By 1833 he was ready for action. Young Italy had attracted a remarkably large number of the young officers and men of the Piedmontese army; with his boyhood friend Jacopo Ruffini he now planned simultaneous risings in Genoa and Alessandria, which he believed would spread across the country, overthrowing the government and eventually toppling Charles Albert. Alas, before these risings were even begun the plot was discovered. The discovery was in fact the fault of neither of the two chief conspirators, but virtually all their associates were arrested, twelve of them being executed by a firing squad. Ruffini slashed his veins in prison.
Mazzini, over the border in France, was in no immediate danger, but Marseille was full of Piedmontese agents, and soon afterwards he left for the greater safety of Geneva. Three years later, however, after several more unsuccessful conspiracies, even Switzerland had become too hot for him. In January 1837 he arrived in London, where he was to spend the next eleven years and which was to become his second home. Here he flung himself once again into a whirlpool of feverish activity: breathing new life into Young Italy, working to improve the lot of Italian immigrants, establishing a free school for Italian children, founding another newspaper, writing dozens of letters every day to Italian patriots and exiles throughout the world–for by now there were revolutionary committees not only in Italy but in several other European countries as well as in the USA, Canada, Cuba and Latin America.
Such was his energy and his industry that this remarkable Italian soon became a well-known figure in London. Seven years after his arrival, however, he was to enjoy a sudden and unexpected celebrity which proved of immense benefit to his cause. Early in 1844 he began to suspect that his letters were being secretly opened before delivery–a fact which a few simple experiments were enough to confirm. He at once complained to a friendly Member of Parliament, who obligingly put a question in the House of Commons. The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, at first denied the accusation, but when faced with the evidence was compelled to admit that his office had indeed been opening the letters, at the request of the Austrian ambassador. The resulting scandal–people began writing ‘Not to be Grahamed’ on their envelopes–not only threw Mazzini into the limelight; it also enabled him to write an ‘open letter’ to Graham which set out the Italian case in detail and–since it was widely reprinted–gave him just the publicity he needed. His friend Thomas Carlyle maintained that the opening of his letters was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
The hurried departure of the Pope took Rome by surprise. The Chief Minister of the papal government, Giuseppe Galletti–an old friend of Mazzini’s who had returned to Rome under the amnesty and had courageously succeeded the murdered Rossi–first sent a delegation to Gaeta to persuade Pius to return; only when this was refused an audience did Galletti call for the formation of a Roman Constituent Assembly, of 200 elected members, which would meet in the city on 5 February 1849. Time was short but the need was urgent, and 142 members duly presented themselves in the palace of the Cancellaria on the appointed date. Just four days later, at two o’clock in the morning, the Assembly voted–by 120 votes to ten, with twelve abstentions–to put an end to the temporal power of the Pope and to establish a Roman republic. Mazzini was not present; by far the most dominant personality in the proceedings was a forty-one-year-old adventurer named Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Born in 1807 in Nice–which would be ceded to France only in 1860–Garibaldi was, like Mazzini, a Piedmontese. He had started his professional life as a merchant seaman, and had become a member of Young Italy in 1833. Always a man of action, he was involved the following year in an unsuccessful mutiny–one of the many failed conspiracies of those early years–and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Just in time, he managed to escape to France; meanwhile, in Turin, he was sentenced in absentia to death for high treason. After a brief spell in the French merchant navy he joined the navy of the Bey of Tunis, who offered him the post of Commander-in-Chief. This he declined, and finally, in December 1835, he sailed as second mate in a French brig bound for South America. There he was to stay for the next twelve years, the first four of them fighting for a small state that was trying–unsuccessfully–to break away from Brazilian domination. In 1841 he and his Brazilian mistress, Anita Ribeiro da Silva, trekked to Montevideo, where he was soon put in charge of the Uruguayan navy, also taking command of a legion of Italian exiles–the first of the Redshirts, with whom his name was ever afterwards associated. After his victory at the minor but heroic battle of Sant’ Antonio in 1846 his fame quickly spread to Europe. By now he had become a professional rebel, whose experience of guerrilla warfare was to stand him in good stead in the years to come.
The moment Garibaldi heard of the revolutions of 1848, he gathered sixty of his Redshirts and took the next ship back to Italy. His initial offers to fight for the Pope and then for Piedmont having both been rejected–Charles Albert, in particular, would not have forgotten that he was still under sentence of death–he headed for Milan, where Mazzini had already arrived, and immediately plunged into the fray. The armistice following Charles Albert’s defeat at Custoza he simply ignored, continuing his private war against the Austrians until at the end of August, heavily outnumbered, he had no choice but to retreat to Switzerland. There he spent the next three months with Anita, but on hearing of the flight of the Pope hurried at once with his troop of volunteers to Rome. He was elected a member of the new Assembly, and it was he who formally proposed that Rome should thenceforth be an independent republic.
Mazzini was, surprisingly, not present during these stirring events. From Milan he had travelled on to Florence–from which Grand Duke Leopold had somewhat hurriedly decamped–with the vain hope of persuading the government to proclaim a republic and unite it with that of Rome; it was only at the beginning of March that he made his way–for the first time–to the new capital, where a seat in the Assembly was awaiting him. He was, predictably, given a hero’s welcome, and was invited to sit at the President’s right hand.
It was unfortunate that the King of Piedmont should have chosen this moment to denounce the armistice concluded less than seven months before and to resume his war with Austria. Why he did so remains a puzzle. It may be that he feared another insurrection and the loss of his throne; more probably he saw himself as the champion and liberator of Italy, and was determined not to allow the defeat of Custoza to spell the end of his military career. That defeat had shown him, however, that he was no general; for the next phase of the war, while retaining the nominal supremacy, he entrusted the effective command to a Pole, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars named Wojtiech Chrzanowski.
Chrzanowski doubtless did his best, but as a general he proved little better than his chief. Less than a fortnight after the war was resumed the Piedmontese found themselves up against Radetzky at Novara, some thirty miles west of Milan. As at Custoza, they were no match for the slightly outnumbered but infinitely more disciplined and professional Austrians. Charles Albert showed exemplary courage, moving fearlessly across the field as the bullets whistled around him. He survived unscathed, but his troops were routed and the battle lost. One city, Brescia, stood alone for a few more days, but it was soon subdued in its turn by the Austrian General Julius von Haynau, with all the savagery and brutality for which he was notorious.244 Charles Albert, declaring that he could not face signing another armistice, abdicated in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy. Permitted as a private citizen to pass through the Austrian lines, he retired to Oporto, where he died only four months later of what seemed suspiciously like a broken heart.
Giuseppe Mazzini had long believed that imperial Rome and papal Rome would be followed by a third Rome: a Rome of the people. Now that dream had come true. The Assembly had put the new republic in the hands of a triumvirate; of its three members, however, two were virtually ignored. Mazzini was now effectively dictator of Rome. He was by no means the first, nor would he be the last, but it can safely be said that no other was remotely like him. In his
cramped little office in the Quirinal Palace he was accessible to all comers; he ate every day at the same cheap trattoria; his monthly salary of thirty-two lire he gave to charity. Now, too, the propagandist and demagogue became a quietly conscientious administrator. He abolished the death penalty, introduced universal male suffrage, declared total freedom of the press and restored order to the Papal States, which had been terrorised by republican extremists. He would doubtless have done a great deal more, but he knew that he was working against time: ‘We must act,’ he told the Assembly, ‘like men who have the enemy at their gates, and at the same time like men who are working for eternity.’ He spoke no more than the truth; in early April there came ominous news from Paris. A French expeditionary force was on the march.
On 18 February Pope Pius in Gaeta had addressed a formal appeal for help to France, Austria, Spain and Naples. By none of these four powers was he to go unheard; to Mazzini, however, the greatest danger was France–whose response would clearly depend on the complexion of its new republic and, in particular, on Prince Louis Napoleon, its recently elected president. Nearly twenty years before, the Prince had been implicated in an anti-papal plot and expelled from Rome; he still had no particular affection for the Papacy. Since Novara, on the other hand, he could see that Austria was more powerful in Italy than ever; how could he contemplate the possibility of the Austrians now coming south and restoring the Pope on their own terms? If he himself were to take no action, that–he had no doubt at all–was what they would do.
He gave his orders accordingly, and on 25 April 1849 General Nicholas Oudinot–son of one of Napoleon’s marshals–landed with a force of about 9,000 at Civitavecchia and began the forty-mile march to Rome. From the start he was under a misapprehension. He had been led to believe that the republic had been imposed by a small group of revolutionaries on an unwilling people and would soon be overturned; he and his men would consequently be welcomed as liberators. His orders were to grant the triumvirate and the Assembly no formal recognition, but to occupy the city peacefully, if possible without firing a shot.
He was in for a surprise. The Romans, although they had little hope of defending their city against a trained and well-equipped army, were busy preparing themselves for the fight. Their own forces, such as they were, consisted of the regular papal troops of the line, the carabinieri–a special corps of the Italian army entrusted with police duties–the 1,000-strong Civic Guard, the volunteer regiments raised in the city amounting to some 1,400, and–by no means the least formidable–the populace itself, with every weapon it could lay its hands on. But their total numbers were still pathetically small, and great was their jubilation when, on the 27th, Garibaldi rode into the city at the head of 1,300 legionaries which he had gathered in the Romagna. Two days later there followed a regiment of Lombard bersaglieri, with their distinctive broad-brimmed hats and swaying plumes of black-green cock’s feathers. The defenders were gathering in strength, but the odds were still heavily against them and they knew it.
That first battle for Rome was fought on 30 April. The day was saved by Oudinot’s ignorance and incomprehension. He had brought no siege guns with him, and no scaling-ladders; it was only when his column, advancing towards the Vatican and the Janiculum hill, was greeted by bursts of cannon-fire that he began to realise the full danger of his situation. Soon afterwards Garibaldi’s legion swept down upon him, swiftly followed by the bersaglieri lancers. For six hours he and his men fought back as well as they could, but as evening fell they could only admit defeat and take the long road back to Civitavecchia. They had lost 500 killed or wounded, with 365 taken prisoner, but perhaps the humiliation had been worst of all.
That night all Rome was illuminated in celebration, but no one pretended that the French were not going to return. The French had now learned that Rome was to be a tougher nut to crack than they had expected; nonetheless, they intended to crack it. Little over a month later–during which time Garibaldi, with his legionaries and the bersaglieri, marched south to meet an invading Neapolitan army and effortlessly expelled it from republican territory–Oudinot had received the reinforcements he had requested, and it was with 20,000 men behind him and vastly improved armament that, on 3 June, he marched on Rome for the second time.
Advancing as he was from the west, his primary objectives were the historic Villa Pamfili and Villa Corsini, high on the Janiculum hill. By the end of the day both were safely in his hands, his guns drawn up into position. Rome was effectively doomed. The defenders fought back superbly for nearly a month, but on the morning of 30 June Mazzini addressed the Assembly. There were, he told them, three possibilities: they could surrender; they could continue the fight and die in the streets; or they could retire to the hills and continue the struggle. Around midday Garibaldi appeared, covered in dust, his red shirt soaked in blood and sweat; his mind was made up. Surrender was obviously out of the question. Street fighting, he pointed out, was also impossible; when Trastevere245 was abandoned–as it would have to be–French guns could simply destroy the city. The hills, then, it would have to be. ‘Dovunque saremo,’ he told them, ‘colà sarà Roma.’246
Strangely enough, the majority of the deputies disagreed, choosing a fourth possibility: not to surrender, but to declare a ceasefire and remain in Rome. This was a course which Mazzini appeared not to have previously considered; eventually, however, he decided to adopt it himself. The French, who had been led to believe that he was a hated tyrant, were astonished to see a man who walked fearlessly through the streets hailed and greeted with respect wherever he went, to the point where they did not dare to arrest him. But Mazzini knew that even if he remained at liberty he would henceforth be powerless, and after a few days he slipped back to London. ‘Italy is my country,’ he used to say, ‘but England is my home–if I have one.’
Garibaldi, meanwhile, appealed for volunteers. ‘I offer,’ he declared, ‘neither pay, nor board, nor lodging; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battle and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not with his lips only, follow me.’ Four thousand men hastened to join him, though it was to be little more than a handful that a month later, having escaped the attentions of no less than three enemy armies, dragged itself to refuge in the little republic of San Marino.247 There the troop disbanded, and Garibaldi, with Anita and a few faithful followers, set off for the only Italian republic which was still fighting for survival: Venice.
Alas, the vessel in which they sailed was intercepted by an Austrian warship. Garibaldi was forced to disembark on a remote stretch of the coast–now known as Porto Garibaldi–and before he could reach the Venetian lagoon his beloved Anita died in his arms. Temporarily, the spirit went out of him. Once again he left Italy, and a few weeks later arrived in New York, there to begin his second period of American exile.
Even if Garibaldi had managed to reach Venice, there was little that he could have done. All through the previous winter, despite an intermittent Austrian blockade, Daniele Manin had concentrated on building up an effective army–a task which he entrusted to General Pepe, who cheerfully proclaimed his readiness to give his life for Italy and the Venetian Republic. As a Calabrian, Pepe proved able to recruit a large number of officers and men formerly in the Neapolitan army; the result, by the beginning of April 1849, was a reasonably disciplined fighting force some 20,000 strong, which gave the Assembly the confidence to publish a heroic decree: ‘Venice will resist Austria at all costs. President Manin is invested, for that purpose, with unlimited powers.’
The blockade continued until May 1849, when the Austrian commander finally accepted that a lagoon ninety miles in circumference could never be completely cordoned off, while a city of some 200,000 inhabitants would take a long time to starve; there was nothing for it but a full military siege. The first target was the fort at Malghera (now Marghera), at the mainland end of the railway bridge. After three weeks’ bombardment it finally gave in, but the bridge itself, with several other makeshift forts along
its length, somehow held. Early in July the Austrians had the extraordinary idea of trying to drop bombs on Venice from a fleet of large balloons; the experiment proved a fiasco and gave the Venetians at least something to laugh about–but they had very little else. The siege had at last given rise to a serious shortage of food, and as the month wore on they found themselves on the brink of famine. Even fish–the Venetian staple–was in short supply, since the amount furnished by the lagoon was hopelessly inadequate for the city’s population. Bread rationing was introduced, but the situation continued to deteriorate. On 28 July Manin formally asked the members of the Assembly whether it was possible for Venice to resist any longer; his hearers, however, were determined to fight to the end.
On the night of the 29th, the bombardment of Venice began in earnest. It was confined to the western half of the city, if only because the Austrian guns, even when raised to their highest elevation, could lob their cannonballs no further; the Piazza was fortunately just out of range. Fortunately, too, the vast majority of the projectiles were merely balls, and not shells that exploded on impact. The Austrians frequently made them red-hot before firing, but there were not enough furnaces to heat them all and the occasional small fire that resulted could normally be dealt with by the Venetian fire brigade–which now included Daniele Manin as one of its members.
Nevertheless, the sheer intensity of the bombardment over the next three and a half weeks could not fail to take its toll on Venetian morale, and by now the city had fallen victim to the greatest scourge of all: cholera. By the end of July the disease was raging in every quarter of the city. In the heat of August it grew worse still, especially in the hideously overcrowded easternmost region of Castello, to which most of the people from the exposed western areas had fled. The grave-diggers could not hope to keep pace–burial is anyway a difficult process in Venice–and the corpses awaiting their attention remained piled up in the campo of Venice’s old cathedral, S. Pietro di Castello. The smell, we are told, was asphyxiating.
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