I. THE REPUBLICS ESTABLISHED BY

THE DIRECTORY.

ENGAGED for the last fifty years in a continued series of revolutions, Italy still finds herself under the domination of Austria and the Holy See. During this period of half a century, she has presented the strangest contrasts, and gone through the most different phases. Italy received the laws of France without making one effort to resist their imposition-and has lost them without taking one step in their defence; insurrections have burst forth without encountering any obstacleand terrible re-actions have stifled them without provoking resistance. At various epochs the state of Italy appeared utterly desperate: first, after the battle of Waterloo; next, in 1821; and again in 1831, the political agony of the peninsula seemed about to begin. Even at the present day, the language of most of the revolutionists of Italy breathes nothing but despair: “Let us conspire," say they, "let us rise in revolt; it will be without success; we shall fall in the attempt, but fresh victims will at least serve to keep alive the hatred of the people against the existing governments." Despite these mournful cries--despite these sinister auguries, always in the end hope has rekindled, always conspiracies have begun again to be formed, followed by new contests and new reactions, which have been regarded by the mass of the population with the same apparent indifference. The apathy of the people of Italy-the ill-starred activity of the conspirators-the insatiable cruelty of the existing governments-the exalted heroism of the victims-the feebleness of the combatants-all create unmingled astonishment beyond the Alps.

Italy is a country different from every other. To explain why it is so, and to form a proper estimate of the actual strength of the liberal party, we must go back to the period when that party was legally constituted by the French revolution.

Previous to 1789, there existed in Italy four distinct kinds of governments absolute governments on the Austrian model, in the duchies of Milan and Mantua-theocracy in the Roman States-mediæval republics at Venice, Genoa, Lucca, and San-Marino-the rest of Italy was under independent princes. Hence four distinct influences grew up at every point of the peninsula. Austria, in the commencement of the eighteenth century, had attempted to resuscitate all the imperial pretensions of ancient times: more recently Joseph II. laid the foundations of the Austrian system, (bureaucracy,) called himself the first employé of the state, and thus placed himself at the head of a movement hostile to the feudal system and the clergy. Following the movement of the popular mind in France, the dukes of Modena and Parma combated the pretensions of the church, and the privileges of the aristocracy; the Grand Duke of Tuscany gave a code of laws to his subjects, and supported the bishop of Pistovia against the Holy See. In the republics the patricians had got hold of the reins of power, and of themselves alone constituted the state; whilst the democracy was deprived even of the dubious support of enlightened despotism. Venice had become conscious that she could neither reform herself nor continue unchanged, but must inevitably perish along with the inquisition and the council of ten;

Genoa, after the desperate contest of its plebeians against the imperial troops, remained stationary; Lucca was still governed by foreign rulers, and by the ancient institution of the discola, a sort of half religious, half political inquisition. The two Italian monarchies were quite exceptions to all the other governments of Italy. The monarchy of Piedmont, opposed to Austria, prided itself on devotion to religion and to feudal customs-its population wished to be esteemed neither Italian nor French-its king valued a drummer more than a philosopher and Piedmont succeeded in preserving its military attitude only at the cost of a public debt of a hundred and twenty millions. The government of Naples contained within itself the very extremes of civilization and of barbarism: on the one hand it was seen to suppress tithes, convents, and the privileges of the clergy-to expel the Jesuits, and, at one stroke, in spite of the indignation of the bishops, to render public instruction purely secular; whilst on the other hand, the punishment of death was decreed against freemasons-the reading of Voltaire's works was prohibited under penalty of three years' confinement as a galley slave-and six months' imprisonment was awarded for reading the Gazette de Florence. During the very period that the minister, Tanucci, was compelling the nobles to reside at court, was framing new laws, and extending his protection to Filangieri,* only the one twenty-seventh part of the kingdom was, in 1789, freed from the chains of feudalism; one thousand three hundred and ninety-five feudal claims on person and property were still reckoned to exist; and justice was administered according to the conflicting enactments of twelve different codes, one of which was as ancient as the conquest of the country by the Normans. Sicily was distinguished from Naples only by its barbarism being more profound and complete. So recently as 1724, the three inquisitors of

Palermo had burned two victims in presence of twenty-six prisoners of the inquisition. As to the Roman theocracy, enfeebled, its pretensions combated throughout the entire of Europe, and without even the support of popular opinion in Italy, the Holy See still preserved the sentiments, the practices, and the pretensions of the middle ages. During the last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, eighteen thousand assassinations were recorded by the tribunals; and the Roman legislation was comprised in eighty-four thousand laws. Naples, Milan, Genoa, Parma, Modena, and Tuscany were, in the eyes of the court of Rome, but revolutionary states; and Pius VI. spared neither counsel, remonstrance, nor contrivance, to excite a religious reaction all over Italy.

Such was the state of Italy, undergoing a crisis, slow, irregular, and full of strange incidents and contrasts. Every where the new ideas of the eighteenth century had succeeded in penetrating-and every where they had given birth to new opinions and prejudices, without constituting any actual political party. The liberalism of the French reform party displayed itself in administrative ameliorations, but it failed to arouse the middle classes (bourgeoisie); it protected the third estate against the nobility and the clergy, but it gave to it neither power nor political influence; ostentatiously paraded at court for the purpose of conciliating popularity, its enunciation in books was visited with persecution; and amongst the society of freemasons it received its deathblow before the slightest political movement could be attempted. A considerable number of authors of eminence and many poets had rallied round liberal sentiments, but their influence was almost nothing, and they were completely vanquished by the empty and sonorous productions of writers of songs and ballads. this epoch Italy was still the country of eighty thousand monks—the adopted country of sigisbeest and banditti

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armies of adventurers represented its military power-and its morals were under the guidance of governments supported by political inquisitions, and which scrupled not to seek aid from the dagger of the assassin. vigour of the republics had departed five hundred years ago, and the bril liant sway of the feudal chiefs had ceased for two centuries: there remained of ancient times only the division, the cunning, the despotism, and the administrative resources which had been put in practice to stifle the great revolutions of the middle age and the renaissance. There was, besides, no spirit of unity, no Italy, no national hatred of foreign domination, and the most profound depravity characterised the political conduct of the whole peninsula.

At the appearance of the French army the scene changes: the enlightened despotism of the princes recoils back in its course of reform, and hastens to restore to the court of Rome the privileges of which it had been stripped. On the other hand, the middle classes, thoroughly possessed by the new ideas, demand a complete transformation of the system of government, and, as all is refused them, their liberalism glides into republicanism. Scarce had Buonaparte entered the territory of Piedmont, when thousands of Jacobins began to form conspiracies. In 1798 there were six thousand Piedmontese exiles ready to take the field; the prisons were crammed with revolutionists, and the unsuccessful revolt of Domodossalo placed in the power of the Piedmontese authorities one hundred victims, all of whom were shot. Priocca, minister of the interior, exerted himself to allay the storm: by appeals to religion he raised several bands of fanatical peasants, and he granted impunity to the assassins of the French and Jacobins; but even these terrible means could not protract the contest, and the king of Piedmont soon found himself compelled to abdicate his throne.

In Lombardy, the victory was still more quickly gained: the Austrians vanquished, the duchy yielded without resistance; the Cisalpine republic was triumphant, thanks to a new set of revolutionists who were completely unknown in 1789. Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Vicenza, joined in the general movement, and rose in insurrection against the patriciate of Venice. Verona felt inclined to resist the liberal impulse; a Capuchin monk incited the people to free Italy of the barbarians; the populace made a furious attack on the French and on the Jews, spared not even the hospitals, and attempted to plunder the public treasury. This piece of extravagance only served to draw down on Venice the vengeance of Buonaparte, and the republic soon found itself at the mercy of the democrats, who surrendered it to the French troops on the 12th of May, 1797. The aristocratic state of Genoa yielded ten days later, viz., on the 22nd of May, in the same year. Supported at first by the populace, she was at length compelled to surrender to Buonaparte, and offered no resistance to the French arms, but what was encountered from the crowds of peasants of Abaro and Polcevera, whom General Duphot found no difficulty in dispersing. Lucca, in its turn, was likewise gained over to the democratic party in 1799. Three years before, the revolution had reached Reggio, and from thence it passed to Modena, which was already abandoned by its duke. The Roman States had already lost Bologna and Ferrara, which were in arms against the sway of the pope when, in 1799, the French army arrived beneath the walls of Rome, and proclaimed a republic without encountering any opposition, with the exception of a mere émeute of the Transteverins.*

At Naples the liberals had begun to form combinations so early as 1791, and their plans had assumed considerable development in 1795. In 1799, the police made out a list of twenty

thousand suspected persons. In the teeth of these demonstrations of liberalism, the king threw himself into a re-action of a theocratico-feudal character, gave the order for religious persecutions, plundered the public banks to raise funds for levying an army, and imagined the crisis well chosen for hearkening to the counsels of England, and provoking the French army, which was then in the Roman States. At

the first encounter, fifty thousand Neapolitans were scattered and disbanded; the king fled to Naples, and afterwards to Sicily; and General Championnet marched on Naples with a corps of eight thousand men. The populace of Naples, more royalist than their king and the public functionaries, were eager to oppose the French: the attempt was heroic, but the liberal inhabitants of Naples, whose cause was identified with that of France, opened on them the batteries of Sant' Elmo; and the mob, thus caught betwixt two fires, was speedily compelled to yield. The submission of Naples drew on gradually that of the provinces, and thus was achieved the invasion of the peninsula.

The apparent result of this first revolution was to establish in Italy the sway of democracy. The whole peninsula became covered with republics, and every state set about re-organizing its government on the model of the French republic. At Naples there was the Parthenopean republic; the Roman states formed the Roman republic; in upper Italy, the Cisalpine, Cispadane, Transpadane, Ligurian, and Venetian republics were formed; Piedmont became united to France. The real and decisive result of the invasion was the change which it effected in the principles of Italian politics, and the thorough separation of the three parties which, for half a century, had been growing up and struggling together in Italy.

The strongest of these three parties was then, as well as now, composed of the supporters of the ancient governments. This party required only unity of action amongst its members, to repress the revolutionary attempt, and to oppose with success the French invasion; but the princes, the republics, and the court of Rome, in contending against Buonaparte, would listen to no counsels but such as were in VOL. XXVII.-No. 159.

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accordance with the old political notions of Italy. Nothing could be more hostile to unity than those ideas. The court of Rome imagined itself still in the middle ages; Venice, firm to the traditions of antiquity, chose to maintain a position of neutrality; the government of Tuscany was ever seeking after new alliances, as was its invariable custom; and Tuscany formed a league with France: Piedmont, following out its military predilections, at once entered into war; whilst Naples kept vacillating betwixt violence and timidity. Various attempts had been made to reconcile these opposing tendencies, but without success. Rome, Cardinal Orsini had proposed an alliance of the Italian states. 1791, the court of Turin urged the close union of Piedmont, Austria, Venice and the other Italian powers; in 1793, Queen Caroline, for the advancement of Neapolitan interests, brought forward the same project of a universal league. All these various attempts were unsuccessful, and the governments continuing in their state of isolation, Austria alone possessed any actual power of resistance. Had they acted with unanimity in supporting Austria, or had the example of Naples, in arming the lower orders, been universally followed, Italy, with its sea-coast protected as it was by England, would have been able to oppose to Buonaparte an army of three hundred thousand men, supported by numerous troops of peasants, and the Italian insurgents would not have dared to show themselves; but, we repeat it, the various governments acted without combination, and hence their overthrow. Still, one chance remained of regaining the advantage which they had at first possessed: they might preach up a crusade against the principles of the revolution, and realize, at no matter what price, that ItaloAustrian league which Naples and Piedmont had so anxiously sought to bring about. The opportunity was not lost, and the alliance took place : ancient Italy forgot its intestine broils; the royalists extended their hands to the patricians of the republics, and to the prelates of the Holy See. The patronage of Austria, supported by England and Russia, was accepted without reserve. Thus, although in appearance vanquished, the royalists

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