The situation was, indeed, sufficiently critical. The unrest in Naples had spread into Umbria and the Marches, and the papal troops, under General Lamoricière, were preparing to suppress it. Had they succeeded, the position of the Piedmontese in Romagna would have been imperilled; had they failed, the road would have been open for Garibaldi to march on Rome. In the circumstances, Cavour decided that Piedmont must anticipate Garibaldi, occupy Umbria and the Marches and place Italy between the red-shirts and Rome. His excuse was the pope’s refusal to dismiss his foreign levies (September 7). On the 11th of September a Piedmontese army of 35,000 men crossed the frontier at La Cattolica; on the 18th the pontifical army was crushed at Castelfidardo; and when, on the 29th, Ancona fell, Umbria and the Marches were in the power of Piedmont. On the 15th of October King Victor Emmanuel crossed the Neapolitan border at the head of his troops.
It had been a race between Garibaldi and the Piedmontese. “If we do not arrive at the Volturno before Garibaldi reaches La Cattolica,” Cavour had said, “the monarchy is lost, and Italy will remain in the prison-house of the Revolution.”[1] Fortunately for his policy, the red-shirts had encountered a formidable obstacle to their advance in the Neapolitan army entrenched on the Volturno under the guns of Capua. On the 19th of September the Garibaldians began their attack on this position with their usual impetuous valour; but they were repulsed again and again, and it was not till the 2nd of October, after a two days’ pitched battle, that they succeeded in carrying the position. The way was now open for the advance of the Piedmontese, who, save at Isernia, encountered practically no resistance. On the 29th Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi met, and on the 7th of November they entered Naples together. Garibaldi now resigned his authority into the king’s hands and, refusing the title and other honours offered to him, retired to his island home of Caprera.[2]
Gaeta remained still to be taken. The Piedmontese under Cialdini had begun the siege on the 5th of November, but it was not until the 10th of January 1861, when at the instance of Great Britain Napoleon withdrew his squadron, that the blockade could be made complete. Recognition of the united kingdom of Italy. On the 13th of February the fortress surrendered, Francis and his family having departed by sea for papal territory. The citadel of Messina capitulated on the 22nd, and Civitella del Tronto, the last stronghold of Bourbonism, on the 21st of March. On the 18th of February the first Italian parliament met at Turin, and Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed king of Italy. The new kingdom was recognized by Great Britain within a fortnight, by France three months later, and subsequently by other powers. It included the whole peninsula except Venetia and Rome, and these the government and the nation were determined to annex sooner or later.
There were, however, other serious problems calling for immediate attention. The country had to be built up and converted from an agglomeration of scattered medieval principalities into a unified modern nation. The first question which arose was that of brigandage in the south. Brigandage Problems of the new government. Brigandage. had always existed in the Neapolitan kingdom, largely owing to the poverty of the people; but the evil was now aggravated by the mistake of the new government in dismissing the Bourbon troops, and then calling them out again as recruits. A great many turned brigands rather than serve again, and together with the remaining adherents of Bourbon rule and malefactors of all kinds, were made use of by the ex-king and his entourage to harass the Italian administration. Bands of desperadoes were formed, commanded by the most infamous criminals and by foreigners who came to fight in what they were led to believe was an Italian Vendée, but which was in reality a campaign of butchery and plunder. Villages were sacked and burnt, men, women and children mutilated, tortured or roasted alive, and women outraged. The authors of these deeds when pursued by troops fled into papal territory, where they were welcomed by the authorities and allowed to refit and raise fresh recruits under the aegis of the Church. The prime organizers of the movement were King Francis’s uncle, the count of Trapani, and Mons. de Mérode, a Belgian ecclesiastic who enjoyed immense influence at the Vatican. The task of suppressing brigandage was entrusted to Generals La Marmora and Cialdini; but in spite of extreme severity, justifiable in the circumstances, it took four or five years completely to suppress the movement. Its vitality, indeed, was largely due to the mistakes made by the new administration, conducted as this was by officials ignorant of southern conditions and out of sympathy with a people far more primitive than in any other part of the peninsula. Politically, its sole outcome was to prove the impossibility of allowing the continuance of an independent Roman state in the heart of Italy.
Another of the government’s difficulties was the question of what to do with Garibaldi’s volunteers. Fanti, the minister of war, had three armies to incorporate in that of Piedmont, viz. that of central Italy, that of the Bourbons and that of Garibaldi. The first caused no difficulty; the rank and file of the Garibaldi’s volunteers. second were mostly disbanded, but a number of the officers were taken into the Italian army; the third offered a more serious problem. Garibaldi demanded that all his officers should be given equivalent rank in the Italian army, and in this he had the support of Fanti. Cavour, on the other hand, while anxious to deal generously with the Garibaldians, recognized the impossibility of such a course, which would not only have offended the conservative spirit of the Piedmontese military caste, which disliked and despised irregular troops, but would almost certainly have introduced into the army an element of indiscipline and disorder.
On the 18th of April the question of the volunteers was discussed in one of the most dramatic sittings of the Italian parliament. Garibaldi, elected member for Naples, denounced Cavour in unmeasured terms for his treatment of the volunteers and for the cession of Nice, accusing him of leading the country to civil war. These charges produced a tremendous uproar, but Bixio by a splendid appeal for concord succeeded in calming the two adversaries. On the 23rd of April they were formally reconciled in the presence of the king, but the scene of the 18th of April hastened Cavour’s end. In May the Roman question was discussed in parliament. Cavour had often declared that in the end the capital of Italy must be Rome, for it alone of all Italian cities had an unquestioned claim to moral supremacy, and his views of a free church in a free state were well known. He had negotiated secretly with the pope through unofficial agents, and sketched out a scheme of settlement of the Roman question, which foreshadowed in its main features the law of papal guarantees. But it was not given him to see this problem Death of Cavour. solved, for his health was broken by the strain of the last few years, during which practically the whole administration of the country was concentrated in his hands. He died after a short illness on the 6th of June 1861, at a moment when Italy had the greatest need of his statesmanship.
Ricasoli now became prime minister, Cavour having advised the king to that effect. The financial situation was far from brilliant, for the expenses of the administration of Italy were far larger than the total of those of all the separate states, and everything had to be created or Ricasoli Ministry. Financial difficulties. rebuilt. The budget of 1861 showed a deficit of 344,000,000 lire, while the service of the debt was 110,000,000; deficits were met by new loans issued on unfavourable terms (that of July 1861 for 500,000,000 lire cost the government 714,833,000), and government stock fell as low as 36. It was now that the period of reckless finance began which, save for a lucid interval under Sella, was to last until nearly the end of the century. Considering the state of the country and the coming war for Venice, heavy expenditure was inevitable, but good management might have rendered the situation less dangerous. Ricasoli, honest and capable as he was, failed to win popularity; his attitude on the Roman question, which became more uncompromising after the failure of his attempt at conciliation, and his desire to emancipate Italy from French predominance, brought down on him the hostility of Napoleon. He fell in March 1862, and was succeeded by Rattazzi, who being more Rattazzi Ministry. pliable and intriguing managed at first to please everybody, including Garibaldi. At this time the extremists and even the moderates were full of schemes for liberating Venice and Rome. Garibaldi had a plan, with which the premier was connected, for attacking Austria by raising a revolt in the Balkans and Hungary, and later he contemplated a raid
