The things that all Italian nationalists shared were dismay at the failure of early constitutional projects, opposition to the political role of the papacy, and resentment against the ‘foreign presence’ of Austria in Lombardy, Venice and the Trentino. They operated in all parts of Italy, though less successfully in some states than in others, and from early on saw Piedmont as fertile ground. In March 1823 a nationalist insurrection was organized in the town of Alessandria by a professional officer of the Sardinian army, Count Santorre de Santarosa (1783–1825), who was hoping to unite Italy under the House of Savoy by waging war on the Austrians. He persuaded the regent of Piedmont to issue a short-lived Constitution before the absent king returned and ordered the insurrectionaries to be crushed. Despite its failure, Santarosa’s enterprise showed that Piedmont was already moving in a different political direction from Savoy.
The seeds of nationalism had been sown in Savoy during the years of occupation by armies of the revolutionary Republic and Empire. After 1815, voices were again raised for the removal of the ‘foreign kings’ and the reinstatement of a French administration, and steps were taken to forge a separate Franco-Savoyard identity. This was done in part by cultivating the idea that the modern, French-speaking inhabitants of Savoy were the direct descendants of a Celtic tribe, the Allobroges, who had lived in the region in Roman times. A key figure in this movement was Joseph Dessaix (1817–70), a writer, sometime political prisoner and admirer of the Risorgimento. He was the author both of a popular historical encyclopedia23 and of the definitive Savoyard song, ‘Le Chant des Allobroges’:
Je te salue, ô terre hospitalière,
Où le malheur trouva protection
D’un peuple libre arborant la bannière.
Je vins fêter la Constitution.
Allobroges vaillants! Dans vos vertes campagnes
Accordez-moi toujours asile et sûreté;
Car j’aime à respirer l’air pur de vos montagnes.
Je suis la Liberté! La Liberté!
(‘I greet you, hospitable land, / where misfortune found protection / from a free people displaying their banner. / I came to celebrate the constitution. // Valiant Allobroges! In your green countryside / grant me always refuge and security; / for I love to breathe the pure air of your mountains. / I am Liberty! Liberty!’)24 This song was not sung in Piedmont.
Yet nationalism, whether French or Italian, did not enjoy a monopoly on the political spectrum. Conservatism was also strong, and a long struggle between monarchists and republicans was only just beginning. Many people simply clung to the status quo, fearing a return to the turbulence of Napoleonic times. In both Piedmont and Savoy, a middle way appealed, combining the maintenance of the monarchy with a programme of gradual constitutional reform. In the peculiar arrangements of what officialdom now called I Stati Sardi, ‘the Sardinian States’, many Savoyards and Piemontesi felt that they could find common cause. Growing currency was given to the concept of ‘the Subalpine Kingdom’ – il Regno Subalpino, le Royaume Subalpin.
The ‘king of Sardinia’ who returned from exile in 1815 was the fifth of his line to bear the royal title, and the fifth of eight ‘Sardinian’ monarchs in all. Vittorio Emanuele I (r. 1802–21) was the second son of the late Vittorio Amadeo III and had briefly been preceded during their exile by his elder brother, Carlo Emanuele IV (r. 1796–1802). During his stay in Cagliari, he formed the Corps of Carabinieri, which remains a colourful feature of Italian life to this day. After the Congress of Vienna handed him the lands of the former Genoese Republic, he founded the Sardinian navy, which was henceforth based in the port of Genoa.
Carlo il Felice/Charles le Heureux/Félix (r. 1821–31) was the younger brother of his two predecessors. He was particularly proud of the Bourbon heritage of his mother, Maria Antonia, an infanta of Spain, and a zealous defender the royal prerogative. After the suppression of Santarosa’s rising, he was known to his subjects not as Il Felice, but as Il Feroce, ‘The Ferocious’.
His successor, Carlo Alberto (r. 1831–49), was less ferocious but not easily swayed by radical demands. He introduced a bureaucratic, paternalistic administration dubbed Il Buon Governo or ‘Good Rule’, and in 1834 ordered the suppression of the next attempted insurrection, in Turin, for which the young Giuseppe Mazzini (see below) was handed a death sentence. Carlo Alberto also took special pains to reassert the dynasty’s standing by restoring its monuments. He renovated the family mausoleum at Hautecombe and relaunched it as the prime symbol of the family’s continuity. The revolutionary wreckage at the abbey was removed, a grandiose Gothic church was erected on the ruins, and the ducal tombs were lovingly reconsecrated. A steamship service was introduced to take visitors back and forth to Aix-les-Bains, and in 1849 Carlo Alberto himself was buried there among his ancestors. The record of his self-proclaimed Buon Governo was not entirely negative. A memorial column erected in his honour still stands beside the Pont d’Arve at Bonneville.25
Before his death, Carlo Alberto had succumbed to the Continent-wide clamour of 1848 to issue liberal constitutions, in his case lo Statuto Albertino. The remarkable thing was not that the Statuto was introduced, but that it was never rescinded. While reserving all executive decisions to the king, including declarations of war and peace, it guaranteed freedom of speech and assembly and made provision for a two-chamber parliament, made up of an appointed Senate and a chamber of elected deputies.26 The king equally ensured the survival of the Valdenses. After centuries of persecution he granted them toleration, decorating the one-legged British missionary, John Beckwith, who had taken up their cause. Henceforth their main centre would be located near Ivrea in Piedmont, at La Torre on the eastern slopes of the Gran Paradiso.27
Piedmont-Savoy did not witness any of the more extreme manifestations of the ‘Springtime of Nations’. Public meetings in Chambéry and Turin did not disintegrate into the sort of riots and revolutions that were witnessed in Paris, Milan or Rome. Nonetheless, the old king’s proclamation of the Statuto had far-reaching consequences, and his refusal to heed the resurgent conservatives or to limit the constitution kept the ferment of 1848 bubbling throughout the following decade. It opened the way in Savoy for pro-French republicans to agitate in favour of reunion with France; and, on the other side of the Monte Viso, for activists of the Risorgimento to press for the adoption of Piedmont as the springboard of Italian unification. Neither the Francophiles in Savoy nor the Italophiles in Piedmont enjoyed a monopoly. Yet the resultant stresses grew ever more visible. Savoy and Piedmont were being pulled in opposite directions. This was what Bayle St John had set out to observe.
Unfortunately, Vittorio Emanuele II (r. 1849–61 and 1861–78) was temperamentally indisposed to plotting a firm course between the competing whirlpools. As an ex-Carbonaro who had dallied in his youth with unconventional friends, he was familiar with the aims of the radicals, though he sympathized more with those of the moderates. On the other hand, as a crowned king, he was loath to join the hue and cry against other divinely appointed monarchs. It was not his choice that the reactionary stand of other Italian rulers, including the pope, should have pushed him into the role of the Risorgimento’s chief patron, yet neither could he resist the temptation of adopting the conceited motto of ‘VERDI’ – ‘Vittorio Emanuele Re d’Italia’. As part of a dubious claim to have shown bravery in battle, he also adopted the sobriquet of Il Re Galantuomo, ‘the Hero King’. In reality, he was one of the world’s ditherers. The British foreign minister, George Villiers, was less than generous: ‘There is universal agreement that Vittorio Emanuele is an imbecile. He tells lies to everyone. At this rate, he will end up losing his crown and ruining Italy.’28 In foreign affairs the king relied on the advice of his foreign minister, the devious Count Cavour (see below).29 ‘I have discovered the perfect means of deceiving diplomats,’ Cavour once said; ‘I tell them the truth and they never believe me.’30
The political condition of Savoy at this juncture was extremely fragile.31 The Sardinian Restoratio
n had been accompanied by an influx of Italian-speaking bureaucrats and by a resurgence of ‘the noble-clerical reaction’, and pro-French sentiment had been growing ever since: large numbers of Savoyards had emigrated to Lyon and Paris, and the republicans among them instinctively sought rapprochement with a French republic. On the other hand, as carefully reported by Bayle St John, the pro-French party received a series of hard blows in the 1850s. The opening of the ‘subalpine parliament’ in Turin, attended by deputies from every part of the state, won over many sceptics. The invasion of Chambéry in 1848 by a republican rabble from Lyon calling themselves the ‘Voraces’ infuriated the citizenry,32 and the violence in Paris surrounding Napoleon III’s coup d’état in 1851, widely reported in Chambéry, tarnished France’s image. From then on, there was no French republic for Savoyard republicans to join.
Chambéry in the 1850s was a small provincial town still harbouring memories of its past glory. It was increasingly overshadowed both by the nearby spa of Aix-les-Bains, with its boisterous casino, and, across the frontier, by the French city of Grenoble, which was more than twice its size. Bayle St John liked it:
Chambéry is the capital of the province of Savoy; and, it has… a far more complete and metropolitan character than might have been expected. There is no trace of the village about it… evidently a place accustomed to be the seat of government [and] somewhat annoyed to be so no longer… Everything seems to be arranged for making the city a comfortable winter-quarter… During the summer everyone who can afford it disperses… up the lower slopes of the mountains which are dotted with villas…
However, the streets and… the Place Saint Léger, where the band played each evening, were sufficiently well-thronged… The aristocracy of the place being away, the middle classes tried to lord it… I wished to change some English sovereigns. The money-changer had gone to Paris. This is confirmation of a truth… that the English… all go to Switzerland, or only make a dash into northern Savoy to visit Mont Blanc…
The fountain of De Boigne, with its four half-elephants stuck together is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen… M. de Boigne… earned a colossal fortune in India… He built the long street through the centre of town, adorned like the Rue de Rivoli [in Paris], with porticos…
Then there is the old castle – so many times rebuilt that only a scrap is really old… Underneath the terrace of the castle… not far from the place where Mme. de Warens once [held]… her extraordinary interviews with Jean Jacques [Rousseau], extends a botanical garden.33
Travellers usually reached Chambéry from France by crossing the frontier station on the River Guiers at le Pont de Beauvoisin, some 15 miles west of the city. St John reported a succession of peculiarly pedantic and intrusive customs examinations conducted by teams of French and ‘Sardinian’ inspectors. In local parlance, ‘beyond the Guiers’ meant ‘in France’, and ‘this side of the Guiers’ meant ‘in Savoy’. On leaving the city, travellers could go either north to Geneva and the Swiss frontier, south towards the border with Dauphiné, or east on the road to Italy. Fifteen miles from Chambéry, the eastbound road divides. The left fork takes one to Albertville, Moûtiers, Bourg St Maurice and via the Little St Bernard pass to the Val d’Aosta. The right fork, which Bayle St John preferred, leads to St Jean de Maurienne, the Mont Cenis and, through the Val di Susa, to Turin.
The capital of Piedmont lies 138 very precipitous miles from the capital of Savoy. On reaching it, having crossed the Mont Cenis on foot, Bayle St John did not conceal his distaste:
Turin has been suddenly swelled out to suit the convenience of a new royalty… [It] disappoints the stranger, not because it is uglier or meaner than he expects, but because of its audacious air of pretension… Every street, every square manifestly asserts its right to be admired, and fails at first because the mind puts itself into a hostile attitude. Instead of noticing the real beauties, we notice at once the tedious provoking uniformity…
Numbers of the houses and palaces are built of brick in a dirty London hue… The Carignan Palace, where the Chamber of Deputies sits, is a huge ugly pile… The palace of the king upon the Piazza Castello is nothing to look at, but its apartments are superbly laid out and decorated… The Palazzo Madama is an old brick house… To make it uglier than it would otherwise be, they have built an observatory on the top…
The court is as elaborate as the court of an empire, with all the same accumulation of useless offices and degrading titles, which are ludicrous… in so small a kingdom. If every soldier is a general, every man has two confessors.34
As a Victorian liberal and an Anglican Protestant, the itinerant Englishman was perhaps predisposed against ‘the Sardinian monarchy’ and its hallmark Catholicism. Yet an inventory of the royal palaces in Turin and its surroundings listed twenty-two major buildings; the charge of overblown pretentiousness was well targeted, and the fact that he had to walk over the central section of the route between Chambéry and Turin, in a year when the railway between Chambéry and Paris was on the verge of completion, revealed the relative attractions of the two sides of the Alps. Even eighty years earlier, observers including both Voltaire and Gibbon had reacted exactly as St John did. They felt that the extravagant Sardinian monarchy was living it up at the expense of its impoverished Alpine subjects. ‘In every gilded moulding’, wrote Gibbon during a visit to the royal palace in Turin in 1764, ‘I see a Savoyard village dying of hunger, cold and poverty.’35
The catalogue of the royal titles, almost one hundred long, was no less extensive than that of the royal palaces:
Victor Emmanuel II, by the Grace of God, King of Sardinia, Cyprus, Jerusalem, Armenia, Duke of Savoy, count of Maurienne, Marquis (of the Holy Roman Empire) in Italy; prince of Piedmont, Carignano, Oneglia, Poirino, Trino; Prince and Perpetual vicar of the Holy Roman Empire… prince bailiff of the Duchy of Aosta, Prince of Chieri, Dronero, Crescentino… Duke of Genoa, Montferrat, Aosta… Chablais, Genevois, Piacenza, Marquis of Saluzzo (Saluces), Ivrea, Susa… Ginevra, Nizza, Tenda, Romont, Asti… Novara, Tortona, Bobbio, Soissons… Baron of Vaud e del Faucigni, Lord of Vercelli, Pinerolo, Lomellina… Overlord of Monaco, Roccabruna and 11/12th of Menton, Noble patrician of Venice, patrician of Ferrara.36
Soon yet another title would be added.
It was well known that the Emperor Napoleon III looked with favour on the Italian Risorgimento, but many observers in the late 1850s wondered whether sympathy would ever be translated into action. It was, but only after some extraordinary skulduggery. In January 1858, a group of Italian revolutionaries unsuccessfully bombed the emperor’s carriage on its way to the Paris Opéra; disillusioned by his prevarications, they were convinced that he was blocking all hopes for change in Italy. The chief conspirator, Felice Orsini, soon captured by the police, was a disciple of Mazzini. Before he was guillotined, he apparently penned two death-cell letters, which were duly published in the press. ‘Unless Italy is free,’ they said, ‘the peace of Europe will be no more than a delusion.’ Much, much later it was discovered that the letters’ author was not Orsini but an imperial aide.37 Napoleon III spent many hours in the following weeks poring over Italian maps; he had decided to prevaricate no further.
At this stage, three men were driving the ‘Italian Question’ forward. All three were subjects of the House of Savoy; and all contested Metternich’s cynical saying that ‘Italy is merely a geographical expression’. Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–71), founder of the ‘Young Italy’ movement and the theorist of Italian republicanism, had never reconciled himself to the Congress of Vienna which had handed his native Genoa to the Piedmontese. In 1858 he was still under sentence of death in Turin for fomenting failed insurrections; and, as one of the leaders of the ill-fated Roman Republic of 1848–9, was still operating from exile in London.38 Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82), a Nizzardo sea-captain and once Mazzini’s partner, already had a rich revolutionary career behind him, both in Italy and in South America. In 1858, having recently established his home on the island of Caprer
a off Sardinia, and with his hopes for support from the House of Savoy reviving, he was preparing to be elected to the subalpine parliament as the member for Nice.39 Camillo Benso, Count Cavour (1810–61), an aristocratic liberal with Piemontese, French and Savoyard connections, the former foreign minister, had been prime minister of the Sardinian kingdom for six years. He had already steered the House of Savoy through the Crimean crisis. He was less interested in patronizing the Risorgimento than in furthering his royal master’s fortunes, and he regarded the activities of Mazzini and Garibaldi as an infernal nuisance.40
In the early summer of the same year, an obscure emissary from Paris arrived in Turin unannounced. He told Count Cavour that Napoleon III wished to see him privately, preferably during the emperor’s annual visit to the spa at Plombières-les-Bains in the Vosges. Cavour hardly needed to be briefed. He knew about the turn in French policy through the wife of the crown prince of Savoy, Napoleon III’s daughter; and he was receiving information from his own cousin, Virginia Oldini, countess of Castiglione, whom he had deliberately inserted into the imperial court in Paris to add her to the emperor’s lengthy list of mistresses.* Cavour thereon ordered a false passport, and travelled to the Vosges incognito and by a roundabout route. His secret meeting with Napoleon at Plombières on 21 July 1858 was conducted in a semi-conspiratorial setting, although his presence was leaked to the French press. What exactly happened can only be reconstructed from a report composed by Cavour; none of the emperor’s ministers were involved and many details remain vague. But it is clear Cavour learned that the French were itching to attack Austria, and were willing to do so in partnership with Sardinia. He did not learn the emperor’s final aims, however, and he was taken aback by the harsh terms proposed. In essence, the emperor offered to send his army to liberate northern Italy from Austria, but only if the counties of Savoy and Nice were ceded to France in return. Cavour swallowed his pride and, in principle, accepted. He was risking the loss of perhaps a third of his sovereign’s possessions in the uncertain hope of winning something more extensive.42
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