Piedmontese

“ And of those who come here, above all I must praise the Piedmontese, who arrive in frequent cavalcades of from twenty to five-and-twenty people, to an edification which is beyond all praise; and they are munificent in the gifts they leave behind them to the Holy Place—not resembling those who are mean towards God though they will spend freely enough upon their hotel-bill. ”

“ Unsupported by Piedmontese troops, the conspirators of Milan failed to raise any open insurrection. Austrian soldiers thronged westwards from the Venetian fortresses, and entered Piedmont itself; the collapse of the Neapolitan army destroyed the hopes of the bravest patriots; and the only result of the Piedmontese movement was that the grasp of Austria closed more tightly on its subject provinces, while the martyrs of Italian freedom passed out of the sight of the world, out of the range of all human communication, buried for years to come in the silent, unvisited prison of the North. ”

“ To the men nature has been more bountiful. Though fine features are, comparatively speaking, rare, tall, well-set figures, a frank and manly bearing, might be encountered at every turning. A Piedmontese can be told at once by his open, brave, but not over-intellectual face, in which you look in vain for the chiselled contour, the thoughtful brow, and quick, restless eyes of central and southern Italy. It was interesting at the Valentino to compare the different Italian races, for every country in the Peninsula was there represented. ”

“ It is remarkable indeed that a Piedmontese, who had to teach himself classical Italian with infinite labour, and whose character possessed few distinctively national traits, should have been the reviver of the national spirit in Italy. This Alfieri unquestionably was. He had what is so deplorably wanting among the gifted men of the golden age of Italian literature, a passion for freedom and a hatred of tyranny, which impart to his works, however remote in subject from modern times, the air of indignant protests against the subjection and degradation of his country. ”

“ They gave us a dynasty—good. They also gave us a constitution, but we mean to perfect it and adapt it to the demands of progressing civilization. But in Rome Italy belongs to the Italians, not to the Piedmontese. Piedmonteseism oppresses us. Everything in the kingdom has a subalpine odor—the organic laws, bureaucratic systems, fiscal arrangements. The administrative machine is run entirely by Piedmontese. The ministers, their secretaries (with rare exceptions) , the supernumeraries who lackey these—all Piedmontese. ”

“ Politics, judicial reforms, vast public works, schemes more gigantic still of national emancipation, now hold, in the thoughts and conversation of the majority of the Piedmontese, the place which elsewhere in the Peninsula is assigned to the début of a promising singer, or the apotheosis of a new saint. In lieu of grass-grown streets and decaying palaces, new quarters are springing up in every town ”

“ There is not in Central Italy a single government that has resulted from popular election. They were all named by Piedmont—which had, as it were, packed the cards. Liberty of speech there was none, nor liberty of the press, nor personal liberty.... The Grand Duchess of Parma was expelled by a Piedmontese army, and restored by the spontaneous call of her people. ”

“ If we have heard much of the personal unpopularity of the Piedmontese in Southern Italy, it is a theme which cannot be exaggerated. There is not, perhaps, throughout Europe a people who have less in common than the sub-Alpine and the South Italian. If Garibaldi and his followers came as liberators, the Piedmontese entered Naples as conquerors. ”

“ Italy has ceased to be only a geographical name; she is now a nation whose voice is listened to at the council tables of the Great Powers.
The old terms of Piedmontese, Tuscan, Lombard, and Neapolitan, have no longer aught but a local significance; from the Alps to Tarentum every one glories in the name of free united Italy, and feels proud of being an Italian.
Young Italy is so rapidly developing the resources of her gifted people [viii] and of her fruitful lands, that she daily becomes more interesting to all who sympathize with a free and vigorous country ”

“ When we reached the farmer’s, which is a stone’s throw above our house, we were received with great enthusiasm; the only drawback being, that no one spoke French, and we did not yet speak Piedmontese. ”

“ Nothing can be more absurd and unreasonable, than the murmurs of the Piedmontese officers at the preferment of foreigners, who execute those things for the advantage of their country, of which they know themselves incapable. ”

“ The Piedmontese government stores were at his service as they were in 1860, in order to aid him in clothing and arming his volunteers. These were joined by numerous functionaries and officers of the regular army, who took no pains to conceal their Piedmontese arms and uniforms. Municipalities, at public deliberative meetings, voted subsidies to the Garibaldians, and railway managers provided them with special trains. Whilst so many things that clearly showed the complicity of Piedmont were done, Victor Emmanuel sent protestation after protestation to Paris. ”

“ In Italy the Piedmontese had, at the command of the King of Sardinia, risen en masse, but being destitute of the enthusiasm of liberty, they constituted a body without a soul. Before the middle of April, the army of the Alps amounted to 75,000 men, opposed to which were only 40,000 Piedmontese and 10,000 Austrian auxiliaries. ”

“ The Piedmontese clergy, more numerous in proportion to the population than in any state except Rome, were more intransigent than any ecclesiastical body in the world. The Italian priest of old days, whatever else might be said about him, was rarely a fanatic. The very nickname 'Ultramontane' given by Italians to the religious extremists north of the Alps, shows how foreign such excesses were to their own temperaments. But the Ultramontane spirit had already invaded Piedmont, and was embraced by its clergy with all the zeal of converts. ”

“ Stunted, shabby, rather vitiated looking, they have none of the personal richness of the sturdy Piedmontese; and I will take this occasion to remark that in the course of a journey of several weeks in the French provinces I rarely encountered a well-dressed male. ”

“ Our whole force in Italy is quite strong enough to break the Piedmontese rule if the regular army is engaged and defeated by the victorious Austrian troops, but we are not in a position to effect anything against the army of Piedmont if it is free to act against us. ”

“ The King published a proclamation, in which he said that he closed the era of revolution in Italy. Other bodies of [Pg.323] Piedmontese troops had been despatched by sea to Naples and Manfredonia. The passage of the Piedmontese troops over the Abruzzi mountains was opposed both by a division of the Bourbon army and by armed peasants, who burnt a man alive at a place called Isernia; but their advance was not long delayed.
The Neapolitans now began to retire from the right bank of the Volturno, and retreat towards the Garigliano, their last line of defence. ”

“ Except where fighting is concerned, the Piedmontese noble systematically opposes whatever Cavour proposes, and thinks it due to his caste to throw as many impediments in the way of reform as he can devise. ”

“ The Piedmontese, though otherwise good fellows, are apt to be suspicious and distrustful. He commands the horse; you know you cannot hold your tongue, and are very likely to let slip some jest or other that may vex him. ”

“ There were, indeed, to be farther collections for the Piedmontese sufferers, and new interposition in their behalf with the Duke of Savoy. Nay, by this time, the generosity of his Highness in the Piedmontese business had led to applications from distressed Protestants in other parts of Europe. ”

“ The Piedmontese had learnt the lessons of 1848-49 very differently from their critic. To them discipline was the one essential. Never again must dissension about means paralyze the country in front of the enemy. ”

“ In fact, they speak of their brothers of the South as at one time, though seldom now, the Piedmontese used to speak of the Neapolitans and the Tuscans: “Yes, they have genius, imagination, sweet speech, and amusement; but we, on the contrary, have greater force of will, greater aptitude for science, better popular education, ... ”

“ His Holiness did not deem it expedient to do some things desired by the French government. But Piedmont did a great many things which the French government had publicly declared it was opposed to. The Imperial government forbade the violation of the neutrality of the Papal States; and to this the Piedmontese government responded by occupying the Romagna. The Imperial government disapproved annexation; and the Piedmontese government only answered by accomplishing annexation. The Imperial government forbade, in threatening language, the invasion of the Marches and Umbria ”

“ To return to my first day's journey from Turin. It was a very long day's work, and we did not arrive at Asti till very late, after having performed the last hour, half in the dark, on a road which is by no means in good repute. The character of the lower class of Piedmontese is not good. They are ferocious, vindictive and great marauders. They make excellent soldiers during war and they not unfrequently, on being disbanded after peace, by way of keeping their hand in practise and of having the image of war before their eyes, ease the traveller of his coin and sometimes of his life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is so true that nations derive their character from the nature of their government, that in this same Italy, we behold a remarkable difference of manners in the different states that compose it. The Piedmontese, who formed a little national body, have a more martial spirit than all the rest of Italy; the Florentines, who have had the good fortune either to enjoy their liberty, or to be governed by liberal princes, are mild and enlightened; the Venetians and the Genoese, discover a genius for politics, because their government is a republican Aristocracy ”

“ The Bourbon Government of Naples had many faults, but the Piedmontese rule has had no successes. There is that of ungeniality in the Northern temperament that renders even favours at their hands little better than burdens, and their justice has a smack of severity in it that wonderfully resembles revenge. ”

“ On the 2nd of November the Piedmontese army, putting itself in motion, crossed the Pelice, and advanced along the narrow defile that leads up to the Valleys, having the heights of Bricherasio on the right, and the spurs of Monte Friolante on the left, with the towering [Pg 83] masses of the Vandalin and Castelluzzo in front. ”

“ The inhabitants of the north—the Piedmontese, Lombards and Genoese especially—have suffered less than those of the rest of the peninsula from foreign domination and from the admixture of inferior racial elements, and the cold winter climate prevents the heat of summer from being enervating. They, and also the inhabitants of central Italy, are more industrious than the inhabitants of the southern provinces, who have by no means recovered from centuries of misgovernment and oppression, and are naturally more hot-blooded and excitable, but less stable, capable of organization or trustworthy. ”

“ Mazzini was a native of Genoa, which ill tolerated the enforced rule of Turin. Garibaldi came from Nice, and was a child of the people. Cavour was born in the midst of that stiff aristocratical society of old Piedmont which has been described so vividly by D’Azeglio in his Ricordi. The Piedmontese nobles had the virtues and the defects of English country squires in the last century. Loyal, truthful, brave, hard-headed, tough in resistance, obstinately prejudiced, they made excellent soldiers, and were devoted servants of the crown. ”

“ The Piedmontese conquests had not been made without cost. Enormous sums had been spent in corrupting the Neapolitan people. Large amounts were still scattered throughout the annexed provinces, in order to maintain their loyalty to the new power; and the press was liberally subsidized, both in Italy and abroad. For such heavy expenditure money must be had. Rem! quomodocunque modo rem! An expedient which occurs so readily to revolutions was had recourse to. The properties of the convents and the treasures of the churches were seized. ”

“ The French vernacular of thousands of Piedmontese is furthermore related to the cause of Protestantism, which has taken solid root in this mountain land in spite of the persecutions to which it had been formerly subjected. As used by the natives of the region the local dialect consists, more properly, of a modern form of an old langue d’oc dialect similar to the patois of various districts in the French High Alps. To the Protestant inhabitants of these mountain communities French has served as the only medium of intercourse with their co-religionists in Switzerland and France. ”

“ This measure called forth a letter from Mazzini to Cavour, dated June 1858, in which the writer exhibits his own character and system as truly as he describes that of his antagonist, and which is one of the most expressive documents of the Italian movement.
"I have long known you," he begins, "more solicitous for the Piedmontese monarchy than for our common country, a materialist worshipper of the event more than of any sacred and eternal principle, a man of an ingenious rather than a powerful mind. ”