Charles Albert of Sardinia

“ The King of Sardinia was spoken of among the liberals as a worthless man, without heart or honour, only likely to be kept on the right side by the stress of circumstance. This judgment of him was reversed in after years, when, behind Casa Guidi windows, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, with steadfast hand, "Yea, verily, Charles Albert has died well."
The royalty of Naples tried to quiet its tremors with blood, and trembled still. And in the midst of all this turmoil, down comes Louis Philippe from his throne, and France is shaken to her very centre. ”

“ Vic′tor Emman′uel II, king of Italy, born at Turin, March 14, 1820, was the son of Charles Albert, king of Sardinia. After serving gallantly in the army, he became king of Sardinia by the abdication of his father on the evening of the battle of Novara, March 23, 1849. ”

“ Meanwhile Calabria and Sicily were in a state of fermentation, and the King perplexed by the general condition of affairs, was induced to grant a general amnesty.
The North of Italy was at that time in calmer and happier circumstances. Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, had consented to measures of Liberal Reform, and certain influential northern Italians, headed by Counts MammianiMammiani and Balbo, Massimo d’Azeglio, Cavour and Silvio Pellico, had petitioned Ferdinand II. to make concessions similar to those they enjoyed in their kingdom, but without avail. ”

“ The masses were to be educated to understand their rights, and taught to secure them, if need be, by force. Shortly after Charles Albert became king of Sardinia, Mazzini urged him to put himself at the head of the struggle for national independence. ”

“ They were planning a war against the King of Sardinia whose name was Charles Albert, and while the patriots invaded Savoy Garibaldi's mission was to go to Genoa and hatch a revolution in the fleet, where, it was thought, there were many sailors who would gladly fall in with the aims of Young Italy and lend their aid in overthrowing the existing governments. ”

“ In 1717, however, Cardinal Alberoni retook Cagliari for Spain; but this state of things was short-lived, for Modern
history. in 1720, by the treaty of London, Sardinia passed in exchange for Sicily to the dukes of Savoy, to whom it brought the royal title. The population was at that time a little over 300,000; public security and education were alike lacking, and there were considerable animosities between different parts of the island. Matters improved considerably under Charles Emmanuel III., in whose reign of forty-three years (1730–1773) the prosperity of the island was much increased. ”

“ It will not suffice to give all the credit for these revolutionary movements to Mazzini, the organizer, Garibaldi, the soldier, and the ambitious monarchs of France and Sardinia. More important than king and emperor was the eminent statesman, Count Cavour, prime minister of Sardinia from 1852. It is to this able man that the honor of the unification of Italy most fully belongs, though he did not live to see it. He sent a Sardinian army to the assistance of France and England in the Crimea in 1855, and by this act gave his state a standing among the powers of Europe. ”

“ He considers the conquest of Piedmont as one made by Austria of an enemy's country. He denies that the King of Sardinia can be considered as an ally or as a friend, or even as a neuter; and, besides imputing a thousand instances of ill-faith to that Court, relies on the actual alliance made by it with the French Republic by which the King of Sardinia had appropriated to himself part of the Emperor's dominions in Lombardy, an offence which, I perceive, will not be easily forgotten.... ”

“ On the night of the 1st of July 1863 Carlisle was bombarded by Confederate troops.
CARLOFORTE, a town of Sardinia, in the province of Cagliari, the capital of the small island (6 by 5 m.) of San Pietro (anc. Accipitrum or Ίερακοννῆσος) off the west coast of Sardinia. Pop. (1901) 7693. It lies on the east coast of the island, 6 m. west by sea from Portoscuso, which is 47 m. west by rail from Cagliari. It was founded in 1737 by Charles Emmanuel III. of Savoy, who planted a colony of Genoese, whose dialect and costume still prevail. ”

“ It has thriven every day since Charles Albert emancipated the Vaudois. No one can cross its frontier without being struck with the contrast it presents to the other Italian States. While they are decaying like a corpse, it is flourishing like the chestnut-tree of its own mountains. The very faces of the people may tell you that the country is free and prosperous. Its citizens walk about with the cheerful, active air of men who have something to do and to enjoy, and not with the listless, desponding, heart-sick look which marks the inhabitants of the other States of Italy. ”

“ The Sardinians were bitterly disappointed that they did not get Venetia, and loudly accused the French emperor of having betrayed their cause, since at the outset he had promised them that he would free Italy from the mountains to the sea. But Sardinia found compensation for Venice in the accession of Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Romagna, the peoples of which states, having discarded their old rulers, besought Victor Emmanuel to permit them to unite themselves to his kingdom. Thus, as the result of the war, the king of Sardinia had added to his subjects a population of 9,000,000. ”

“ On September 11 the Sardinian army, more than double as strong as Lamoricière's, crossed the papal frontier. With the exception of England and Sweden, all the Powers recalled their representatives from Turin. The French Ministry telegraphed to Napoleon, who was at Marseilles, to ask what they were to do. They got no answer, and, left to their own inspiration, they informed the Duke de Grammont, the French Ambassador at Rome, that the Emperor's Government "would not tolerate" the culpable aggression of Sardinia, and that orders were given to embark troops for Ancona. ”

“ Appel and Thurn, and Wratislaw and the old Field-Marshal were on the march, and by four o'clock they were pouring their fresh troops upon the Piedmontese, who had not known how to profit by their success. [Pg.141] Heroism such as few battlefields have seen, disorder such as has rarely disgraced a beaten army, were displayed side by side in Charles Albert's ranks. At eight in the evening, the whole Sardinian army retired into Novara ”

“ It is like Cornwall, like the Land's End region. Here and there, in the distance, are peasants working on the lonely landscape. Sometimes it is one man alone in the distance, showing so vividly in his black-and-white costume, small and far-off like a solitary magpie, and curiously distinct. All the strange [Pg 130] magic of Sardinia is in this sight. Among the low, moor-like hills, away in a hollow of the wide landscape one solitary figure, small but vivid black-and-white, working alone, as if eternally. There are patches and hollows of grey arable land, good for corn. ”

“ The country is picturesque, but roads and inns are still wanting. It appears to be the intention of the Piedmontese Government to render Sardinia similar to the States of Italy, but it will require much time to ascertain the inclinations of all classes for the new mode of existence. ”

“ On the twenty-third Radetsky had fled from Milan, to face Venice rising in his path. On the twenty-fourth the first Piedmontese had crossed the Ticino, and Charles Albert himself was in Pavia on the twenty-ninth. The bells of Milan had carried the word from Turin to Naples, from Genoa to Ancona, and the whole country was pouring like a flood-tide into Lombardy. Heroes sprang up from the bloody soil as thick as wheat after rain, and every day carried some new name to us; but never the one for which we prayed and waited. ”

“ Rome fully shared the enthusiasm which was awakened throughout Italy by the entrance of the Piedmontese troops into Lombardy, and by the announcement by Charles Albert that he had drawn the sword in the sacred cause of Italian independence. His proclamation, in the stilted phrase common to such state papers, declared that he relied upon "the assistance of that God who is visibly with us; of that God who has given Pius IX to Italy; of that God who, by such wondrous impulses, has placed her in a condition to act for herself." ”

“ Garibaldi sought an interview with Charles Albert, and offered him his arms and the arms of his Legion, 'not unused to war.' Pope or prince, little it mattered to him who the saviour of Italy should be. But Charles Albert, though he was polite, merely referred his visitor to his ministers, and the inestimable sword of the hero went begging for a month or more, till the Provisional Government of Milan gave him the command of the few thousand volunteers with whom we saw him at the conclusion of the campaign. ”

“ There is more life on the Campidano than in the mountains. Not that it is inhabited; there is scarcely a house on this whole plain, fifty or sixty miles in circumference. Not that there is much cultivation; here and there, at rare intervals, we see patches of a livelier green than the surrounding expanse of grass, and the young wheat just springing up, the strong blade and rich loamy furrow, remind us that Sardinia was reckoned in former times a granary of Rome. ”

“ So that for us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.
And then—and then—there is a final feeling of sterility. It is all worked out. It is all known: connu, connu!
This Sunday morning, seeing the frost among the tangled, still savage bushes of Sardinia, my soul thrilled again. This was not all known. This was not all worked out. Life was not only a process of rediscovering backwards. ”

“ Italy, France, and Spain
In Italy a variety of changes were made. The Pope got back the States of the Church; Tuscany was restored to its king; the same was the case with Naples, King Murat being driven from his throne and put to death. Piedmont, increased by the Republic of Genoa, was restored to the king of Sardinia. Some smaller states were formed, as Parma, Modena, and Lucca. Finally, Lombardy and Venice, much the richest regions of Italy, were given to Austria, which country was made the dominant power in the Italian peninsula. ”

“ Many years since, the writer of these pages ventured to predict that the time must come when Sardinia would lead the van of Italian civilisation, and take proud place amongst the greater nations of Europe. In the great portion of this population there is visible the new blood of a young race; it is not, as with other Italian States, a worn-out stock; you do not see there a people fallen, proud of the past, and lazy amidst ruins, but a people rising, practical, industrious, active ”

“ Accordingly, the Sardinians received only Lombardy in return for Savoy and Nice, which they gave to France, and the Austrians kept the county of Venetia. A fire once kindled, however, is hard to put out. No sooner did the people of the other states of northern Italy see the success of Sardinia, than, one after another, they revolted against their Austrian princes and voted to join the new kingdom of Italy. ”

“ La Madelena is the largest island in the Sardinian group, and while Porto Longone is a poor place, the town and harbour of La Madelena are much frequented in the communications and trade between Corsica and Sardinia. ”

“ All about us was the sea of great adventure, and below us, caught somewhere in its gleaming meshes, were the bones of nations and navies . . . . . nations and navies that gave youth its hope and made life something more than a hunger of the bowels. The unpeopled Sardinian coast unfolded gently before us, like something left over out of a world that was gone; a place that might well have had no later news since the corn ships brought the tidings of Actium.
"I shall never go to Sardinia," said Mrs. Ebbling. ”

“ There is one highly gifted man, who has long filled a distinguished place in the service of his sovereign and the eyes of the world, in whose hands the task of regenerating Sardinia, herculean as it may appear, would be not only a labour of love, but facile comparatively with any others on which it may devolve. ”

“ He had won and governed Sardinia, and "conquered a great part of Italy, at an age when the vast majority of youths, even under the most favourable circumstances, are but beginning to aspire to glory and active life ”

“ Lobsters are exported, especially to Paris. The coral fishery—mainly on the west coast—has lost its former importance. Neither the tunny nor the coral fishery is carried on by the Sardinians themselves, who are not sailors by nature; the former is in the hands of Genoese and the latter of Neapolitans. The unhealthy lagoons contain abundance of fish. The mountain streams often contain small but good trout.
In Roman times Sardinia, relatively somewhat more prosperous than at present, though not perhaps greatly different as regards its products, was especially noted as a grain-producing country. ”

“ There is a tick-tocking in the little cabin against which I lean. The wireless operator is busy communicating with Trapani, no doubt. He is a fat young man with fairish curly hair and an important bearing. Give a man control of some machine, and at once his air of importance and more-than-human dignity develops. One of the unaccountable members of the crew lounges in the little doorway, like a chicken on one foot, having nothing to do. The girl from Cagliari comes up with two young men—also Sardinians by their thick-set, independent look, and the touch of pride in their dark eyes. ”