The Fighter_Literary Essays

by Tim Parks

  But if the important Italian states all had different forms of government, they were nevertheless agreed on what constituted the basis for a sovereign territory. It was the city and the agricultural land surrounding and supplying it. When Venice or Florence or Milan launched wars of expansion they extended taxes but not voting rights to the subject towns they acquired. Venice was superior to Padua and Verona, Florence to Pisa, Milan to Brescia. There was no question of shared sovereignty. Nor, despite recognising that they had ‘Italianness’ in common, was there any movement among the larger cities towards unification. Such a prospect would anyway have been problematic since a large swathe of central Italy was held by the papacy, which apparently needed to exercise temporal power in order to fulfil its divine mission. One has to wait till Mussolini to find an Italian leader who puts the land as a whole and the people of the countryside before the cities.

  This fragmentation meant that Italy never developed a unified approach to the problem of how power was to be legitimised. Different traditions flourished. It also led to the peninsula’s being overwhelmed by foreign invasions at the end of the fifteenth century, but again not unified under occupation. With the exception of Venice, the republics disappeared to be replaced by client monarchies and dukedoms that sought an aura of legitimacy in grandiose monuments and public works while keeping a lid on political debate. It was a state of affairs which could only welcome the Counter-Reformation.

  During the next three centuries of foreign domination the desire for a free and united Italy very gradually took shape. Liberation, it was understood, was a common cause and would be achieved and sustained only through collective action. By the end of the eighteenth century, secret societies promoting the idea of an Italian state were common, though there was no agreement on the political form such a state would have. The brief unification of the country under Napoleon from 1805 to 1814, with the introduction of many republican ideas and the Napoleonic code of law, gave impetus to the patriots, but the Congress of Vienna re-established the old status quo and in particular granted the whole of the Veneto and Lombardy to the Austrian Empire, the then superpower of central Europe. Once again the lid was clamped down on nationalist aspirations.

  But by now the pot was coming to the boil. In 1848 patriotic rebellions broke out all over Italy. Jonathan Keates’s The Siege of Venice examines the most long-lived of the rebel states that came into being. With its broad view of the 1848 experience across Italy and its detailed account of political developments and divisions in Venice during the city’s eighteen months of independence, the book offers a fascinating picture of Risorgimento Italy and plenty of opportunity to reflect on continuities with the present day. It also makes an excellent story.

  Writing in 1826 of the dispiriting nature of Italian public life, the poet Giacomo Leopardi remarked: ‘It is as marvellous and apparently paradoxical as it is true that no individual or people can be so cold, indifferent and insensitive … as those who by their nature are lively, sensitive and warm.’2 That is, Leopardi explains, the lively, sensitive Italian nature, when exposed to the ugly ‘reality of things and men’,3 particularly as manifested under Italy’s abysmal rulers, is prone to fall into a ‘full and continuous cynicism of mind’.4 What the poet suggests is a psychology oscillating dramatically between positive and negative states, a condition that ‘the northern peoples’, less warm, and hence ‘less swift to disillusion’,5 could not understand.

  Generalising as it is, Leopardi’s observation will serve as a frame for reading the relationship between the Austrians and Italians as it unfolds in Keates’s book. Among the Italians there are extremes of idealism and cynicism that fizz together in the constant and universal obsession that others are betraying the cause. To this rather hysterical dynamic the Austrians reply with the uniform and dogged determination of a society that, six centuries after the birth of the Italian republics, still believes in the absolute right of the Habsburg dynasty to rule over all its subject territories, regardless of language and ethnicity and whatever the quality of the dynasty’s representative at any given moment. Emperor Francis I would never have been chosen as a leader by any electoral body.

  * * *

  Keates opens his book with the story of the Bandiera brothers and at once poses the question: what does it mean to sacrifice one’s life for a cause even when no practical benefits immediately accrue? Italian officers in the Austrian navy, Attilio and Emilio Bandiera became fervent patriots, tried to lead an insurrection in the navy, were betrayed, deserted, subsequently attempted, in 1844, with only twenty followers, to stir up an insurrection in Calabria, were again betrayed and arrested, shortly after which they met the firing squad with shouts of ‘Viva l’Italia’.

  Keates speaks with some irony of the brothers’ ineptitude and bungled plans, but then admits that precisely ‘their rashness afforded them an imperishable glamour’.6 And indeed many a piazza in Italy is still named after i Fratelli Bandiera. Their story points up the eagerness of the mind, particularly the youthful mind, to attach itself to ideals that give life meaning. Above all, it warns us that whenever people are willing to sacrifice their lives for a cause, the rest of us, however indifferent or hostile, must sit up and take notice. Inept, bungled and irrational self-sacrifice can be seductive and inspirational, especially in the cynical public world which Leopardi describes. These extremes call to each other.

  One man who certainly took notice was the hero of Keates’s book, Daniele Manin, who four years later would find himself at the head of the Venetian rebellion. Keates is troubled throughout his long tale by the reflection that Venice in general and Manin in particular have not been afforded the celebrity they deserve in the history of Italy’s Risorgimento. They were overshadowed by events in Rome and by figures like Mazzini and Garibaldi. His determination to set the record straight gives the book a touchingly personal note, if only because the reasons for Manin’s and indeed Venice’s relative obscurity in the liberation process are soon all too evident to the reader.

  Born in 1804, his grandparents Jews converted to Christianity, Manin was an able lawyer of liberal leanings deeply committed to the commercial life of Venice and to improving its plight under an Austrian regime that tended to favour the port of Trieste and responded even to constructive criticism with censorship, if not worse. Bespectacled, short of stature and of ever uncertain health, Manin fought his city’s corner with courage, confronting the Austrian authorities with demands for administrative devolution and favourable trading conditions. He was concerned above all that unrest arising from worsening poverty and harsh Austrian government would lead to serious public disorder if concessions were not made. The Venetian mob, it should be said, is perhaps the second most important character in Keates’s book, a loud background noise always threatening to break in on any orderly political debate or military endeavour. Rather than seeing Manin as a moderate with whom they could do business, the Austrians arrested him on 18 January 1848 and held him in prison even after a trial had absolved him of any wrongdoing.

  The rapid succession of liberal protests and uprisings in 1848 from English Chartism, through revolutionary Parisian republicanism to the many rebellions in Austria, Hungary and Italy suggests how much modern communications were transforming Europe into a place where what happened at one end of the continent could immediately, if unpredictably, affect the other. A sense of the chronology of the uprisings is thus essential for an understanding of Manin’s and Venice’s story. Here is a brief summary of the first phase of events.

  In January 1848 Palermo rebelled against its Bourbon, Naples-based king, who was obliged to withdraw his forces from Sicily. In February, Paris rose against its government. In March the Viennese did likewise and the arch-conservative Metternich was dismissed. Monarchs in Naples, Turin, Florence and Vienna all promised their people constitutions. On 17 March a demonstration in Venice forced Manin’s release and on 22 March a rebellion by shipbuilders in the Arsenale led the Austrians to withdraw from the ci
ty. That this happened with very little bloodshed was largely thanks to Manin. During the same few days the Milanese pushed out the occupying Austrian army led by their senior general, Radetzky. Vicenza, Padua, Treviso and Udine all gained their freedom. On 23 March Charles Albert of Piedmont announced an invasion of Lombardy and the Veneto. In April Hungary gained a measure of autonomy within the Austrian Empire, which was now close to total collapse. In May the emperor fled Vienna.

  If there is a tide in the affairs of men, this was the moment to take it at the flood. Austria was on her knees. The major powers of northern Europe were preoccupied with their internal affairs. In a reversal of previous papal policy, the recently elected Pope Pius IX had declared himself in favour of Italian national aspirations and in so doing had become a hero for thousands of patriots. It seemed there was nothing to prevent Italian unification.

  But to form a single state would mean to agree on a political system and, perhaps more crucially, to accept the subordination of one’s home city to a national government, whether republican or monarchical. These matters had never been thrashed out. There were rival views. Charles Albert was marching into Lombardy as much to bury republicanism as to further unification. Pope Pius had been enthusiastic about the idea of Italy and the popularity his patriotism brought him, until he began to appreciate what the reality would mean in terms of the papacy’s relationship with Catholic Austria and the inevitable involvement in a struggle with republicans in Italy. As the battle against Austria began in earnest in Lombardy and the Veneto, he sent an army north but told his commanders not to cross the Po, then called them back. They disobeyed and advanced anyway. As international events in our new millennium have shown, to dismantle the status quo without a clear sense of what will replace it can lead to a long period of turmoil.

  Concentrating on the Venetian experience, Keates’s book now offers a fascinating dramatis personae encompassing more or less every shade of opinion and emotional response to the new situation that had so suddenly developed, a group of men and women whose interaction illustrates how, despite great physical courage, honesty, idealism, adequate resources and considerable powers of organisation, defeat can nevertheless be snatched from the jaws of victory.

  Manin had become the idol of the crowd, but his quiet charisma lay above all in his ability to face a mob down and restrain people from acts of public disorder. What appears to have mattered to him more than anything else was that Venice demonstrate its right to liberty through a show of civilised restraint. He rapidly put together an administration that was extremely successful in managing the city’s resources but unimaginative in its response to the inevitable Austrian counter-attack. Manned by Italians who could have been encouraged to mutiny, the Austrian fleet was allowed to escape and would return months later with different crews to blockade the Venetian lagoon. Appeals for military help from the surrounding towns of the Veneto were not generously met. Very soon the ancient campinilismo re-emerged, with Padua, Vicenza and Treviso all suspecting that Venice intended to lord it over them.

  Manin was assisted and hindered in his work by the wonderfully tetchy writer Niccolò Tommaseo, an outspoken and provocative misanthrope with a genius for taking offence. While Manin supported a moderate republicanism, the Catholic Tommaseo believed fervently in an Italy led by the papacy. Further to the left were patriots supporting more extreme forms of republicanism and even communism. Among the business community many pressed for fusion with Piedmont under the conservative rule of Charles Albert, while the city’s Cardinal Monico was not alone in hoping for the return of the Austrians, a sympathy that would lead to his house being stormed and looted.

  All these positions were intensely and eloquently argued in a plethora of newspapers and assemblies while the Austrians, who, though demoralised, knew exactly what they were about, regrouped to the east. In April the Irish general Nugent led Austrian forces into Friuli and the Veneto in an attempt to link up with Field Marshal Radetzky, who had retreated to a defensive position in the town of Verona, midway between Milan and Venice.

  The campaign was long and complex. One is struck, reading Keates’s entertaining account, by the international nature of the forces on both sides. The Austrian army was largely Croat, but there were also Hungarians, Slavs of every kind, Romanians and indeed many Italians who kept their oath to the imperial flag and the very simple, even ‘natural’ view of the world it allowed. On the Venetian side were soldiers who had deserted from the Papal army, from Naples and Calabria, from Tuscany and Romagna, but also a contingent of Swiss volunteers and stray adventurers from as far abroad as England.

  It is also striking to learn, through Keates’s many mini-biographies, how many of the men involved, whether professional soldiers or volunteers, switched sides and ideologies both before and after this campaign. Personalities seemed to metamorphose under the pressure of rival political visions and sudden changes of context. Men who had fought for Bourbon kings now fought valiantly for republicans, but would perhaps return years later to shooting down unarmed political demonstrators. Clearly there was a passion and enthusiasm in these heady days of liberation that carried along many in a raptus of collective sacrifice that would later seem inexplicable. Yet conscription was not introduced and even after the military situation in Venice became desperate there were many young men who did not volunteer to fight and presumably remained indifferent to the outcome of the war. On the other hand there were many women whose contribution went beyond nursing and knitting blankets to offering themselves as soldiers.

  For months the outcome hung in the balance. The Piedmontese achieved early successes in Lombardy and on the borders of the Veneto. Supported by a variety of Papal, Tuscan, Neapolitan and Venetian troops, the people of Treviso and Vicenza fought courageously. But again and again one force let down another, professional soldiers showed their contempt for volunteers, local groups and new arrivals failed to co-ordinate. Town by town, the dogged Austrians regained control. Every failure on the Italian side led to recrimination and suspicion of treachery. There were so many agendas. Above all, the Italians lacked a man who possessed both political and military vision and the mandate to use it. The much-envied Garibaldi might have been that man, but he was given a small force of poorly equipped volunteers and dispatched by the Piedmontese on a pointless diversionary excursion north of Milan.

  The Venetians waited. Keates repeatedly and admiringly remarks on how meticulously the city’s accounts were kept throughout this difficult period when a population of 100,000 and more had to be fed and armed despite a tightening blockade. But careful accounting was a minor quality beside what was now required and hardly likely to inspire future generations of patriots. In July 1848, fearful of Austrian successes, a democratically elected assembly of Venetians voted for fusion with Piedmont in the hope that Charles Albert could offer protection. Manin resigned from the city’s government, unable, he said, to serve in a monarchy, thus revealing that he put his political ideals before a united Italy. Ironically, only three weeks later the Piedmontese army was beaten at Custoza (just south of Lake Garda). Milan capitulated shortly afterwards and very soon Charles Albert was making a peace which did not even recognise the Venetians as ever having been part of his kingdom. This betrayal brought Manin back into government again, though with little idea as to how his city’s independence might now be saved aside from futile appeals to liberal opinion in France and Britain. At this confused moment, however, events in Venice were decidedly upstaged by those in Rome.

  When one considers the rise and fall of the various European powers in the modern age, it is hard to overestimate how much Britain’s potential was enhanced by that superimposition of faith and patriotism achieved through the invention of the Church of England. On most matters, British political and religious leaders could speak with one voice and in the event of European war only a small percentage of Catholic citizens might feel their loyalties were divided. This was emphatically not the case in Italy and the events of 1848 were
to confirm a rift between faith and patriotism that would plague the country into the 1930s.

  There were those who had hoped that Pius IX could bring religion and national sentiment together. ‘If Pius IX wishes it,’ wrote Massimo d’Azeglio, later to be prime minister of Piedmont, ‘if he consents to what public opinion is making of him, the papacy will become the century’s guiding force.’7 To encourage the Pope to show his hand, he penned a proclamation for the commanders of the Papal army on their arrival at the Po in April 1848. It declared that the struggle against Austria was a holy war on a par with the crusades. The plan backfired. Far from coming on board, Pius recalled the army and shortly afterwards bade all Catholics obey their foreign rulers. When in November his chief minister was murdered by demonstrators the Pope fled to take refuge with the reactionary King of Naples. From that moment on the split between the official church and Italian patriotism was irremediable.

  Into the vacuum left by the Pope came Mazzini and Garibaldi. They headed a revolutionary government. Neither was from Rome. Having lived much of their lives as exiles, they were attached above all to the idea of Italy and had no particular allegiance to any one town. Although important social reforms were passed, their main aim was to use this moment to advance the cause of a united Italy. Over a period of four months Garibaldi won two major engagements against French and Neapolitan armies and then led a spirited defence against a massive French siege. Always aware that the city couldn’t be held, he then fought his way out of it and took what was left of his army into the hills so that the fall of the town should not be seen as a final defeat. Keates repeatedly points out that the siege of Venice lasted so much longer than that of Rome, yet this is hardly the point. There was a clarity of patriotic intention, a simplicity of gesture in the defence of Rome that was far more likely to capture the imagination than the drawn-out vicissitudes of the siege of Venice. One was a watershed in Italian consciousness, the other was not.