3 NOVEMBER 1855, Page 16

OALLENOA'S HISTORY OF PIEDMONT.'

THE interest of this work is marred by an ineffective display of the materials at the author's disposal. Signor Gallenga opens too far beyond the beginning. The disquisitional account of Piedmont from before the Etruscan tera till the premonitory symptoms of the downfall of Rome encumbers the story. The survey of the states of Italy, or rather of Western Europe, from the fifth to the eleventh century, is a good deal larger than Piedmont or Savoy ; but a part of it was necessary to understand the formation of those feudal states, half-noble half-regal, of which Savoy was one. In his preface, the author seems to intimate that his main object is to describe the formation of the Piedmontese people. As this forma- tion began at the very furthest with the Restoration of 1814-'15, his true theme occupies but a small apace in a period of eight hun- dred years. In reality, however, the people, or topics connected with the people,---arts, literature, commerce, agriculture, manners —are scarcely touched. One half of the work, covering about five hundred years of time, is occupied with the personal characters and changing fortunes of little more than feudal pobles. Properly treated, their characters and fortunes would have possessed inte- rest; for, continually pressed by superior powers—France, Spain, or the German Empire through its Italian dominions—the princes of the house of Savoy could only escape destruction by balancing their enemies one against the other, with a prudent sagacity not unmixed with deceit. Their story, however, required a clear and simple statement. The author has encumbered it with collateral family details, and proceeded upon a bad plan. A period is not ended and dismissed, but partially treated and suspended, for re- vival under some other head. This puzzling method is indeed fol- lowed throughout; and the reader having, as he thought, left a reign behind, is suddenly surprised to find himself plunged into it again. The house of Savoy dates from about the middle of the eleventh century ; when Hubert, Rupert, or Humbert—apparently some military adventurer—rendered great assistance to the Emperor Conrad the Second, and in return was created Count of Burgundy, having previously been only Count of Salmonrec, or, as some say, Maurienne. The marriage of his son Oddo with Adelaide, daughter of the Count of Turin, gave the family territorial claims on the Ita- lian side of the Alps. During the confusion of that troubled period, and by bringing might to the aid of right, the future house con- trived to acquire dominions both in France and Italy as large as it has since held, if not larger. For the reason already mentioned, that the territory of the Dukes of Savoy lay between states much more powerful, and not restrained by any public law or the " ba- lance of power," the fortunes of the house were frequently fluctu- ating, sometimes prosperous, sometimes at a very low ebb, some- times almost destroyed. The males of the race were mostly brave, active, and able—successful in matrimony, war, and diplomatic business : but even such as they could not always make head against adverse circumstances. A weak or rash prince brought the state to the verge of ruin. The actions, however, in which they were engaged as princes, and the acquisitions they made or the losses they incurred, were too small and remote to have much attraction for English readers, especially when loaded with detail ; a better plan and a more spirited treatment might have sustained attention, not as history, but as a story of family adventure and progress. The proper history of Piedmont, or rather of the house of Savoy, begins with Emanuel Philibert, 1553-4580. That prince may be said to have started in life as a military adventurer. His father, Charles the Third, had lost everything, the French having devas- tated and occupied his territories. The son rose to high command in the service of Philip the Second ; and when the rightful Duke of Savoy gained the battle of St. Quintin, France was eventually comkelled to restore his dominions. His abilities consolidated and reanimated his states ; his prudence and self-control resisted the temptation of extending his dominions by violence, that might end in general war ; and he died the real father of his house if not of his country. His great grandson, Victor Amadeus the Second, the ally of Queen Anne and the colleague of Eugene, was about the ablest and craftiest of his crafty race; but there were great excuses for his diplomacy. The arrogant oppression of Louis the Fourteenth threatened him with destruction by united force and guile. Austria, more cowardly and deceitful, would have used him • History of Piedmont. By Antonio Gallenga. In three volumes. Published by Chapman and Hall.

for her purposes, and having got from him what she could, would have left him to shift for himself. With his territory overrun, his capital besieged, his soldiers disarmed by his late ally Louis, and forced into the French army, he yet, aided by the subsidies of England, emerged from all his difficulties, and became, in 1718, King of Sardinia. His descendants occupied the throne till 1831, when the present collateral line succeeded in the person of Charles Albert.

Throughout the three hundred years which have elapsed since the accession of Emanuel Philibert to the present time, great his- torical events have occurred in which Sardinia has been con- spicuously. engaged ; but even in the large occurrences of history the sovereign is the great figure, or is made so by Gallenga. Per- haps, however, he is really so and of necessity. Before the charter of Charles Albert, the government was a despotism, sometimes pa- ternal, mostly national, but always centering everything in the King. The weakest princes seem to have taken their own way, which led them often into difficulties. Even the predecessor of Charles Albert, the last of his race, low in tastes and character as he was, had the family trait of an independent will.

"He was a strange compound of gloomy indolence and sullen epicurism. He thought his kingly rank did not entitle people 'to bore him.' (Non Bono Re per easer seccato.) Even the army, the favourite toy of all the Savoy princes, had no attraction for him. He was seldom seen on horseback ; hardly ever donned a uniform. He bestowed great care on the navy, and gave his sailors a good opportunity of earning distinction by the bombard- ment of Tripoli in 1825. For the rest, he was unnational enough to say that 'Austria held half a million bayonets in her pay quite at his service, and he needed no other troops.' Neither was he a great lover of priests or monks, though be was compelled to allow them an unbounded control over his sub- jects. He had a taste for the drama and opera, and still more for ballets and pantomimes. Evening after evening he sat in his box, at Genoa or Nice, his favourite sojourns, leering at the dancing-girls, munching grissini,—the famed Piedmontese crisp-baked bread,—and napping. * * *

" Yet flashes of a generous nature were not unfrequent in him, nor, with all his surliness and moroseness, was he altogether destitute of some of the most striking qualities of his family. There was the characteristic obstinacy and self-will, the reluctance to give in to officious suggestions. He was sig- nificantly reminded by one of his courtiers, that a person upon whom he bad just bestowed a pension was a relative of Lauer', an officer who had been

put to death for high treason, after the events of 1821. had forgotten the circumstance,' observed the King ; call the man back.' The petitioner was recalled, and the pension was doubled."

" In life's last scene what prodigies surprise !" After steering through all the depths and shoals of the wars of Louis the Four- teenth, and facing in the field the ablest of his Marshals, Victor the Second was wrecked by doting. At sixty-four he married the widow of Count St. Sebastiano—an old flame of his youth, whom he created Marchioness of Spigno. Tired of business, and devoting himself to this new bride, he resigned the throne to his son, Charles Ema- nuel, after the manner of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, in spite of the entreaties of that son and the remonstrances of his sub- jects. But in a few months, weary of inaction, or stirred up by the ambition of the Marchioness, who wished to be a real Queen, Victor announced his intention to resume the sceptre. Charles, a submissive son, called his Council together, and intimated his willingness to resign, but that he did not deem himself authorized to do so without their assent. The laymen were apprehensive, but silent. The Archbishop Gattinara spoke out.

"Gattinara strongly and at full length demonstrated the unreason- ableness of Victor's pretensions ; , when, at his persuasion, it was unani- mously resolved that the tranquillity of the country did not admit of a re- peal of that King's act of abdication. The apprehension of Victor Amadeus was next moved.

"Whilst they were yet deliberating, a note was handed to the King, by which the Baron of St. Remy, commander of the citadel of Turin, announced that at midnight 'Victor had come from Moncalieri, on horseback, followed by a single aide-de-camp, and asked for admittance into the fortress. The commander had firmly but respectfully answered that the gates of the citadel could not be opened without an order from the King ; whereupon the old King, in a towering passion, had turned his horse's head back to Moncalieri.

"This last proof of Victor's readiness to resort to extreme measures de- termined the still wavering minds in the King's Council. An order of arrest against Victor was drawn up, which Charles Emanuel signed with trembling hand, with tears in his eyes.

"The Marquis of Ormea, who had been raised to power by the father, who now conducted the affairs of the son, and was more than any man im- plicated in these fatal differences between them, took the warrant from Charles's reluctant hands, and, on the night of the 27th to the 28th of Sep- tember, [1731,] repaired to Moncalieri.

"He had encompassed the castle with troops, summoned from the neigh- bourhood of the capital, and charged four colonels with the conduct of the dangerous expedition.

" These walked without resistance into the old King's apartments ; where he was found plunged in one of his fits of sound, lethargic sleep, by the aide of the woman who had wrought all the misery that awaited him. The Mar- chioness awoke and bounded up with a scream ; but she was hurried away in her scanty night attire, and conveyed first to a nunnery at Carignano, then to a state prison at the Castle of Ceva. Not a few of her relatives and par- tisane were arrested in the course of the same night.

"The Chevalier Solaro, one of the colonels, next proceeded to possess him- self of the King's sword, which lay the table by his bedside ; and at length succeeded, not without great difficulty, in breaking the King's heavy slum- bers.

" Victor sat up in his bed he looked hard at the faces of his disturbers, and inquired on what errand they came : on hearing it, he burst into a pa- roxysm of fury ; he refused to accompany them, to dress, to rise from his bed. They had to wrap him in his bedclothes, and thus to force him from the chamber.

" It was a painful and an anxious moment. The soldiers had been chosen for their character of reliable steadiness and discipline, but were not proof against the passionate appeals of the man who had so often led them to vic- tory. Murmurs were heard from the midst of them, and a regiment of dra- goons, addressed by Victor in the courtyard, gave signs of open mutiny. The Colonel, Count of Perosa, however, with great presence of mind, ordered silence in the King's name, and under penalty of death, and drowned the old King's voice by a roll of the drums. They thus shut him up in one of the Court carriages, into which he would admit no companion, and followed him on horseback with a large escort to the Castle of Riveli.

" Itivoli was for some time a very hard prison to Victor Amadeus, with bars at the windows, a strong guard at the doors, and unbroken silence and solitude within. His frequent fits of ungovernable rage made his keepers apprehensive that reason had forsaken him ; and they treated him, though with marked respect, yet with untiring watchfulness, as a maniac. They show still—or at least they showed till lately—a marble table which the strong old man cracked with his doubled fist in one of his paroxysms of an- guish and fury. By degrees, however, loneliness and confinement did their work, and the storm of angry passions subsided into the calmness of deep-set melancholy. The rigour of his captivity slackened, though by no means the vigilance of his gaolers. He was allowed the use of books and papers, and intercourse with friends ; presently, also, the soothing company of the Mar- chioness, the fair tempter who had wrought him all this wo. At his own request he was removed to Moncalieri, as he complained of the keen air of Riven : but the infirmities from which he was suffering sprang from other sources than inclemency of sky or climate. His mind and body were equally shattered under the consequences of the violent scenes he had passed through. He now turned his thoughts to Heaven, and prepared for coming death. He wished for a reconciliation with his son, and, through the confessor that this latter had sent him, sued for an interview. Charles Emanuel instantly ordered his carriage to the palace-door, and wished to hasten to his father's summons. But his Ministers and the Queen had most probably a strong in- terest—and by their remonstrances they had the power—to prevent an en- counter which might lead to disagreeable explanations. The carriage was countermanded. The King shed tears, but father and son never met again in this world."

The style of this work is frequently involved or lame, like that of a foreigner unaccustomed to write in English. And we may observe that the national and Italian character are both rather too conspicuous in the narrative. The persecutions of the Waldenses are passed over too lightly; and if a Machiavellian policy is not praised, it is scarcely censured.