BOOKS

THE HISTORY OF ITALY..

Two volumes of a new history of Italy form the first instalment of a work which the growing interest in the fortunes of that beautiful peninsula renders especially opportune. The historical period selected for elucidation by Mr. Butt dates from the new and memorable era of Napoleon's Abdication and closes, we believe, with the current year, comprising forty-five years of sup- pressed or overt struggle against the political arrangement, by which the reconstruction of society in Italy was attempted at the Congress of Vienna. The volumes now before us, terminate with the reestablishment of German ascendancy in Italy, as the result of the Convention of 1813. They relate with ample detail the changes experienced during the wars of the French Revolution ; explain the origin and development of the House of Savoy and the commanding position of Piedmont ; record the leading events of the long reign of Ferdinand of Naples, the brief triumph of French power in 1799; the exile of the Ring, the plots of the Queen, the atrocities of the restoration ; the recognition of a free constitution under the protection of English arms, the determina- tions of the Congress, the annexation of Genoa to Piedmont, the surrender of Lombardy and Venice to Austrian rule ; the fall of the kingdom of Italy, and the fortunes of the chivalrous but vacillating Murat. They desclibe the intrigues influences and

dissensions of the assembled representatives of E '

Europe, the trea- ties of Vienna as far as they relate to Italy, and "those separate treaties which contemporaneously established secret relations be- tween Austria and some of the Italian States." In addition to this comprehensive narrative of recent incident, a review of the earlier history of Italy occupies a larger proportion of these volumes than the title would perhaps lead us to suppose. This previous summary is vindicated on the principle that some ac- quaintance with its past is necessary to understand the present, or form any conjecture as to the future, of any one of the Italian States." There are few persons, we imagine, to whom such a re- trospect will not be welcome ; for the history of the Italian past which has a central interest, that makes it in some degree the Ids- tory of civilized Europe, is little known and less understood. From the occasional disquisitions which interrupt its flow, Mr. Butt's narrative may perhaps be pronounced wanting in unity. This want of unity, however, is only external. An inward unity pervades the whole story, for "in approaching the later period of Italian history, we are introduced to the close of a drama, whose plot originates, as its earlier scenes occurred, in times long since gone by.' To the task which he has undertaken, Mr. Butt seems to us fairly competent. He has sympathy with his subject, the Italian people ; with mankind and the various social institu- tions which embody human thought, supply human want, or re- present human power. His research is extensive ; his remarks are sound and judicious ; he is liberal, temperate, and just. His narrative is clear ; his style lucid ; his language unaffected ; his work is not destitute of references ; an analytical table of con- tents demonstrates the careful industry of the author ; a list of authorities shows us the extent of his reading ; and the long notes and tabular statements which are attached to some of the chap- ters, indicate his desire to furnish the reader with such notices as may aid comprehension or facilitate inquiry. In a thoughtful review of the remoter history of Italy, Mr. Butt reminds us that in the ages which we are accustomed to call dark, when the rest of Europe was struggling with barbarism, and the mass of the people were in a state of serfdom, "Italy was great, prosperous and free." In the middle of the twelfth century, all its northern provinces were studded with free and opulent republican cities. Venice and Genoa, in particular, fostered the spirit of a noble independence, and were the centres of a brilliant commercial enterprise. From the free cities of Italy Europe learned "the lessons of that municipal self-government' which is the basis of whatever liberty she now enjoys. Over the darkness of its most gloomy period these cities, he tells us, diffused the light of literature, of science and of civilization. Unhappily, however, there is one circumstance in which Italy (like Germany) differs from other European countries. In England, in Franee, in Spain, the elements of national strength have been consolidated into one central government ; whereas Italy has never attained a collective unity. Her failure to realize this internal harmony is mainly, if not entirely, attributable to her peculiar position. Europe inherited from the historic past ecclesiastical Christianity, perhaps the only form of Christianity possible in the dark and middle ages ; and a secular Imperialism, probably the only available check on the usurpations of Papal power. "The presence of such a power in the very centre of Italy might naturally be expected to modify the entire course of national affairs ; and to the existence of the Papal sovereignty we have no difficulty in tracing some at least of the phenomena which present themselves to us in the strange history of this land. Next to importance to the Papal power, our attention is attracted to that singular institution by which' Imperial rights over Italy were conceded to a sovereign, in ;every sense of the word, a foreigner and a stranger. I German chief, without connexion with Italy by birth, by residence, or even by possessions, was permitted, under the imposing names of King of the Romans and Emperor 'The Ilistory of Italy from The Abdioation of Itrapoleon I. With Introdn0- tory References to that of Earlier Times. By Isaac Hutt. Formerly Professor of Political Economy in the University of Dublin. Vols. I. and H. Published by

Chap- manand Hall.

of the Holy Roman empire, to exercise a real, although imperfect, supremacy, over the Italian States." This chief, chosen by seven Teutonic electors on the banks of the Rhine, claimed the right of investiture in the name of the Caasars, and as "the representative of Augustus asserted his title to the possession of the fiefs of the Roman empire by escheat." "Imperfect as was the rule of these German emperors in Italy, its existence, especially when combined with that of the Papal power, was sufficient to prevent the union of the lesser sovereignties into one monarchy, the process by which national dynasties were formed in almost every other country in Europe." Foreign interference, under such a constitution, became inevitable. The imperial rule was never anything but interference. The Emperor was scarcely known in Italy except as an enemy. That beautiful country became the prize and the prey of European ambition. Francis I. of France, and Charles V. of Spain made it their battle-ground. While the Papal power extended the influence of Italy to Europe, it invited the influence of European power to Rome, for "the ecclesiastical chief of Christendom could never be a mere Italian prince. The Christian world had an interest in the direction of his policy, and in the defence of his rights." Thus, unable to protect herself, Italy became, "from the close of the fifteenth century, the scene of wars in which French, German, and. Spaniard contended for her spoils, until at last her land was parcelled out among strangers, and in the list of her sovereigns we lock in vain for even one

purely Italian prince." •

The development of this dual system of power is clearly traced by Mr. Butt in the volumes under review. In A.D. 476, the seizure of Rome by Odoacer extinguished the separate existence of the empire of the West. In 552, the rebel kingdom of the suc- cessors of Theodorie was subdued, and Justinian was acknowledged as sovereign of all Italy and Emperor of Rome. An imperial lieutenant fixed his residence at Ravenna ; which, with the dis- tricts around it and with Rome itself, remained for more than two centuries subject to an authority "exercised in the name of the feeble and distant court of Constantinople." That authority, however, within the city of Rome, "was controlled by, if not divided with, the growing influence of its bishop. Elected by the people—dwelling in the midst of them—invested by his office with a sacred character, the Bishop of the Roman see gathered mind his person the affection and the veneration of the people. Their national feeling was interested in supporting an indepen- dent native authority derived from the free suffrages of them- selves." The establishment of an Italian monarchy under the sceptre of the Lombard king was, according to Mr. Butt, ren- dered impossible by the opposition of the Pontiff; though in offering "that opposition the Church only represented the fierce hatred which was borne to the Lombards by the inhabitants of Rome." When in the time of Leo the Isanrian the Image war broke out, Luitbrand, the Lombard King, took part with the Pon- tiff ; and not satisfied with occupying, continued to retain, the provinces that belonged to the empire. " The seizure of these territories was a wrong upon the Roman Republic. The demand for their restitution to that Republic "was made in the name of the Emperor, the senate, the people, and the Church. Luitbrand retained them in defiance of that demand." Menaced by an in- vading army, Pope Zacharias proceeded to the Lombard camp, at Pavia, and effected a general reconciliation. In the days of Ste- phen II. and Astolph, the quarrel was renewed. Italy seemed destined to fall under the dominion of the Lombard king, when Pepin came to the rescue of Rome. Twenty years later, Charles, the son of Pepin. overthrew for ever the dynasty of the Lombards. In the year 800, a golden crown was placed on his head. "Thus in the person of a French, or rather German potentate, was created that new empire of the West, the claims arising from which occupied the attention of statesmen in discussing the pro- visions of the Treaty of Paris in 1814, more than a thousand years after. Throughout the whole course of those thousand years, Italy has felt the consequences of the acts which placed her diadem on the brow of a stranger." While within the kingdom of Italy the Emperor exercised the rights of lord paramount over chieftains and municipalities, whose administration was in reality almost independent of him : in Rome, which was never included in the kingdom of Italy, his real power was limited to the control which he was able to establish over the election of the Pope ; and with the very origin of the German dominion in the person of Otho began the struggle for this object, which constitutes the first rind contest "between Italy and her Teutonic masters." The violation of popular privilege, in the appointment of Roman bishops, was felt as an intolerable grievance. "The resistance to the right of Imperial nomination, says our historian, was in one sense a struggle for the independ- ence of the Holy See. But it was not the struggle of Churchmen to support ecclesiastical power. It was a battle of the people to preserve those privileges which had descended to them from an- ment.times." Thus understood, the war of investitures, in the Pontificate of that supremely great man Greery VII., becomes a war of patriotism against foreign domination. It is trim it was more than this, but it was, or seems, in part to be this. So that from a spirit of opposition to the Emperor, Mr. Batt thinks it probable that the Roman princes who had conquered Southern Italy became the defenders of the Holy See. The extinction of a great Italian city (Milan) arrayed against the first Frederic the best feelings of even his own adherents. In the oath of the con- sult] of the four cities of Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, to recover their liberties, was laid the foundation of the Lombard league, A. D. 1167. " On the 27th of May, the battle of Italian freedom was fought at the village of I.egnano, not quite twenty miles from Milan," when Frederic I. was compelled to recognize the League, and to cede the rights asserted by the free cities to all the Italian towns. In the quarrel of the Second Fredericlivr, ith the Papal power "the patriotism of the Italiaos wai appealed to against the man who was employing his Saracen and German troopers to trample on the liberties of their nation and their Church." The Tuscan league was formed 1197, nominally in the interest of the Pope, but really to prevent the Emperor from de- stroying the independence which the cities of Tuscany had claimed. Alexandei III., who is known to 1;ltra-Protestants only perhaps by the ridiculous fiction which represents him as placing his foot on the Emperor's neck, and quoting a verse from the Psalms about the dragon, lion, and adder, was nobly distin- guished as a patriot Pope, the champion of municipal freedom and the President of the Council, which deolared that no Christian man ought to be kept in slavery. The soldier-Pope, Julius, was also genuinely attached to the principles of civil liberty, while, "with his ambition to establish the temporal dominion of the Church, he associated the passion to see his country free from a foreign yoke. To chase the barbarians' from Italy was the dream of his dying hour."

In this estimate of Papal and Imperial pretension, we must not suppose that one of the contending powers was absolutely right, and the other absolutely wrong. The Pope was not always on the side of the people ; the Emperor was not always opposed to popular claims. Without the Papal antagonism, it is probable that a secular universal monarchy would have been established in Europe ; without the Imperial antagonism, a formidable thee- cracry would perhaps have triumphed over human freedom. The Pope and the Emperor acted as mutual checks, each opposing the exclusive tendencies of the other.

The contest in which the Imperial power was engaged is dis- tributed by our historians into four periods. The fat struggle was carried on with the municipal freedom of Rome for the right of nominating the Pontiff; the second with the Papacy on the subject of investiture ; its third with the Republics of Northern Italy in the assertion of' the Royal prerogative against civic privi- lege; its fourth with the Papal see, when the conflict "was be- tween the supremacy of the sovereign and the lordship claimed over mankind by the occupants of the Papal chair." Another generalization which our author supplies may assist us in understanding the political or social position of home. For many centuries, forte different influences divided the authority over the eternal city—" That of the Emperor depending upon the uncertain prerogatives which he was supposed to inherit from Charlemagne and the Ctesars ; that of its bishops, resting chiefly upon the veneration paid to their spiritual authority' partly- on

i the personal character, but sustained also in no small degree by the vague traditions of their ancient sovereignty, which had ac- quired authority among the people : that of the democracy, still represented. in those Republican institutions which preserved the forms of ancient Rome ; and lastly, the power of the great barons, which often made itself dominant over all."

Quitting the general point of view, we direct attention to some remarkable facts recorded in Mr. Butt's history. In other parts of Europe the origin of municipalities has been referred to the period of the tenth or eleventh century, whereas "the free cities of Northern Italy, which cast a glorious splendour over the dark- ness of the Middle ages, were the fragments of the great Roman system which, on the fall of the empire, was shattered but not annihilated. Of the transmission of the old Republican forms, Rome itself affords the most decisive example. The little Re- public of San Marino, which has retained. its civic liberty to our own day, was a free municipality in the days of Constantine.

In Italy the germ of the defensive warfare of the Middle ages may be traced to a very remote period. "Many of the Lombard cities had their ramparts and their fortresses in the days when the Roman empire was threatened with the first invasions of the Goths from Gaul." The contests "that followed the termination of the Carlovingian dynasty, insured their erection, and long be- fore the time of the accession of Otho to the empire, the kingdom of Italy was covered with walled towns. To the dangers of these troubled times must be referred the practice of convening the citi- zens as an organized force by the sound. of a bell. An armed civic militia, ever ready to assemble at the summons of the magistrate, was supplied by the city companies—companies which in Italy, did not originate in Teutonic institutions, but which existed there before the barbarian invasion and. were, like the whole system of municipalities, of Italian origin. Thus Gibbon mentions the company of merchants and manufacturers of Milan in the days of St. Ambrose.

The presence of a lawless nobility in Rome is a characteristic of Italian life which must not be omitted. A vigorous authority was needed to restrain the incessant tumults of the mailed barons who sallied forth from their fortresses to make war on each other or oppress the plebeians of the town. Dismantled theatres, ruined temples, deserted paldces, were the fastnesses of men of blood and violence. The final overthrow of the House of Holsertstanfen did not restore peace to Italy. In 1273 Rudolph, the founder of the dynasty of Hapsburg, ceded all claim to authority in the imperial

city. During the residence of the Popes at Avignon, Rome be- came a prey to disorders which almost threatened it with extinc- tion." The Pope's Legate/ if Rienzi's representations are to he believed, rather encouraged than repressed the turbulent barons

and "the enfeebled magistracy were unable to control the great lords." During the Papal secession to Avignon, the population of , Rome is said to have fallen to 35,000 or even 15,000; for there was nothing to attract visitors or sustain Rome as a great city, when the Pontifical court had been withdrawn. When the Avignon schism was over, and the Pope was welcomed to Rome as the abso- lute sovereign of the city, he found liberty extinguished there as in the other Italian towns. In 1450, under the papacy of Nicholas V., "an attempt was made by conspiracy to restablish republican freedom." Stephen Porcaro, who appears to have shared Rienzi's enthusiasm, twice plotted against the Pope and twice failed. His execution with that of nine accomplices "emphatically proclaimed that the Pope was in very truth the master and sovereign of Rome." "In 250 years which passed from the days of Nicholas to those of Pius VI. but one Pontiff was exposed to the miseries and perils which ha:c1 been the ordinary lot of the earlier occupants of the papal throne." That "Pontiff had dared to join in a league against the dominion of the stranger on the Italian soil ; his weakness in deserting it did not preserve him from the fate that befel him as an Italian prince ; and the last struggle of Italian liberty and her final subjugation to the yoke of the foreigner, were marked by the spectacle of an imprisoned Pontiff and the abandon- ment of his city to the licence of ruffians who called themselves the soldiers of the Most Catholic king." In the imprisonment of Cle- ment VII., Mr. Butt sees the Papacy suffering and declining with the departing vitality of Italy ; in that of Pius VI., he sees it re- viving with the awakening of the nation from its long and death- like dream.

Into the more modern history of Italy, we have neither space nor time to follow our reflective historian. There are yet, how- ever, one or two points of interest which require vindication. The first has to do with an alleged secret treaty contracted with Austria by English ministers signed at Prague on the 27th of July, and ratified at London on the 27th of August 1813. By this treaty England bound herself, in the event of Napoleon's downfall, to use all her influence to obtain for Austria the supreme direction of affairs in Italy, the territories of the Sardinians being excepted. The treaty, moreover, contemplates the surrender of Bourbon rights in favour of an Austrian Prince ; of the entire kingdom of Italy, including the legations and of the provinces reconquered from the French, to the Imperial power of Austria, with other stipu- lations which we omit. The voucher for the existence of this

secret treaty is none other than the historian and statesman,Signor Farini, who publishes a document, which if not a fabri-

cation, clearly establishes the fact that England entered into ob- ligations of the highest moment, and yet that the assumption of these obligations was 'kept a profound secret from Parliament and the country." The second point to which we would give prominence is the question of Lord Nelson's conduct in annulling the capitulation with the Neapolitan revolutionists, a capitulation signed by Car- dinal Ruffo by the Russian and Turkish commanders, and by Captain Foote, commander of the British forces.

Mr. Butt, in a very long and elaborate note, in which he cor- rects the errors of Southey, Alison, Botta' Collette, and Pepe, thoroughly investigates the subject. He states that the Castles of Uovo and Nuovo were not taken possession of till the evening of the 26th, but that on the 25th Nelson had addressed to the garrisons of the forts a proclamation, in which he required that they should throw themselves unconditionally on the mercy of the king. He exempts the British hero from "those imputations which represent him as deliberately.violating good faith to gratify the requests of an abandoned woman ." but he maintains that Lord Nelson took a mistaken view of the position in which he was placed, and that on principles of international law it is impossible to justify the acts by which the capitulation was annulled. The inquiry instituted by Mr. Butt will be the more interesting to the readers of the Spectator, as it was a suggestion in this journal, (January 7, 1860,) which, adopted by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine (March 1860,) has recently led to a reconsideration of the subject. The allegations by which the contributor of the ar- ticle in Blackwood seeks to reverse the popular sentence, do not satisfy Mr. Butt; who, while acquitting Nelson of any personal breach of faith, .prefers against him the charge that he repudiated, or enabled the Sicilian Court to repudiate, the terms granted to the republicans by their officers when it was not in his power, or in the power of any one, if Grotius correctly states the law of na- tions, to annul the capitulation "solemnly signed by the vicar general of the Sicilian king ; by the commanders of all the allied forces, and among them by the British officer in command." However this question may be decided, it must, we think, be eternally regretted that either Nelson or England should have had any share direct or indirect, in transactions which issued in the cruel judicial vengeance of the restored King of Naples. Of 30,000 prisoners arrested for political offences, 4000 of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes' were condemned to death. "The executions purged Naples not of the enemies of the altar and the throne, but of those whose genius added lustre to its professions and its literature, and whose virtues threw a charm over the circles of domestic life." The fiendish atrocities of the French Revolu- tion were rivalled, if not surpassed, by the cannibal orgies of the Lazzaroni of Naples, who "in a city occupied by thousands of troops, and on an open place commanded by the guns of a power- ful fleet assembled in front of the Royal palace, and actually roasted living men in the flames," tearing, it is said, the flesh off their victims with their teeth.

So much of the tiger still survives in man, whether he belong to the party of order, or to the party of progress!