Camillo Benso di Cavour

“ He was encouraged to it by General La Marmora, the friend of both, who declared that "Camillo was a gran buon diavolo," who would grow more moderate when "with us." Cavour accepted the offered post of Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, but not without making terms. He exacted the retirement of a minister whom he considered incurably timorous, especially in ecclesiastical legislation. The point was yielded, but D'Azeglio said to La Marmora, "We are beginning badly with your buon diavolo." The good Massimo got no comfort from the king: "Don't you see that this man will turn you all out?" ”

“ Any other man would have become popular at once, but against Cavour prejudice was too strong for a fleeting success to remove it. From that day, however, he was listened to. He was no longer a quantité négligeable in the politics of Italy or of Europe.
One of the ministers, Count Pietro di Santa Rosa, died within a few months of the bill on the Foro becoming law, and the last sacraments were denied to him because he refused to sign a retractation of the political acts of the cabinet of which he was a member. Cavour was an old friend of Santa Rosa. ”

“ In these letters she laid bare her innermost soul; she was ardently patriotic, steeped in the ideas of Mazzini, and far more Italian than Piedmontese, though she wrote in French. She knew English, and Cavour advised her to read Shakespeare. Remarkably gifted, she had the deep humility of many of the best Italian women; "What have I done, O Camille," she asks, "to meet a soul like yours!... To have known you for an instant fills a long existence; how can you love me, weak as I am?" ”

“ The French Emperor thought that there was an opening for a new kingdom of Etruria with Prince Napoleon at the head. All sorts of intrigues were set afoot by all the great powers except England to re-erect Tuscany as a dam to stem the flood of unity midway. Cavour was determined to defeat them. It was against his rule to discuss remote events. He once said to a novice in public life, "If you want to be a politician, for mercy's sake do not look more than a week ahead." ”

“ The minister seems to have received him coldly. He remarked that with these great people you must be a person of importance to make any way; an obscure citizen of Piedmont, unknown beyond the commune of which he was syndic, could have no chance. With Thiers he got on much better; principles apart, their temperaments were not inharmonious. Of the literary men Cavour preferred Sainte Beuve; in Cousin he cared less for the philosopher than for the friend of Santorre di Santa Rosa, the exiled patriot of 1821. Cousin introduced him to several fervid Italian liberals, among others Berchet, the poet. ”

“ Abroad he could give this quality freer play than in Italy, where vivacity offends in a serious man. He charmed even those who did not share his opinions. At a dinner given by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris to all the members of the Congress, he sat next to the Abbé Darboy, one day to succeed to the see and meet a martyr's death in the Commune. The Abbé never forgot his neighbour of that evening, and in 1870, at Rome during the Oecumenical Council, when some one mentioned Cavour's name, he exclaimed, throwing up his hands, "Ah, that was a man in a thousand! ”

“ To his amazement he discovered that the Southerner was a close student of European statesmanship and well informed on the conditions of modern Italy.
"I am delighted beyond measure, Signor," he said earnestly, "to learn of the interest of your King in the South. I have long felt that Cavour was one of the greatest statesmen and diplomats of the world. His achievement in establishing the Kingdom of Sardinia in the face of the bitter rivalries and ambitions of Europe, to say nothing of the power of Rome, was in itself enough to mark him as the foremost man of his age." ”

“ If Piedmont, small in territory, yet counts for something in the councils of Europe, it is because it is great by reason of the ideas it represents and the sympathies it inspires. This position doubtless creates for us many dangers; nevertheless, while respecting treaties, we cannot remain insensible to the cries of grief that reach us from so many parts of Italy." Cavour had the French words turned into good Italian by a literary friend (for he always misdoubted his own grammar) ; one or two expressions were changed; "humanity" was left out. Did it savour too much of Mazzini? ”

“ He took his seat for the first college of Turin. He did not make an immediate impression; his short stature, and still more the imperfect accent with which he spoke Italian, were not in his favour. French was allowed in the Sardinian Chamber, but Cavour never opened his lips in it in Parliament. By degrees his speeches became marvels of close reasoning, and they even soared, sometimes, when he was deeply moved, into a kind of eloquence superior to that of rhetoric, but the accent was never such as would satisfy a fastidious ear. ”

“ A point which is worth observing is that, as minister, no one ever made less use of what may he called the influence of society than Cavour. He never tried to make himself agreeable at Turin, least of all to the king. For a long time he was considered haughty by those who did not know him, and arbitrary by those who did. But abroad he underwent a change which probably came about from his revealing not less but more of his natural self. "He has that petulance," Massimo d'Azeglio said, "which is exactly what they like in Paris." ”

“ Lord John defended every act of Sardinia in the strongest and plainest terms, and people grew almost more angry with him than with Cavour. The Italian statesman never quailed through this last perilous crisis; "Nous sommes prêts," he wrote, "à jouer le tout pour le tout." There are moments when the problems of politics, as of life, cease to perplex. By degrees the storm-clouds rolled away without breaking. In November Cavour felt himself strong enough to affirm that the questions of Naples and the Marches were purely Italian, and that the Powers of Europe had no business to meddle with them. ”

“ It should be added that Cavour could not understand a country life which did not embrace solicitude for the worker. The true agriculturist gained the confidence of the poor around him; it was, he said, so easy to gain it. He was kindly, thoughtful, and just in his treatment of his dependents, and he always retained his hold on their affections; when Italy was asking what she should do without her great statesman, the sorrowing peasants of Leri asked in tears what they should do without their master? ”

“ Every reason, patriotic, political, geographical, justified Cavour's resolution. It was only by force that Umbria and the Marches had been retained under the papal sway in 1859; there was not an Italian who did not look on their liberation as a patriotic duty. The nominal pretext for the war, as has happened in most of the wars of this century, only partially touched the point at issue; Cavour professed to see a menace in the increase of the Pope's army, and demanded its disbandment. In a literal sense, fifteen or twenty thousand men could not be a menace to Italy. ”

“ D'Azeglio, harassed on all sides and ill through the reopening of his wound, resigned office, and advised the king to send for Cavour. "The other one, whom you know, is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, and then, he enjoys it so much!" he wrote to a friend, with the pathetic wonder of the artist, romancist, and grand seigneur, who had never been able to make out what there was to enjoy in politics. Victor Emmanuel followed his advice, but he allowed Cavour to see that he hoped that the new ministry would make up the quarrel with Rome. ”

“ When he had to do with men born of the people, he instinctively treated them on a perfect equality, not a common trait, if the truth were told. In August 1856 an event took place which had far-reaching consequences: the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour was one of Garibaldi's earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services. In one way the hero was a man after the minister's own heart: he was absolutely practical ”

“ Through his life he kept the blood-stained uniform in which the young officer received his death-wound in a glass case in his bedroom, a piece of enduring sentiment which shows how unlike Cavour was the coldly calculating egotist whose portrait has passed for his.
The story of the years of revolution in Italy is a story of great things and small, like most human records; but, when all is said, the great predominate, for no blunders could efface the readiness for self-sacrifice displayed by the whole people. ”

“ If it be true that, as men live so they die, it is not true that Count de Cavour died like a good Christian. None will be inclined to dispute with him the comfort which he claimed of being at peace with himself. But they who are aware of the violence, the spoliation, the rapine, bloodshed, and unspeakable suffering, in all which he was, at least, an accomplice, if not the direct cause, throughout the States of the Italian Grand Dukes, the Pontifical territories and the kingdom of Naples, will not easily acknowledge that he spoke truth when he said that “he had never wronged anyone.” ”

“ It was intended to send him to Florence, but when he reached the Foreign Office, which Lord Palmerston had just vacated, he received instructions to go to Turin, a fortunate change of plan. No two men were ever better fitted to work together than Cavour and Sir James Hudson. Without ceasing to be particularly English and strictly loyal to the interests of his own country, the British Minister at Turin served Italy as few of her sons have been able to do. ”

“ Cavour himself drew a miserable picture of his country: science and intelligence were reputed "infernal things by those who are obliging enough to govern us"; a triumphant bigotry trembled alike at railways and Rosmini; Cavour's aunt, the Duchess de Clermont Tonnerre, only got permission to receive the Journal des Débats after long negotiations between the French minister at Turin and the Sardinian government. No wonder if Mme. de Circourt impulsively entreated the young man to shake the dust of Piedmont off his feet and to seek a career in France. ”

“ Victor Emmanuel could sound the depths of Mazzini's patriotism; Cavour never could. The two men were made to misunderstand each other. There are differences too fundamental for even imagination to bridge over. Had they lived till now, when both are raised on pedestals in the Italian House of Fame, from which time shall not remove them, Mazzini would still have been for Cavour, and Cavour for Mazzini, the evil genius of his country. ”

“ When a revolutionary movement broke out in Sicily, Cavour thought of sending secretly a Piedmontese officer, who fought in the Sicilian insurrection of 1848, to assume the direction, but he did not do so, perhaps because he had very little faith in the success of the attempt. Save for the undoubted fact that Sicily was already separated in spirit not only from the Bourbon crown but from any rule which had its seat at Naples, the insurrection did not begin under promising circumstances. ”

“ The memorandum actually sent was short and moderate in tone, the chief point recommended being the evacuation of Bologna by the Austrians. It has been sometimes quoted in order to convict Cavour, at this period, of having held poor and narrow views of the future of Italy. But a man who is mounting a stair does not put his foot on the highest step first. At this stage in his political life most of Cavour's biographers pause to discuss the often-put question, Was he already aiming at Italian unity? ”

“ It was in the exposition of these principles, in the enforcement of the common moral interest of Italian nationality and the Catholic Church, that Cavour gave his last counsels to the Italian Parliament. He was not himself to lead the nation farther towards the Promised Land. The immense exertions which he had maintained during the last three years, the indignation and anxiety caused to him by Garibaldi's attacks, produced an illness which Cavour's own careless habits of life and the unskilfulness of his doctors rendered fatal. ”

“ Although the new king was obliged to conclude peace with Austria and the Italian revolution was crushed, Cavour nevertheless did not despair; he believed that so long as the constitution was maintained in Piedmont, the Italian cause was safe. There were fresh elections in July, and this time Cavour was returned. He was still in the difficult position of a moderate Liberal at a time when there seemed to be room for none but reactionaries and conspirators, but by his consummate ability he convinced men that his attitude was the right one, and he made it triumph. ”

“ Aurelio Saffi well said that "in these supreme moments you would have called Cavour a follower of Mazzini." The world often thinks that a man is changed when he is revealing what he really is for the first time. It suited Cavour's purpose to appear cool and calculating, but patriotism was as much a passion with him as with any of the great men who worked for Italian emancipation.
CHAPTER X SAVOY AND NICE The dissolution of Parliament by Lord Derby in June led to the return of a Liberal majority and the resumption of power by men who were open advocates of Italian unity. ”