imprisoned. Radetzky, not satisfied with this, laid an embargo on the property of many Lombard emigrants who had settled in Piedmont and become naturalized, accusing them of complicity. The Piedmontese government rightly regarded this measure as a violation of the peace treaty of 1850, and Cavour recalled the Piedmontese minister from Vienna, an action which was endorsed by Italian public opinion generally, and won the approval of France and England.
Cavour’s ideal for the present was the expulsion of Austria from Italy and the expansion of Piedmont into a north Italian kingdom; and, although he did not yet think of Italian unity as a question of practical policy, he began to foresee it as a future possibility. But in reorganizing the shattered finances of the state and preparing it for its greater destinies, he had to impose heavy taxes, which led to rioting and involved the minister himself in considerable though temporary unpopularity. His ecclesiastical legislation, too, met with bitter opposition from the Church.
But the question was soon forgotten in the turmoil caused by the Crimean War. Cavour believed that by taking part in the war his country would gain for itself a military status and a place in the councils of the great Powers, and establish claims on Great Britain and France for the Crimean War. realization of its Italian ambitions. One section of public opinion desired to make Piedmont’s co-operation subject to definite promises by the Powers; but the latter refused to bind themselves, and both Victor Emmanuel and Cavour realized that, even without such promises, participation would give Piedmont a claim. There was also the danger that Austria might join the allies first and Piedmont be left isolated; but there were also strong arguments on the other side, for while the Radical party saw no obvious reason why Piedmont should fight other people’s battles, and therefore opposed the alliance, there was the risk that Austria might join the alliance together with Piedmont, which would have constituted a disastrous situation. Da Italy and the Congress of Paris, 1856. Bormida, the minister for foreign affairs, resigned rather than agree to the proposal, and other statesmen were equally opposed to it. But after long negotiations the treaty of alliance was signed in January 1855, and while Austria remained neutral, a well-equipped Piedmontese force of 15,000 men, under General La Marmora, sailed for the Crimea. Everything turned out as Cavour had hoped.
