PARTIES AND AFFAIRS IN ITALY.
IL—Tan WAR.
When Charles Albert entered Lombardy, victory was almost in our hands, the ground was everywhere our own. In Lombardy, the Austrians, terror-struck and demoralized, had taken refuge in the three fortresses. In Venetia, the for- tresses themselves were ours. The struggle, from one end of the territory to the other, had cost our enemies more than 20,000 men. Our volunteers, formed in moving columns, scoured the country, but not an Austrian was to be found; they pushed on to the Italian Tyrol, where the insurrection received them with open arms. Arms were wanting; but they could be purchased as quickly as they were required, in Switzerland, and the manufactories of Brescia could be imme- diately put again into active operation. Men did not fail us; in those days of exaltation every citizen was a soldier, ready to march. The popular movement had so inspired our Italian youth, that as many volunteers as could possibly have been required would have been readily at our service. Already they began to ar- rive; they would have joined us in numbers from Switzerland; they sent to offer themselves from France. The elite of our youth, whom preceding struggles had condemned to exile, had produced a number of officers experienced in iusurrec- tionary warfare; they were spread throughout Europe, but were in the greatest force in Spain, whence an official appeal would have brought them in a few days. The Austrian army was numerically weak ; 40,000 men at the most. What was requisite was, to prevent them from receiving reinforcements, to close the passes of the Alps, and to starve them in their fortresses. Charles Albert led into Lombardy an army superior in numbers to that which the Austrians maintained within the lines of their strongholds. Nevertheless, the war was lost. What were the causes of its failure?
These it is almost impossible to explain shortly to any one who has not actually witnessed, as we have done, the course of this work of dissolution and of ruin which has been accomplished in Lombardy; but to all those who have had the opportunity of studying recent events upon the very scene of the struggle, it has become apparent that this has been the work of the Moderate party. A dynastic project substituted for the insurrectionary Republican idea—the egotistical notion of the Monarchical aggrandizement of the house of Savoy taking the place of the great national idea—the poor tactics of a timid and ignorant party gradually sup- planting the enthusiasm of a nation—here lies the secret of our defeat. The character of the Lombard movement was essentially Republican. It was so, by the absence of any local monarchical element; it was so, by the tendencies of the youth who had fought at the barricades, and almost all of whom had been prepared for the struggle by the labour of secret Republican associations; it was so, by the instincts and habits of equality which rale the people. The aristocracy, which possess in Lombardy scarcely a sixth of the soil, had taken an initiative only a very short time before the insurrection ; and it was precisely by showing
the Republic to be inevitable at Milan, and, by a natural consequence, at Turin also if Lombardy should be left to her own resources, that it had succeeded in gaining over Charles Albert. The natural tendency of the movement was so clearly recognized by the King and by his party, that they did not dare to name the opposite principle at Milan. The King declared that be would not enter the city until after victory ; and his party, then powerless, resolved to manceuvre, and to seek by trickery and conspiracy to gain that which they dared not seize upon at once. This dynastic conspiracy lost the war.
The men who had directed the insurrection abdicated too generously after the triumph. A Provisional Government had been formed, composed of men known by some acts of legal opposition to Austrian misrule; the majority of them par- ties to the Monarchical plot. The minority consisted of the priest Anelli, the Marquis Guerrieri, and the secretary Correnti: the first, a pure and noble soul, but little fitted by his habits of life for such a struggle ; the second, good, but feeble; the third, gifted with intelligence and with great activity and energy, but inclining by I know not what fatal attraction to the spirit of intrigue, fascinated by the complexity of a system of mere tactics, having little faith, living more by the brain than by the heart, and more adapted to be the head of a parliamentary opposition under an artificial regime than to be the guide of a people in revolt, capable of achieving great things only through the worship of truth and by en- thusiasm and faith. This Provisional Government soon became the servile instru- ment of the Moderate party.
From the first, the objections which the Moderate party opposed to the Italian and Republican tendencies, were those of time and opportunity ; they put in a dilatory plea to their demands. "Behold a King," said they," who comes to assist us: we cannot in conscience proclaim a principle opposed to that which guides his army. Let us postpone the question. Let us put the political question on one side. Let us have but one standard, that of independence. Let us address our- selves to ties war: that ended, a Lombardo-Venetian Constituent Assembly will decide the litical question." This programme of political neutrality was pro- mulgated in two proclamations of the Provisional Government. Charles Albert declared his solemn adhesion to it. It was universally accepted ; for it was just. And had it been maintained in good faith, Austria would not now be reigning in Milan. But all the tactics of the Moderate party were employed to prepare men's minds for its violation. And there was not a single element of the war in which these tactics did not serve toplant the germs of dissolution and death.
There were two elements of war in Lombardy; the people, and the Piedmontese army; the insurrectionary element, and the regular strategetic element. It was necessary to combine them for a common end. There were two arenas appro- priate for these two elements; the plain, and the mountains; strong' places to be taken, and the defiles of the Alps to be kept. The regular military element had its principal mission marked oat between Peschiera and Mantua, and in the Vene- tian territory. The insurrectionary element, the youth, the volunteers, were admirably adapted by their enthusiasm, by their habits of the chase, and by their sympathy with the peasant populations for Alpine warfare. Their instincts urged them thither. " To the Alps! to the Alps!" was the general cry of the Lom- bard youth, and of the bands of volunteers who came from Genoa, Tuscany, and Romagna. Their vanguard was already revolutionizing the TyroL The Val- telline, Friuli, all Upper Lombardy, constituted the true line of operations for the popular army. On the Alps, beneath the bright heavens, our Italian youth, burn- ing with courage, panting with the love of glory and of poetry, would have wrought great things. But this youth had been won, as we have said, to Republican ten- dencies: it was necessary to repress its enthusiasm, to prevent it from acquiring more and more a consciousness of its own power, to snatch it from the chiefs which it bad chosen for itself, to cast discouragement and doubt amongst its ranks; or else to fashion it to the passive obedience of military rule, or to disperse it in the Royal regiments of Piedmont. And therefore war was declared against the volunteers,—a war both moral and material ; moral, by the discredit and the calumnies which were thrown upon them; material, by the want of provisions which should have been furnished to them, by the systematic disorder carried into everything which concerned their arming and equipments. They complained, and were accused of exigence and want of discipline; they endeavoured to provide for themselves, and were accused of pillage. At last they were recalled to Brescia, for the purpose of reorganizing them as it was said, but in reality iu order to accomplish their dissolution. Piedmontese officers, Pied- montese uniforms, and the pay of Piedmontese soldiers, were offered to them: they replied, that in the face of Italy they were and wished to be Italians, but that if Piedmont alone were presented to them as a country, they were still Lom- bards. Great numbers of them dispersed, and went to spread complaint, distrust, and discouragement, where there was the greatest need of unity and confidence. Others after a time accepted the conditions of service ; but the necessary arrange- ments were carried out so tardily and with such a want of skill on the part of the Piedmontese Ministers of War, that they were not completed when the war ended. The Provisional Government, inspired by the dynastic idea, had decided that to succeed in the Monarchical annexation of Lombardy to Piedmont, it was necessary that the victory upon which they counted should be owing to the Piedmontese army alone. This idea exercised a fatal influence upon the war in yet another manner. Every enterprise must necessarily be directed, whether voluntarily or not, in accordance with its own principle. The popular principle had at once carried the war into the Tyrol; the dynastic principle was op- posed to this. On the one hand, the Tyrolean insurrection had adopt- ed the Republican standard; it was therefore not to be encouraged: on the other hand, there were diplomatic difficulties, in the badly-founded pretensions of the Germanic Confederation. It would have been politic for us to have braved them; it was not so for the King: determined upon avoid- ing at any price the aid of the French Republic, and not choosing to avail him- selfi of the insurrectionary enthusiasm of our Italian masses, it was necessary for him to diplomatize, to negotiate, to avoid the European question, and to create as few enemies as possible. The Tyrolean insurrection was consequently abandoned and betrayed; the brave mountaineers, who had risen at our approach, were ob- liged to emigrate. The same fate awaited Venetia. There also the people had risen up to the cry of "St. Mark and the Republic!" Monarchy could not fra- ternize with Venice, and desired that she might be made to feel her weakness, in order that she might be compelled to invoke the support and accept the condi- tions tittered to her. Those who have studied step by step the campaign of 1848, cannot fail to have become convinced of the existence of this system of tactics, in which General Durando lost for ever his well-earned reputation. With the serceptiowof one hundred men in the artillery service at Palmanova, not a single detachment of the Royal Army seconded the efforts of Venice; and the doubtful attitude and the inexplicable hesitation of Durando, and the con- tempt which he affected for the Roman and other volunteers whom he led, neutralized the good spirit of the populations, sowed the seeds of mistrust, and caused the terror-stricken abandonment of the Venetian towns. The irritation of the Moderate party against this Italian population, which had dared to carry out its own principle of action, was indeed truly dishonourable. Calumnies which would have come better from an Austrian pen continually ap- peared in the hired journals of the Piedmontese Monarchical party, against this heroic city, which yet sustains alone the standard of Italy against Austria, and which shows what a spirit of devotion can accomplish in a single town when in- trigue is banished from its walls. The same principle of aversion to the Repub- lican tendency which procured the dispersion of the volunteers, caused the Tyrol to- be abandoned, and sacrificed Venetia, could not but serve also to repel the aid of the foreign enrolments of volunteers. Two thousand Swiss from the Canton of Vand were refused ; the dominant ideas of the Canton were suspected. Two thousand Corsicana were refused: they feared a double purpose in the man who brought their offers of assistance. Their dread of the French volunteers was such, that the envoy of the Provisional Government at Paris was charged to do everything in his power to prevent their Betting out; and the same alarm extended even to the Italian volunteers coming from France. An Italian legion, formed at Paris and commanded by General Antonini, was thrown back upon Venice, and it was not even wished that it should peas by Milan. The nucleus of a Polish column, headed by the poet Mickiewicz, was not allowed to add to its numbers, nor was it formally accepted till towards the end of the war. But this was not the worst. Distinguished Italian officers, men covered with decorations and with wounds received in Spain, and recalled by official letters which I myself had, I may say, extorted from the Provisional Government immediately upon my reach- ing Italy, were upon their arrival shamefully repulsed. One of them, Colonel Cialdini, received afterwards an almost fatal wound as a simple volunteer in the ranks of the defenders of the Venetian territory. Whilst all these things were being enacted, whilst every element likely to be useful to the country was being eliminated, whilst the enthusiasm of the popula- tions was being destroyed, and the Italian war in Lombardy denaturalized, by reducing it to the mean proportions of a war between the house of Savoy and Austria, what was the Piedmontese army doing? Was it doing that which it prevented others from doing ? was it closing to the enemy the passes of the Alps? was it preventing the arrival of reinforcements? was it cutting off the comma- nication between the Empire and the demoralized fraction of its army which was shut up in its fortresses?—No; it remained stationary, exposed to all the conse- quences of inaction and to the inroads of sickness, between Peschiera and Man_ tun. Not a Piedmontese regiment stirred beyond that line.
As a natural consequence of this inaction, discouragement soon found its way into the heart of this brave army. Mistrust entered amongst its ranks. The resources of Lombardy were becoming exhausted, without being replaced by the efforts of an enthusiasm which it was impossible that this kind of war could create. And the chiefs of the Moderate party, in what were they em. ploying themselves? They were occupied in creating a party for Charles Albert; they had invented the " Italy of the North," the kingdom of Upper Italy, the " fusion," as they were pleased to term it; and they speculated, strange and mournful though it appear, upon the disorganization of the insur- rectionary movement, upon the symptoms of defeat which were beginning to manifest themselves, to insure the triumph of their cherished idea. They said to some—" If Charles Albert does not triumph, it is because he is uncertain of the reward of victory ": to others—" Our funds are becoming exhausted ; but if we proclaim the union of Lombardy with the Sardinian territory, Genoa will supply us ": to all—" This is no question of subalteruizing Lombardy to Piedmont, but rather of conquering Piedmont itself. Milan will be the capital of Upper Italy; a Constituent Assembly, democracy, universal suffrage, you will have them all." Gioberti did not scruple to become the commis-voyageur of this would-be king- ship; and whilst the Austrians were regaining their courage, strengthening their army, reconquering one after the other the Venetian towns, and changing their role of pure defence into one of attack, these men were endeavouring to win over the ignorant peasants to their favourite plan of an "Italy of the North," and to calumniate the Republicans under the walls of Milan. They conspired to make the misled populations accept their decree of the 12th of May, by which, in breaking their solemnly sworn programme of political neutrality, they called upon the country to vote for the Piedmontese Royalty without discussion, by a silent vote, similar to that which gave the Empire to France. Their narrow and shortsighted intellects could not comprehend that the only way of realizing their project was to make Charles Albert the prince of the Revolution, the man of the war of the People, the soldier of Italian Democracy.
The dream of an " Italy of the North " changed the character of the war out of Lombardy, as the Monarchical idea had effaced and marred its popular character within. It furnished to the King of Naples, to the Pope, to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the best possible pretext for detaching themselves from an Italian coali- tion to which the noble burst of popular enthusiasm had urged and driven them. "How," said they, "you speak to us of an Italian crusade against the barbarian, and it is only for the aggrandizement of the house of Savoy that you call upon us to fight: it is to satisfy a local ambition, to create not an Italy, but a Monarchi- cal Italy of the North, which will give law to that of the Centre and of the South." It was this of which the papers of the party most imprudently boasted, saying, " When we are twelve millions we will give the law." The promulgation of this fatal idea, which founded the regeneration of Italy upon the ascendancy of Charles Albert, was the signal for a general coolness, and for a decided antagonism be- tween the North and the South of Italy. It was afterwards, when the deception was consummated, the cease of a discord which had not been desired or foreseen by any one, between the Piedmontese and the Lombards themselves.
The deception was rapidly accomplished. The people abdicated, the fusion was voted, the party triumphed, but the nation succumbed. The absence of all active warfare, and of any important military operations, had spread discouragement in the army ; the violation of all the promises by means of which the votes of the people had been obtained, had sown mistrust and suspicion in their hearts. The Provisional Government had fallen into the most absolute discredit. Not know- ing how to sustain itself any longer,* ........ . . . . . it fell back in the moat cowardly manner upon those who had predicted all from the first: it addressed itself, possibly with the idea of ultimately laying upon them the burden of defeat, to the Republicans: it called upon them to save the country. The Republicans gave them three men, whose measures reanimated the popular courage, and awakened a fresh spirit of action. The levy en masse was proclaimed; Milan prepared itself for a popular defence by its barricades, in the name of the memories of March. And would to God that Milan had been left alone to her own resources! But it was not to be. The entrance of the Pied- montese army in disorder within its walls put a stop to all the preparations for defence. The Milanese trusted to it; and every one knows how Charles Albert responded to this confidence.
Such was the campaign of the Moderate party: that of the National party re- mains to be tried.
There is no conclusion to be drawn from the past year, if it be not this—that when the principle given to a course of action is false, the course of action itself is powerless from the first. To declare, like the Times, that the Italians are cowards, is simply to yoke stupidity to the service of bad faith: it is to forget far the Spain of 1823 the Spain of 1808: it is to forget the bravery of the Italian troops under the Empire—to remember only the Piedmontese army directed by counter-revolutionists and traitors." A nation cannot be regenerated by a policy which it does not comprehend, guided by men in whom it has no faith. On the day when a truly national idea, inter- preted by sincere and energetic men, shall inspire the Italian war, it will be a succession of victories, which will only terminate, I repeat it, beyond the Alps. At the present time, the men of the Moderate party in power at Turin, incorri- gible as are all parties, are dreaming of a second Royal campaign ; which must, if undertaken upon the same principles, terminate in the same manner. By per- sisting in this fatal project of an Italy of the North, they do but fetter the Na- tional movement, and sow the seeds of disunion between the Central Provinces and Piedmont. Rome and Florence are now struggling in the name of the Na- tional party against the fractionary tendencies of Turin; and upon the issue of this struggle depends the immediate fate of our country. I shall speak of this party in my third and last letter. JOSEPH Mazzna.
* Note—By an unfortunate accident, two or three sentences were obliterated at each of these places, before the original manuscript was read ; so that it has been Impossible to replace them.—TIANSLATOlt.
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