Italian Wars

“ Three or four of our men who had previously served in the Italian wars, swore over and over again that they had never witnessed such furious fighting, neither in the wars with the king of France, nor even in those with the grand Turk himself. ”

“ Charles made peace with France at Cambray, and with the Pope at Barcelona, and received the Imperial crown at Bologna.
This was the consummation of the Italian wars, by which the main conditions of modern politics were determined. The conflicts which had lasted for a generation, and the disorder and violence which were older still, were at an end; Italy obtained repose from her master, and spent for centuries her intellect in his service. Pescara, Ferrante, Gonzaga, Philibert Emanuel, Spinola, were the men who made Spain the first of military powers. ”

“ Public assemblies, preaching, the bearing of arms, and violence prevail in the land and the King’s ministers amount to nothing.
The duke then outlined the plan. Ten thousand new Spanish recruits under three ensigns were to be sent to Luxembourg, Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily to take the places of as many veteran troops there, for the King was unwilling to use Italian infantry. A thousand heavy-armed footmen and three or four hundred mounted arquebusiers, all Spanish, were to be drawn from Milan, the most loyal of Spain’s Italian dependencies. ”

“ Æquians, Volscians, Etruscans, Latin allies, Samnites, Gauls, Greeks of south Italy, yielded in turn to their arms, until the whole Italian peninsula had been brought under Roman rule. Then followed intrusion in Sicily, collision with Carthage in that island, and the half century of Punic wars, which tried the Republic to the extremity of its powers, but which left it with no rival in the Mediterranean world, From that time the career of Roman conquest was rapidly pursued in widening fields. ”

“ The rapidity of the French conquest, like that of Naples by Charles VIII., illustrates the weakness of Italy. The treachery and cowardice of the soldiery was the result of the evil traditions of Italian condottier warfare. The army once gone, the citizens could scarcely have resisted if they would, and they would not if they could. Devoid of all sense of patriotism or loyalty, they feared the vengeance of the French, and listened easily to their promises of milder government, and lighter taxation. Reaction against the French. ”

“ Although it is only since May that Italy has stood by our side on the battlefront, in an effort to avert from the world a new military domination, we have known from the beginning that her heart was with the Allies, and she was willing to stake all, when her time came, for the same principles of humanity and freedom. A Roman friend tells me that he heard an Italian statesman say, "Italy always meant war." ”

“ Many young Italians, in order to train themselves to arms, had, from about the middle of this century, engaged in the German, English, and French troops which inundated Italy; and they soon proved that Italian valour, directed by the reflection and intelligence of a highly civilised nation, who carried their arms as well as tactics to perfection, had greatly the advantage over the brute courage of barbarians. ”

“ The war in Europe had so raised anew the pride of country in each Italian, and filled him with such sanguine patriotic aspirations and hopes of a united Italy, that his heated fancy beheld in every incident of the war the most righteous struggle that ever was engaged in, and in the opposite party the most detestable and inhuman of opponents. ”

“ I had thought that there might be a certain amount of panicky exaggeration in the reports of the extent of the Austrian advance towards the place, but there were incontestable proofs in the shape of trenches, barbed wire and so forth pushed forward well in front of Arsiero.
Every yard of the enemy’s advance had been methodically consolidated, but nothing had stopped the rush of the Italians—their blood was up for vengeance—they were fighting on Italian soil and on their way here had passed through the devastated villages and ruined countryside, and had heard tales of outrage and infamy. ”

“ It is necessary for those who wish to have a clear understanding of Italy's share in the war to look back and realize the situation of our Italian friends when, at the most critical moment for the cause, they threw the weight of their sword into the scales. ”

“ A war of this order may be carried on for years; and, unless the Italian population shall rise en masse, it must be a mere waste of blood and time.
The true tactique of an Italian invasion is a succession of rapid, daring, and hazardous attacks. This is the dictate of experience in every example of Italian conquest. A bold rush into the interior, leaving all fortresses behind, despising the obstacles of rivers, lakes, and mountains, and only hurrying on to meet the enemy in line, has been the principle of success from the first days of the French assaults on Italy to the last. ”

“ Did Italy wish to provoke Germany, to whom she owes so much in her upward growth of a great power, and from whom she is not separated by any conflict of interests? We left Rome in no doubt that an Italian attack on Austro-Hungarian troops would also strike the German troops. [Cheers.] Why did Rome refuse so light-heartedly the proposals of Vienna? The Italian manifesto of war, which conceals an uneasy conscience behind vain phrases, does not give us any explanation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But they hadn't forgotten how to suffer and hold their tongues; how to die and take their secrets with them. The Italian war of independence was really carried on underground: it was one of those awful silent struggles which are so much more terrible than the roar of a battle. It's a deuced sight easier to charge with your regiment than to lie rotting in an Austrian prison and know that if you give up the name of a friend or two you can go back scot-free to your wife and children. And thousands and thousands of Italians had the choice given them—and hardly one went back. ”

“ The spectacle of these countless little Italian powers, racked, and torn, and blazing with pride, aggression, and disorder, within and without,—full of intrigue, anguish, and shame,—each with its petty thief or victorious faction making war upon the other, and bubbling over with local ambitions, personal rivalries, and lusts,—is a spectacle which the traveller of to-day, passing over the countless forgotten battle-fields, and hurried from one famous city to another by railroad, can scarcely conjure up. ”

“ All these young men, so full of strength and hope, may be called upon any day to defend our country, and fall in a few hours, crushed to fragments by bullets and grape-shot. Every time that you hear the cry, at a feast, ‘Hurrah for the army! hurrah for Italy!’ picture to yourself, behind the regiments which are passing, a plain covered with corpses, and inundated with blood, and then the greeting to the army will proceed from the very depths of your heart, and the image of Italy will appear to you more severe and grand. ”

“ Arise with your sabres, down with our enemies,
Arise in your glory, Italians arise
Depart from our borders, depart from our shore
Depart all ye strangers, return never more.
Our home-land so famous for poetry and singing,
Return to the days when the sabres were ringing,
Our hands that are bound with fetters so sore,
When loosened will brandish our swords once more
No fetters nor thongs will Italy endure from the strangers
Who wantonly came to our shore.
No longer will Italy be bound by the tyrants who for many
long years they have kept us their slaves. ”

“ When the Italian war began, there was little to choose between the state of the Milanese or Venetians under the Austrian yoke and that of the French in their own capital and their own provinces: and to expect us English people to march anywhere, side by side with the French, to liberate a nation from repression by a despot was to propose that we should set ourselves up for a laughing-stock to the world. ”

“ Europe was never more amazed than when, on the 6th of July, Napoleon the victor sent General Fleury to Francis Joseph the vanquished with a request for an armistice. One point only was plain; an armistice meant peace without Venetia, and never did profound sorrow so quickly succeed national joy than when this, to contemporaries astonishing intelligence, went forth. But the blow fell on no Italian with such tremendous force as on Cavour.
There are natives of Italy who appear to be more cool, more calculating, more completely masters of themselves, than the men of any other nationality. ”

“ But then, with the promise of Allied help, with the sight of even a handful of new French and British uniforms, and under the spell of the oratory of their statesmen and their journalists, things began to change and Italian hearts grew brave again.
The Italians are a mercurial people. If they are more easily cast down by defeat than we British, they are more easily encouraged by even the distant prospect of victory, and they react to influences that would leave us unmoved. ”

“ IX. Our souls have emerged fortified from the sorrow of the lost war.
One day, surely, Italy will re-echo from end to end with the great cry, "Come!"—and we shall spring to our feet, pale and proud, with the answering shout, "We are ready!"
Then, in the streets of our cities, thronged with people, with soldiers, horses, and wagons, amidst the clashing of arms and the blare of trumpets, we classmates shall meet again. ”

“ As far as we can assist in bringing about such a conclusion, we are resolved that Italian affairs shall be so resettled as that Italy may take her place amongst the great powers of Europe, even although such a termination of the struggle may not be entirely free from danger to ourselves. Such danger we are willing to confront, as believing on the whole, as far as our personal interests are concerned, that we have far more to gain than to lose from an independent Italy! ”

“ The old medieval Italians who had combated like lions against the French and Germans and against each other, when resting from the labors and the high conceptions which have left us the chief sculptures and architecture of the Peninsula, were dead; and their posterity had almost ceased to know war. Italy had indeed still remained a battle-ground, but not for Italian quarrels nor for Italian swords; the powers which, like Venice, could afford to have quarrels of their own, mostly hired other people to fight them out. ”

“ There is to-day in all that mountain country scarcely a spot upon which a bird may roost or to which a goat may climb that the Italian engineers have not conquered, and in conquering achieved so much in pressing back the detested Austrians. And with what cheerfulness, light-heartedness, courtesy, consideration for one another, devotion and loyalty are the Italians accomplishing these miracles of warfare. ”

“ What art, or what toil, Or what o'erwhelming force, Hath stripped thy robe and golden wreath from thee? How did'st thou fall, and when, From such a height unto a depth so low? Doth no one fight for thee, no one defend thee, None of thy own? Arms, arms! For I alone Will fight and fall for thee. Grant me, O Heaven, my blood Shall be as fire unto Italian hearts! Where are thy sons? I hear the sound of arms, Of wheels, of voices, and of drums; In foreign fields afar Thy children fight and fall. Wait, Italy, wait! ”

“ Towards the end of the 15th century, when the large cities had gradually swallowed up the small states, and Italy itself was drawn into the general current of European politics, and became the battlefield of powerful armies—French, Spanish and German—the condottieri, who in the end proved quite unequal to the gendarmerie of France and the improved troops of the Italian states, disappeared. ”

“ The Germans, always so invidious in pride of race, were so in Italy to a degree which goaded the Italians to desperation. The Austrians at last violated the Sardinian territory, and France declared war. The French and Italians, allies in a short campaign, drove the Austrians, with terrible slaughter out of Lombardy, and all their Italian provinces except Venice. The French emperor made peace as suddenly as he had made war. A convention at Villafranca, followed by a conference and treaty at Zurich, settled the affairs of Italy, as far as the two emperors were concerned. ”

“ On the breaking out of the Italian war, when the French crossed our frontier to plant their banner of blood and anarchy on the ramparts of Rome—to assail God's vicegerent in his own eternal city, drive the Bourbon king from Naples, hoist their red cap above the winged horse, and establish a republic of injustice and tyranny—then I once more girded on the sword, and have ever since been fighting; at one time under the chiefs of the Masse, at another under the British: but, alas! oftener under Francatripa and other bold bandits of Naples ”

“ Soldiers, you are entering the Marches and Umbria, in order to restore civil order in the desolated cities and to secure to the inhabitants the liberty to express their wishes. You have not to meet powerful armies, but only to deliver the unfortunate Italian provinces from companies of foreign adventurers. You are not going to avenge the injuries done to Italy or to me, but to hinder the popular hatred from wreaking vengeance on the oppressor. You will teach by your example pardon of offences and Christian toleration to those who compare Italian patriotism to Islamism. ”