Kingdom of Italy

“ Never had Italy been brought more completely under foreign dominion. ♦Revival of the Italian name.♦ Still, in a part at least of the land, the name of Italy, and the shadow of a Kingdom of Italy, had been revived.{255} ♦Its effects.♦ And, as names and shadows are not without influence in human affairs, the mere existence of an Italian state, called by the Italian name, did something. The creation of a sham Italy was no unimportant step towards the creation of a real one. ”

“ CHAPTER XV THE MEETING OF THE WATERS 1860 Garibaldi's March on Naples—The Piedmontese in Umbria and the Marches—The Volturno—Victor Emmanuel enters Naples.
The Italian kingdom is the fruit of the alliance between the strong monarchical principles of Piedmont and the dissolvent forces of revolution. ”

“ The chief Italian powers, hitherto kept in equipoise by the diplomacy of Lorenzo de' Medici, were these—the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Florence, the Papacy, and the kingdom of Naples. Minor States, such as the Republics of Genoa and Siena, the Duchies of Urbino and Ferrara, the Marquisate of Mantua, the petty tyrannies of Romagna, and the wealthy city of Bologna, were sufficiently important to affect the balance of power, and to produce new combinations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Italy was later than any other land of Europe in settling down into the national boundaries which remained without any break of importance until the Great War. We may indeed say that the very idea of Italy as a single nation had scarcely existed before the year 1830 or thereabouts. Men did not regard Italy as a unit; but thought of Tuscany, of Venice, of the Papal States, of the Kingdom of Naples, and so on. ”

“ The war of investitures, which lasted more than sixty years, accomplished the dissolution of every tie between the different members of the kingdom of Italy. Civil wars have at least this advantage,—that they force the rulers of the people to consult the wishes of their subjects, oblige them to gain affections which constitute their strength, and to compensate, by the granting of new privileges, the services which they require. The prelates, nobles, and cities of Italy obeyed, some the emperor, others the pope ”

“ Internal Administration.—It was not till 1865 that the administrative unity of Italy was realized. Up to that year some of the regions of the kingdom, such as Tuscany, continued to have a kind of autonomy; but by the laws of the 20th of March the whole country was divided into 69 provinces and 8545 communes. The extent to which communal independence had been maintained in Italy through all the centuries of its political disintegration was strongly in its favour. ”

“ If Pius IX. refuses, the Italian people does not therefore draw back. Nothing remains to the free people of Italy, except to unite in one constitutional kingdom, founded on the largest basis; and if the chief who, by our assemblies, shall be called to the highest honor, either declines or does not answer worthily, the people will take care of itself. ”

“ In more recent times the small states of Italy were continually involved in the wars which devastated Europe, and passed in alliance or in subordination into the hands of Austria, France, and Spain alternately. The last 50 years have seen the unification of the kingdom. After the abortive movement of Mazzini came Cavour and Garibaldi, who, after severe struggles against the Austrians in the North and the despots of Southern Italy, proclaimed Victor Emmanuel king of Italy in 1861. ”

“ Napoleon, far more Italian than French, Italian by race, instinct, imagination, and souvenirs, considers in his plan the future of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France. "Napoleon wanted to create the Italian kingdom over again,5143 combining Piedmont, Tuscany, etc., in one united independent nation, bounded by the Alps and the sea.... This was to be the immortal trophy erected in his honor.... ”

“ If Italy was to be one, all parts of it must be placed under the same laws, and that at once.
On the 11th of October the Sardinian parliament sitting at Turin passed all but unanimously the motion authorising the King's Government to accept the annexation of those Italian provinces which [Pg.322] manifested, by universal suffrage, their desire to form part of the Constitutional Monarchy. Cavour's speech on this occasion was memorable: 'Rome,' he said, 'would inevitably become the splendid capital of the Italian kingdom, but that great result would be reached by means of moral force ”

“ Even though the palsied hand of England—filled with robber gold—be held out to her, Italy’s vows, Italy’s sense of obligation, Italy’s word once given, can never be broken. Such a nation of noblemen could have no dealings with hucksters. ”

“ What if some nation, fresh from the woods and fields of the childhood of its growth, come with overwhelming yet preserving strength and infuse new blood into the withered veins of its predecessor? This is the problem we now have before us. How many writers of Italian history have entitled this chapter in its development "A new Italian Nation formed"! It is not the old glories of Rome, which had been Italy, returning; it is a new Italian nation formed. Each word tells a story of its own. It is not the old galvanized to a second life ”

“ When the prophecy of Garibaldi shall be fulfilled, when the priests, with spades in their hands, shall dig ditches to drain the Pontine marshes, when the monasteries shall be factories, when the whirling wheels of industry shall drown the drowsy and hypocritical prayers, then and not till then, will Italy be great and free. Italy is the only instance in our history and in the history of the world, so far as we know, of the resurrection of a nation. She is the first fruits of them that sleep. ”

“ There was a confederacy dreamed of in his day—Genoa, Milan, and Venice; Florence, Sienna, and Bologna. One rampart to the rolling Alps, one wall on which barbarian hordes might burst and waste themselves in foam. Northwards, a baffled sea; south, all Italy a tranquil haven, a watered garden, where knowledge with all its flowers should find space, and breathing-space to grow. Dost thou love Italy? Then why not a republic, Galeazzo?'
The Duke, as utterly impassive as if he were deaf, turned musingly to Lascaris. ”

“ During subsequent visits to Florence and San Remo he was received with demonstrations of popular respect, and at the latter place, shortly after his final retirement from office in 1866, he said, in reply to an address: ‘I thank you with all my heart for the honour you have done me. I rejoice with you in seeing Italy free and independent, with a monarchical government and under a patriotic king. The Italian nation has all the elements of a prosperous political life, which had been wanting for many centuries. ”

“ Sire, have you never cast an eagle glance upon this Italy, so fair with nature's smile, crowned by twenty centuries of noble memory, the land of genius, strong in the infinite resources that only want a common purpose, girt round with barriers so impregnable, that it needs but a firm will and a few brave breasts to shelter it from foreign insult? Place yourself at the head of the nation, write on your flag, 'Union, Liberty, Independence.' Free Italy from the barbarian, build up the future, be the Napoleon of Italian freedom. ”

“ CONCLUSION.—Although there has been much antagonism between the Vatican and the Quirinal, that is, between the Pope and the Italian government, still reform and progress have marked Italian affairs since the events of 1870. A public system of education has been established; brigandage has been suppressed; agriculture has been encouraged; while the naval and military resources of the peninsula have been developed to such an extent that Italy, so recently the prey of foreign sovereigns, of petty native tyrants, and of adventurers, is now justly regarded as one of the great powers of Europe. ”

“ We desire to renew and strengthen the old union with all the principalities and states of Holy Italy, and to deliver Holy Italy itself from its condition of abject subjection and to restore it to its old state and to its ancient glory. ”

“ Centuries of division, of shameful subjection to foreign princes,—French,
Spanish, and Austrian,—of wars and suffering, were yet before the Italian
people ere Rome should become the centre of a free, orderly, and united
Italy.
THE RENAISSANCE.—Though the Middle Ages closed in Italy without the rise there of a national government, still before the end of the period much had been done to awaken those common ideas and sentiments upon which political unity can alone safely repose. Literature and art here performed the part that war did in other countries in arousing a national spirit. ”

“ Italy, isolated between her natural limits, is destined to form a great and powerful nation. Italy is one nation; unity of customs, language and literature must, within a period more or less distant, unite her inhabitants under one sole government. And Rome will, without the slightest doubt, be chosen by the Italians as their capital.'
Unlike Dante and Machiavelli, who could only sow the seed, not gather the fruit, the man who wrote these lines might have made them a reality. ”

“ From the time of the fall of the Roman Empire until late in the nineteenth century, a period of some fourteen hundred years, Italy remained disunited, divided up between a series of states, small and large, hostile and peaceful, while its territory was made the battlefield of the surrounding powers, the helpless prey of Germany, France, and Spain. ”

“ Thus we trust in the nation itself, honestly proud of its own nationality, to no longer make a point of honour of sanguinary attempts against the Italian nation, but rather to perceive that its true honour lies in recognising Italy as a sister.'
The Emperor received the bearer of the letter with coldness, and referred him to his ministers, who simply called his attention to the fact that the Pope owed the Temporal Power to the same treaties as those which gave Austria the possession of Lombardy and Venetia. ”

“ Oh, Florry, does not your heart yearn toward benighted Italy? Italy, once so beautiful and noble—once the acknowledged mistress of the world, as she sat in royal magnificence enthroned on her seven hills; now a miserable waste, divided between petty sovereigns, and a by-word for guilt and degradation! The glorious image lies a ruin at our feet: for the spirit that gave beauty and strength, and shed a halo of splendor round its immortal name, has fled afar, perhaps forever ”

“ The fact that the same person should be the vice-gerent of the Almighty upon earth, and at the same time a petty Italian prince, is the true explanation of the miseries of Italy for many a century. It is on account of the intestine divisions caused by the presence of that great theocratic functionary, that Italy has been, in turn, the spoil of the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the German. ”

“ Italy comprised many nations; twenty republics had each their own laws, their own interests, and their own history. Those perpetual wars between the citizens of the same cities; those animosities between republic and republic; that necessity of the inhabitants for calling in strangers in their internal quarrels; those mistrusts which bore harder upon the citizens than upon the stipendiary adventurers, tended to efface the true sentiment of patriotism, and at length caused even the name of the Italian nation to be forgotten. ”

“ Out of these and Dante sprang Young Italy. Italy was ripe for the teaching of the epoch-making society. The country was "a geographical expression." Conquerors, whose appetites had been tempted by the Southern land, had carved it into appanages for themselves. Austria held Lombardy and the lands of the Venetian republic; the King of Piedmont ruled the North-West, and Sardinia, and Savoy across the Alps; the Bourbons of Naples had the South; the Pope, the grand-duke of Tuscany, the petty dukes of Modena, Parma, and Lucca divided up the Centre. Nor had there been any serious demand for unity. ”

“ As for Rome and Italy, their temporal prosperity, so far from being sacrificed, would be promoted, by the re-establishment of the pontifical state and the overthrow of the visionary fabric of Cavour and Mazzini. We certainly desire to see all just national aspirations of the Italians satisfied. We are glad that Austrian domination in Italy has ceased. But all history seems to show that a confederate unity of distinct states is the only order suited to Italy, and that a monarchical unification is foreign and hostile to the genius and conditions of the Italian people. ”

“ Tradition has marked out and defined the characteristics of a high mission more distinctly in Italy than elsewhere. We alone, among the nations that have expired in the past, have twice arisen in resurrection and given new life to Europe. The innate tendency of the Italian mind always to harmonize thought and action confirms the prophecy of history, and points out the rôle of Italy in the world to be a work of moral unification,—the utterance of the synthetic word of civilization. ”