Edward Bunbury, Thomas Ashby, Robert Conway, John A. Symonds, John Rose, Luigi Villari & Henry Steed

“ 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. ”

“ But the restored governments in their terror of revolution would not realize that the late régime had wafted a breath of new life over the country and left ineffaceable traces in the way of improved laws, efficient administration, good roads and the sweeping away of old abuses; while the new-born idea of Italian unity, strengthened by a national pride revived on many a stricken field from Madrid to Moscow, was a force to be reckoned with. The oppression and follies of the restored governments made men forget the evils of French rule and remember only its good side. ”

“ Once seated in the duchy of Milan, he displayed rare qualities as a ruler; for he not only entered into the spirit of the age, which required humanity and culture from a despot, but he also knew how to curb his desire for territory. The conception of confederated Italy found in him a vigorous supporter. Thus the limitation of the Milanese duchy under Filippo Maria Visconti, and its consolidation under Francesco Sforza, were equally effectual in preparing the balance of power to which Italian politics now tended. ”

“ Under their consuls the Italian burghs rose to a great height of prosperity and splendour. Pisa built her Duomo. Milan undertook the irrigation works which enriched the soil of Lombardy for ever. Massive walls, substantial edifices, commodious seaports, good roads, were the benefits conferred by this new government on Italy. It is also to be noticed that the people now began to be conscious of their past. They recognized the fact that their blood was Latin as distinguished from Teutonic, and that they must look to ancient Rome for those memories which constitute a people’s nationality. ”

“ The bourgeoisie, protected in their trade, found it convenient to support him. The nobles, turned into courtiers, placemen, diplomatists and men of affairs, ended by preferring his authority to the alternative of democratic institutions. A lethargy of well-being, broken only by the pinch of taxation for war-costs, or by outbursts of frantic ferocity and lust in the less calculating tyrants, descended on the population of cities which had boasted of their freedom. Only Florence and Venice, at the close of the period upon which we are now entering, maintained their republican independence. ”

“ The Guelph is persuaded that the Ghibellines will annihilate freedom and strangle commerce. The struggle is waged by two sets of men who equally love their city, but who would fain rule it upon diametrically opposite principles, and who fight to the death for its possession. This contradiction enters into the minutest details of life—armorial bearings, clothes, habits at table, symbolize and accentuate the difference. Meanwhile each party forms its own organization of chiefs, finance-officers and registrars at home, and sends ambassadors to foreign cities of the same complexion. ”

“ The difficulty of Italian history lies in the fact that until modern times the Italians have had no political unity, no independence, no organized existence as a nation. Split up into numerous and mutually hostile communities, they never, through the fourteen centuries which have elapsed since the end of the old Western empire, shook off the yoke of foreigners completely; they never until lately learned to merge their local and conflicting interests in the common good of undivided Italy. ”

“ The brutalities of Austria’s white coats in the north, the unintelligent repression then characteristic of the house of Savoy, the petty spite of the duke of Modena, the medieval obscurantism of pope and cardinals in the middle of the peninsula and the clownish excesses of Ferdinand in the south, could not blot out from the minds of the Italians the recollection of the benefits derived from the just laws, vigorous administration and enlightened aims of the great emperor. ”

“ Except in regard to the Roman question, the advantages and disadvantages of an Italian alliance with Austria and Germany counterbalanced each other. A rapprochement with France and a continuance of the Irredentist movement could not fail to arouse Austro-German hostility; but, on the other hand, to draw near to the central powers would inevitably accentuate the diffidence of France. In the one hypothesis, as in the other, Italy could count upon the moral support of Great Britain, but could not make of British friendship the keystone of a Continental policy. ”

“ Poland, in South America—and those other exiles who, in Paris or London, eked out a bare subsistence by teaching Italian or by their pen, and laid the foundations of that love of Italy which, especially in England, eventually brought the weight of diplomacy into the scales for Italian freedom. All these forces were equally necessary—the revolutionists to keep up agitation and make government by bayonets impossible; the moderates to curb the impetuosity of the revolutionists and to present a scheme of society that was neither reactionary nor anarchical ”

“ At Pavia the barbarian conquerors of Italy proclaimed him king, and he received from Zeno the dignity of Roman patrician. Thus began that system of mixed government, Teutonic and Roman, which, in the absence of a national monarch, impressed the institutions of new Italy from the earliest date with dualism. The same revolution vested supreme authority in a non-resident and inefficient autocrat, whose title gave him the right to interfere in Italian affairs, but who lacked the power and will to rule the people for his own or their advantage. ”

“ Danger lay rather in entrusting men schooled in political conspiracy and in unscrupulous parliamentary opposition with the government of a young state still beset by enemies at home and abroad. As an opposition party the Left had lived upon the facile credit of political promises, but had no well-considered programme nor other discipline nor unity of purpose than that born of the common eagerness of its leaders for office and their common hostility to the Right. Neither Depretis, Nicotera, Crispi, Cairoli nor Zanardelli was disposed permanently to recognize the superiority of any one chief. ”

“ The conflict with France, the operations in Eritrea, the vigorous interpretation of the triple alliance, the questions of Morocco and Bulgaria, were all used by him as means to stimulate national sentiment. With the instinct of a true statesman, he felt the pulse of the people, divined their need for prestige, and their preference for a government heavy-handed rather than lax. How great had been Crispi’s power was seen by contrast with the policy of the Rudini cabinet which succeeded him in February 1891. ”

“ As the result of the Vienna treaties, Austria became the real mistress of Italy. Not only did she govern Lombardy and Venetia directly, but Austrian princes ruled in Modena, Parma and Tuscany; Piacenza, Ferrara and Comacchio had Austrian garrisons; Prince Metternich, the Austrian chancellor, believed that he could always secure the election of an Austrophil pope, and Ferdinand of Naples, reinstated by an Austrian army, had bound himself, by a secret article of the treaty of June 12, 1815, not to introduce methods of government incompatible with those adopted in Austria’s Italian possessions. ”

“ The conflict is a social one, between civic and feudal institutions, between commercial and military interests, between progress and conservatism. Guelph democracy and industry idealize the pope. The banner of the church waves above the camp of those who aim at positive prosperity and republican equality. Ghibelline aristocracy and immobility idealize the emperor. The prestige of the empire, based upon Roman law and feudal tradition, attracts imaginative patriots and systematic thinkers. ”

“ Hunted to the ground and broken-hearted, Frederick expired at the end of 1250 in his Apulian castle of Fiorentino. It is difficult to judge his career with fairness. The only prince who could, with any probability of success, have established the German rule in Italy, his ruin proved the impossibility of that long-cherished scheme. The nation had outgrown dependence upon foreigners, and after his death no German emperor interfered with anything but miserable failure in Italian affairs. Yet from many points of view it might be regretted that Frederick was not suffered to rule Italy. ”

“ The men of the Left believed themselves subtle enough to retain the confidence and esteem of all foreign powers while coquetting at home with elements which some of these powers had reason to regard with suspicion. Italy, in constant danger from France, needed good relations with Austria and Germany, but could only attain the goodwill of the former by firm treatment of the revolutionary Irredentist agitation, and of the latter by clear demonstration of Italian will and ability to cope with all anti-monarchical forces. Depretis and Cairoli did neither the one nor the other. ”

“ Gian Galeazzo thus became by one stroke the most formidable of Italian despots. Immured in his castle at Pavia, accumulating wealth by systematic taxation and methodical economy, he organized the mercenary troops who eagerly took service under so good a paymaster; and, by directing their operations from his cabinet, he threatened the whole of Italy with conquest. The last scions of the Della Scala family still reigned in Verona, the last Carraresi in Padua; the Estensi were powerful in Ferrara, the Gonzaghi in Mantua. ”

“ By their sufferings no less than by their deeds of daring, her citizens showed themselves to be sublime, devoted and disinterested, winning the purest laurels which give lustre to Italian story. Almost in Frederick’s presence, they rebuilt Tortona, punished Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and the marquis of Montferrat. Then they fortified the Adda and Ticino, and waited for the emperor’s next descent. He came in 1158 with a large army, overran Lombardy, raised his imperial allies, and sat down before the walls of Milan. ”

“ The Left, conscious of its strength, impatiently awaited the moment of accession to power. Sella, the real head of the Lanza cabinet, was worn out by four years’ continuous work and disheartened by the perfidious misrepresentation in which Italian politicians, particularly those of the Left, have ever excelled. By sheer force of will he compelled the Chamber early in 1873 to adopt some minor financial reforms, but on the 29th of April found himself in a minority on the question of a credit for a proposed state arsenal at Taranto. ”

“ Italy, handled and rehandled, settled and resettled, upon each of these occasions, changed masters without caring or knowing what befell the principals in any one of the disputes. Humiliating to human nature in general as are the annals of the 18th-century campaigns in Europe, there is no point of view from which they appear in a light so tragi-comic as from that afforded by Italian history. ”

“ No city calls itself either Guelph or Ghibelline till it has expelled one-half of its inhabitants; for each party is resolved to constitute the state according to its own conception, and the affirmation of the one programme is the negation of the other. The Ghibelline honestly believes that the Guelphs will reduce society to chaos. ”

“ The shores, especially on the Tyrrhenian Sea, present almost a continued grove of olive, orange, lemon and citron trees, which attain a size unknown in the north of Italy. The sugar-cane flourishes, the cotton-plant ripens to perfection, date-trees are seen in the gardens, the rocks are clothed with the prickly-pear or Indian fig, the enclosures of the fields are formed by aloes and sometimes pomegranates, the liquorice-root grows wild, and the mastic, the myrtle and many varieties of oleander and cistus form the underwood of the natural forests of arbutus and evergreen oak. ”

“ He became an Italian in taste and sympathy, entering with enthusiasm into the humanistic ardour of the earlier Renaissance, encouraging men of letters at his court, administering his kingdom on the principles of an enlightened despotism, and lending his authority to establish that equilibrium in the peninsula upon which the politicians of his age believed, not without reason, that Italian independence might be secured. ”

“ He laid waste Chieri, Asti and Tortona, then took the Lombard crown at Pavia, and, reserving Milan for a future day, passed southward to Rome. Outside the gates of Rome he was met by a deputation from the senate he had come to supersede, who addressed him in words memorable for expressing the republican spirit of new Italy face to face with autocratic feudalism: “Thou wast a stranger, I have made thee a citizen”; it is Rome who speaks: “Thou earnest as an alien from beyond the Alps, I have conferred on thee the principality.” ”

“ But by far the greatest profit the Italians reaped was the emancipation of their burghs. During the forty-seven years’ war, when pope and emperor were respectively bidding for their alliance, and offering concessions to secure their support, the communes grew in self-reliance, strength and liberty. As the bishops had helped to free them from subservience to their feudal masters, so the war of investitures relieved them of dependence on their bishops. The age of real autonomy, signalized by the supremacy of consuls in the cities, had arrived. ”

“ The mainstay of the Roman military control of Italy first, and of the whole empire afterwards, was the splendid system of roads. As the supremacy of Rome extended itself over Italy, the Roman road system grew step by step, each fresh conquest being marked by the pushing forward of Roads. roads through the heart of the newly-won territory, and the establishment of fortresses in connexion with them. It was in Italy that the military value of a network of roads was first appreciated by the Romans, and the lesson stood them in good stead in the provinces. ”

“ Ancient geographers appear to have generally regarded the remarkable headland which descends from the Maritime Alps to the sea between Nice and Monaco as the limit of Italy in that direction, and in a purely geographical point of view it is probably the best point that could be selected. But Augustus, who was the first to give to Italy a definite political organization, carried the frontier to the river Varus or Var, a few miles west of Nice, and this river continued in modern times to be generally recognized as the boundary between France and Italy. ”