Sunday, 5 April 2009

curiously enough

Prince Metternich had insisted on the young Prince, then seventeen, visiting the headquarters of the Allies. Charles Felix (who was unconnected with the Modena scheme) wrote a letter to the King on this subject, in which he stated it as his belief that the Austrian plan was to get Charles Albert accidentally killed, or to plunge him in vice, or to make him contract a discreditable marriage.
 This was why they had invited him to their camp. He adds the characteristic remark that their nephew would be in no less danger at the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington 'à cause de la religion.' Have him home and have him married, is his advice.
'We are well treated, because there is the expectation of soon devouring our remains by extinguishing the House of Savoy. It is the habit of the cabinet of Vienna; it was thus they made an end of the House of Este.'




Maria
These counsels were the more likely to impress Victor Emmanuel from his knowledge that they were inspired by no shadow of personal interest in 'the little vagrant,' but by the race-feeling alone. The Queen contrived to prevent the immediate recall of the Prince of  Carignano, but she was obliged to give way, and he was definitely established in Piedmont. In 1818 he was married at Florence to the Archduchess Maria Teresa of Tuscany, who, on the 14th of March 1820, gave birth to the child that was to become the first King of Italy.
Italy1848



Very soon after his return to his country, the hopes of the Liberal party began to centre in the young Prince, whom some of their more ardent spirits already saluted as the rising sun. Those who made his acquaintance were fascinated by the charm of manner which he could always exert when he chose,  What they did not perceive was, that in his nature lay that ingrained tendency to drift before the wind, which is the most dangerous thing in politics.



remembering those that made italy. it says more or less "killed by the Pope without proof or justice"
In Piedmont, Carbonarism had made great way among the upper classes and among the younger officers; the flower of the country was enrolled in its ranks, and the impatience to take some action towards procuring free institutions for themselves, and doing something for their Lombard brothers, had reached fever heat in the spring of 1821, when the affairs of Naples were creating much excitement.
 The principal conspirators, noble young men, full of unselfish ardour, were the chosen friends and companions of the Prince of Carignano. It was formerly the opinion that they made him the confidant of their plans from the first, that he was one of them, in short—a Carbonaro bound by all the oaths and obligations of the society. The judgment of his conduct afterwards is, of course, much affected by this point;   But by the light of documents issued in recent times, it appears more just as well as more charitable to suppose that Charles Albert's complicity was of a much less precise character.



According to his own account, he was taken by surprise when, on the and or 3rd of March, his friends Carail, Collegno, Santa Rosa and Lisio came to tell him in secret that they belonged to societies which had been long working for the independence of Italy, and that they reckoned on him, knowing well his affection for his country, to aid them in obtaining from the King some few first concessions, which would be the prelude of a glorious future.
 It is clear that he ought either to have broken with them altogether from that moment or to have cast his lot with them for good or evil. He tried a middle course.
He induced the conspirators to put off the revolution by which they intended to enforce their demands, and he conveyed to the King information of what had happened, asking at the same time that no measures should be taken against incriminated persons.
In fact, no precautions of any kind seem to have been taken. Victor Emmanuel, frightened at first, was soon reassured. The revolution, which was to have begun on the 8th, actually broke out on the 10th of March at Alessandria, where the counter orders issued at Charles. Albert's request, after the interview just described, were not obeyed.
carbonari flag
 . From Alessandria the revolution spread to the capital. The bulk of the army sympathised with the movement, and relied on the support of the people. But many felt the carbonari were against the King and called a muster.


micca
 Their arms were antiquated pistols and rapiers, and they themselves were veterans, some of them of eighty years, mounted on steeds as ancient.
 The King thanked them, but declined their services; nor would he give carte blanche to Captain Raimondi, who assured him that with his one company he could suppress the insurrection if invested with full powers. Soon after this refusal, a firing of guns announced that the citadel was in the hands of the insurgents.
 Here at the citadel of Turin, during the siege of 1706, occurred the memorable deed of Pietro Micca, the peasant-soldier, who, when he heard the enemy thundering at the door of the gallery, thought life and the welcome of wife and child and the happy return to his village of less account than duty, and fired the mine which sent him and three companies of French Grenadiers to their final reckoning.
Statue of Micca in Turin




After vacillating for two or three days, Victor Emmanuel abdicated on the 13th of March. The Queen desired to be appointed regent, but, to her intense vexation, the appointment was given to Charles Albert. A more unenviable honour never fell to the lot of man.

Stefano Sartorello Studios



Deserted by the ministers of the crown, who resigned in a body, alone in the midst of a triumphant revolution, appealed to in the name of those sentiments of patriotism which he could never hear invoked unmoved, the young Prince uttered the words which were as good as a surrender: 'I, too, am an Italian!'

victor amadeus


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But Charles Felix could not be disposed of so easily. The news of the  late events reached him at Modena of all places in the world, the rallying-point of the Prince of Carignano's bitterest foes. He was not long in sending his orders. He repudiated everything that had been done, and commanded Charles Albert, 'if he had a drop of our royal blood left in his veins,' to leave the capital instantly for Novara, where he was to await his further instructions.He was the eleventh child and fifth son born to Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia and Maria Antonietta of Spain. His maternal grandparents were Philip V of Spain and Elizabeth of Parma.


felix





He was a younger brother of Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia and Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia. He was not expected to ever succeed to the throne. However Charles Emmanuel never had any children and abdicated the throne on June 4, 1802. Victor Emmanuel had four living daughters when he abdicated the throne in 1821. As the succession was regulated by the Salic Law, Charles Felix succeeded his brother on the throne.He was married by proxy to Maria Cristina, Princess of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (January 17, 1779- March 11, 1849) on 7 March 1807. She was a daughter of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Marie Caroline of Austria.Charles Felix died without issue after a reign of ten years. He was succeeded by the senior male of his House as Charles Albert of Sardinia.












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Charles Felix died without issue after a reign of ten years. He was succeeded by the senior male of his House as Charles Albert of Sardinia.






Charles Albert obeyed. He was accompanied on his journey—or, as it may be called, his flight—by such of the troops as remained loyal. At Novara he found a sentence of exile, in a fresh order, to quit Piedmontese territory. Tuscany was indicated as the state where he was to reside.



The Austrians crossed the frontier with the consent of the King. Charles Felix's opinion of Austria has been already given; another time he said: 'Austria is a sort of bird-lime which, if you get it on your fingers, you can never rub off.'
 If anything was needed to increase his loathing for the revolution, it was the necessity in which it placed him, as he thought, of calling in this unloved ally.
 But Charles Felix was not the man to hesitate. Not caring a straw for the privilege of wearing a crown himself, his belief in the divine right of kings, and the obligation to defend it, amounted to monomania. The Austrian offer was therefore accepted.
 On her part Austria declined the obliging proposal of the Czar of a loan of 100,000 men. She felt that she could do the work unaided, nor was she mistaken.



On the 8th of April the Constitutionalist troops which marched towards Novara, sanguine that the loyal regiments there quartered would end by joining them, were met by an armed resistance, in which the newly-arrived Austrians assisted.
Their defeat was complete, and it was the signal of the downfall of the revolution. The leaders retired from Turin to Alessandria, and thence to Genoa, that had risen last and was last to submit.
 Thus most of them escaped by sea, which was fortunate, as Charles Felix had the will to establish a White Terror, and was only prevented by the circumstance that nearly all the proposed victims were outside his kingdom.
 Capital sentences were sent after them by the folio: there was hardly a noble family which had not one of its members condemned to death.
 When his brother, Victor Emmanuel, recommended mercy, he told him that he was entirely ready to give him back the crown, but that, while he reigned, he should reign after his own ideas.
 He seems to have had thoughts of hanging the Prince of Carignano, and for a long time he seriously meant to devise the kingdom to his son, the infant Prince Victor. Thus a new set of obstacles arose between Charles Albert and the throne.



Of the personal friends of that ill-starred Prince all escaped. One of them, the noble-minded Count Santorre di Santa Rosa, died fighting for liberty in Greece. In the miseries of exile and poverty he had never lost faith in his country, but fearlessly maintained that 'the emancipation of Italy was an event of the nineteenth century.' To another, Giacinta di Collegno, it was reserved to receive the dying breath of Charles Albert, when as an exiled and crownless king he found rest, at last, at Oporto.




 Within a few weeks of the breakdown at Novara, The Austrians fully expected a rising in Lombardy in the middle of March, and that they were not without serious fears as to its consequences is proved by the preparations which they quietly made to abandon Milan, if necessary.
 The Court travelling-carriages were got ready, and the younger princes were sent away.
 Carbonarism had been introduced into Lombardy the year before by two Romagnols, Count Laderchi and Pietro Maroncelli.
 It was their propaganda that put the Austrian Government on the alert, and was the cause of the Imperial decree which denounced the society as a subversive conspiracy, aiming at the destruction of all constituted authority, and pointed to death and confiscation of property as the penalty for joining it or not naming names of associates.
 In the autumn of 1820, Maroncelli and many others, including Silvio Pellico, the young Piedmontese poet, were arrested as Carbonari, while the arrest of the so-called accomplices began with Count Giovanni Arrivabene of Mantua, who had no connection with the society, but was charged with having heard from Pellico that he was a member.
 Pellico and his companions  were still lying untried in the horrible Venetian prisons, called, from their leaden roofs, the 'Piombi,' when the events of 1821 gave rise to a wholesale batch of new arrests.
 As soon as they knew of a movement in Piedmont, the Lombard patriots prepared to co-operate in it; that they were actually able to do nothing, was because it broke out prematurely, and also, to some extent, because their head, Count Confalonieri, was incapacitated by severe illness.
 The Austrian Government had, as has been stated, a correct general notion of what was going on, but at the beginning it almost entirely lacked proofs which could inculpate individuals.
 In the matter of arrests, however, there was one sovereign rule which all the despotic Governments in Italy could and did follow in every emergency: it was to lay hands on the most intelligent, distinguished and upright members of the community.
 This plan never failed; these were the patriots, the conspirators of those days. The second thing which the Austrians made a rule of doing, was to extort from the prisoners some incautious word, some shadow of an assent or admission which would place them on the track of other compromised persons, and furnish them with such scraps of evidence as they deemed sufficient, in order to proceed against those already in their power. In their secret examination of prisoners, they had reduced the system of provocative interrogation to a science. They made use of every subterfuge, and, above all, of fabricated confessions fathered on friends of the prisoner, to extract the exclamation, the nod of the head, the confused answer, which served their purpose.
The first to be arrested was Gaetano De-Castillia, who went with the Marquis Giorgio Pallavicini on a mission to Piedmont while the revolution there was at its height.
 When De-Castillia was arrested, Pallavicini, then a youth of twenty, and full of noble sentiments, rushed to the director of the police with the avowal: 'It was I who induced De-Castillia to go to Piedmont; if the journey was a crime, the fault is mine; punish me!'
 No error could have proved more calamitous; till that moment the Austrians were in ignorance of the Piedmontese mission; De-Castillia was arrested on some far more trifling charge. Pallavicini's generous folly was rewarded by fourteen years' imprisonment, and its first consequence was the arrest of Count Confalonieri, at whose instance the visit to Turin had been made. For months the Austrians had desired to have a clue against him; the opportunity was come at last.




Federico Confalonieri, brilliant, handsome, persuasive, of great wealth and ancient lineage, innately aristocratic, but in the best sense, was morally at the head of Lombardy.
When in England, the Duke of Sussex prevailed upon him to become a Freemason, but he was not a Carbonaro  in the technical sense, though both friends and foes believed him to be one. He knew, however, more about this and the other secret societies then existing in Italy—even those of the reactionary party—than did most of the initiated. In an amusing passage in his memoirs he relates how, when once forcibly detained in a miserable hostelry in the Calabrian Mountains, a den of brigands, of whom the chief was the landlord, he guessed that this man was a Calderaio, and it occurred to him to make the sign of that bloodthirsty sect.
Things changed in a second; the brigand innkeeper was at his feet, the complete household was set in motion to serve him.
Confalonieri would have only exercised common prudence in leaving the country, but he could not reconcile himself to the idea of flight. Anonymous warnings rained upon him: most likely they all came from the same quarter, from Count Bubna, the Austrian Field-Marshal, with whom Confalonieri was personally on friendly terms. On the 12th of December the Countess Bubna made a last effort to save him; her carriage was ready, she implored him to take it and escape across the frontier. He refused, and next day he was arrested.




Austrian legal procedure was slow; the trial of the first Carbonari, Silvio Pellico and his companions, did not take place till 1822. On the 22nd of February the sentence of death was read to Silvio Pellico in his Venetian prison, to be commuted to one of fifteen years'  imprisonment at Spielberg, a fortress converted into a convict prison in a bleak position in Moravia.


Maroncelli contracted a disease of the leg through the hardships endured; amputation became necessary, but could not be performed till permission was received from Vienna—a detail showing the red-tapism which governed all branches of the Austrian administration. This patriot went, after his release, to America, where he died, poor, blind and mad. Pellico, crushed in soul, devoted his latter years entirely to religion. Only men of iron fibre could come out as they went in. The Spielberg prisoners wore chains, and their food was so bad and scanty that they suffered from continual hunger, with its attendant diseases. Unlike the thieves and assassins confined in the same fortress, the State prisoners were given no news of their families. Such was Spielberg, 'a sepulchre without the peace of the dead.'



The State trials of the Lombard patriots in 1823 resulted in seven capital sentences on the Milanese, thirteen on the Brescians, and four on the Mantuans.
 The fate of the other prisoners depended on that of Count Confalonieri. If the sentence on him were not carried out, the lives at least of the others might be regarded as safe, since he was looked upon as the head.
 The sentence of death was passed.
Undaunted by the news, his brave wife Teresa sought an interview with the Empress, in whom she found a warm advocate, but who was obliged to own, after several attempts to obtain a reprieve, that she despaired of success.
Teresa Confalonieri hurried back to Milan through the bitter winter weather, in doubt whether she should arrive before the execution had taken place.
 But the unceasing efforts of the Empress won the day.
 The respite was granted on the 13th of January; life-imprisonment was substituted for death.
 The countess sent her husband the pillow which she had bathed with her tears during her terrible journey; needless to say that it was not given to him. She died broken-hearted with waiting before he was set at liberty in the year 1836.



When Count Confalonieri reached Vienna on his way to Spielberg, he was surprised to find himself installed in a luxurious apartment, with  three servants to wait upon him.
 Though too ill to touch solid food, a sumptuous breakfast and dinner were daily set before him; and but for the constant jingle of his chains, he would have thought himself in a first-class hotel on a journey of pleasure. The object of these attentions was clear when one evening Prince Metternich came to see him, and stayed for three hours, endeavouring by every exquisite flattery, by every promise and persuasion, to worm out of him the secrets of which he alone was believed to be the depositary.
 The Austrian Government had spent £60,000 on the Milan Commission, and, practically, they were no wiser than when it began.
 Would Confalonieri enlighten them? Whatever scruples he might have felt during the trial could be now laid aside; there was no question of new arrests. It was from pure, abstract love of knowledge that the Government, or, rather, the Emperor, desired to get at the truth. If he preferred to open his mind to the Emperor in person, His Majesty would grant him a secret audience. Above all, what was the real truth about the Prince of Carignano?



All the rest was a blind; it was the wish to have some damnatory evidence against Charles Albert, such as would for ever exclude him from the throne, that had induced the Emperor and his astute minister to make this final attempt.



'Confalonieri need never go to Spielberg,' said the Prince; 'let him think of his family, of his adored wife, of his own talents, of his future career, which was on the brink of being blotted out as completely as if he were dead!' Confalonieri was worthy of his race, of his class, of himself; he stood firm, and next morning, almost with a sense of relief, he started for the living grave.




 On the 28th of June 1828, several villages in the province of Salerno rose in obedience to the harangues of two patriotic ecclesiastics, Canon de Luca and Carlo da Celle, superior of a capuchin convent.
 This was meant to develop into a general insurrection, but it was nowhere followed up, and the sword of vengeance fell speedily on the wretched villagers.
 Surrounded by the royal troops, they were forced into submission, many were shot on the spot, others were dragged in chains to Salerno, not even a drop of water being allowed them during the journey under the scorching sun.
 The village of Bosco was rased to the ground. The priest, the monk, and twenty-two insurgents were shot after the repression.
The heads of the victims were cut off and placed in iron cages where their wives or mothers were likely to see them.
 A woman went to Naples to beg for the pardon of her two grandsons, by name Diego and Emilio. The King, with barbarous clemency, told her to choose one.
In vain she entreated that if both could not be saved the choice should be left to chance, or decided by someone else. But no; unless she chose they would both be shot.
At last she chose Diego. Afterwards she went mad, and was constantly heard wailing: 'I have killed my grandson Emilio.' This anecdote gives a fair notion of Francis I., whose short reign was, however, less signalised by acts of cruelty, though there were enough of these, than by a venality never surpassed.
The grooms-in-waiting and ladies-of-the-bedchamber sold the public offices  in the daylight; and the King, who was aware of it, thought it a subject for vulgar jokes with his intimates.
Francis died in 1830 of bad humour at the Paris revolution, and was succeeded by Ferdinand II., to be known hereafter as Bomba—then a clownish youth, one of whose first kingly cares was to create St Ignatius Loyola a Field-Marshal.



The revolution which upset the throne of Charles X., and ushered in the eighteen years' reign of the Citizen King, seemed likely to have momentous consequences for Italy. The principle of non-intervention proclaimed by French politicians would, if logically enforced, sound the death-knell of the Austrian power in Italy. Dupin, the Minister of War, enlarged on the theme in a speech which appeared to remove all doubt as to the real intentions of the Government. 'One phrase,' he remarked, 'has made a general impression; it expresses the true position of a loyal and generous Government. Not only has the President of the Council laid down the principle that France should abstain from intervention; he has declared that she would not tolerate intervention on the part of others. France might have shut herself up in a cold egotism, and simply said that she would not intervene; this would have been contemptible, but the proclamation of not suffering the interventions of others is the noblest attitude a strong and magnanimous people can assume; it amounts to saying: Not only will I not attack or disturb other nations, but I, France, whose voice is respected by Europe and by the whole world, will never permit others to do so. This is the language held by the ministry and by the ambassadors of Louis Philippe; and it is this which the army, the National Guard, France entire, is ready to maintain.'



Truly language was invented to travesty the truth, and when French politicians say they are going to the right it is an almost sure sign that they are going to the left; nevertheless, is it possible to blame the Italians who read in these assurances a positive promise affecting their own case?



The same assurances were repeated again and again through the winter of 1830-31; they were repeated authoritatively as late as March in the latter year. Well may a French writer inquire: 'Was it insanity or treacheryKnowing to what extent he was a marked man, Confalonieri would have only exercised common prudence in leaving the country, but he could not reconcile himself to the idea of flight. Anonymous warnings rained upon him: most likely they all came from the same quarter, from Count Bubna, the Austrian Field-Marshal, with whom Confalonieri was personally on friendly terms. On the 12th of December the Countess Bubna made a last effort to save him; her carriage was ready, she implored him to take it and escape across the frontier. He refused, and next day he was arrested.




Austrian legal procedure was slow; the trial of the first Carbonari, Silvio Pellico and his companions, did not take place till 1822. On the 22nd of February the sentence of death was read to Silvio Pellico in his Venetian prison, to be commuted to one of fifteen years'  imprisonment at Spielberg, a fortress converted into a convict prison in a bleak position in Moravia. To that rock of sorrow, consecrated for ever by the sufferings of some of the purest of men, Silvio Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli, with nine or ten companions, condemned at the same time, were the first Italians to take the road. Here they remained for the eight years described by the author of Francesca da Rimini, in Le Mie Prigioni, a book that served the Italian cause throughout the world. Even now some Italians are indignant at the spirit of saintly resignation which breathes upon Silvio Pellico's pages, at the veil which is drawn over many shocking features in the treatment of the prisoners; they do not know the tremendous force which such reticence gave his narrative. Le Mie Prigioni has the reserve strength of a Greek tragedy.



Maroncelli contracted a disease of the leg through the hardships endured; amputation became necessary, but could not be performed till permission was received from Vienna—a detail showing the red-tapism which governed all branches of the Austrian administration. This patriot went, after his release, to America, where he died, poor, blind and mad. Pellico, crushed in soul, devoted his latter years entirely to religion. Only men of iron fibre could come out as they went in. The Spielberg prisoners wore chains, and their food was so bad and scanty that they suffered from continual hunger, with its attendant diseases. Unlike the thieves and assassins confined in the same fortress, the State prisoners were given no news of their families. Such was Spielberg, 'a sepulchre without the peace of the dead.'



The State trials of the Lombard patriots in 1823 resulted in seven capital sentences on the Milanese, thirteen on the Brescians, and four  on the Mantuans. The fate of the other prisoners depended on that of Count Confalonieri. If the sentence on him were not carried out, the lives at least of the others might be regarded as safe, since he was looked upon as the head. It is certain that the authorities, and the Emperor himself, had the most firm intention of having him executed; the more merciful decision was solely due to the Countess Confalonieri's journey to Vienna. Accompanied by the prisoner's aged father, this beautiful and heroic woman, a daughter of the noble Milanese house of Casati, went to Vienna before the conclusion of the trial, to be ready for any eventuality. When the sentence of death was passed, it was announced by the Emperor to old Count Confalonieri, whom he advised to return with the Countess Teresa as fast as possible if they wished to see the condemned man alive. Undaunted by the news, the brave wife sought an interview with the Empress, in whom she found a warm advocate, but who was obliged to own, after several attempts to obtain a reprieve, that she despaired of success. Teresa Confalonieri hurried back to Milan through the bitter winter weather, in doubt whether she should arrive before the execution had taken place. But the unceasing efforts of the Empress won the day. The respite was granted on the 13th of January; life-imprisonment was substituted for death. The countess sent her husband the pillow which she had bathed with her tears during her terrible journey; needless to say that it was not given to him. She died broken-hearted with waiting before he was set at liberty in the year 1836.



When Count Confalonieri reached Vienna on his way to Spielberg, he was surprised to find himself installed in a luxurious apartment, with  three servants to wait upon him. Though too ill to touch solid food, a sumptuous breakfast and dinner were daily set before him; and but for the constant jingle of his chains, he would have thought himself in a first-class hotel on a journey of pleasure. The object of these attentions was clear when one evening Prince Metternich came to see him, and stayed for three hours, endeavouring by every exquisite flattery, by every promise and persuasion, to worm out of him the secrets of which he alone was believed to be the depositary. The Austrian Government had spent £60,000 on the Milan Commission, and, practically, they were no wiser than when it began. Would Confalonieri enlighten them? Whatever scruples he might have felt during the trial could be now laid aside; there was no question of new arrests. It was from pure, abstract love of knowledge that the Government, or, rather, the Emperor, desired to get at the truth. If he preferred to open his mind to the Emperor in person, His Majesty would grant him a secret audience. Above all, what was the real truth about the Prince of Carignano?



All the rest was a blind; it was the wish to have some damnatory evidence against Charles Albert, such as would for ever exclude him from the throne, that had induced the Emperor and his astute minister to make this final attempt.



'Confalonieri need never go to Spielberg,' said the Prince; 'let him think of his family, of his adored wife, of his own talents, of his future career, which was on the brink of being blotted out as completely as if he were dead!' Confalonieri was worthy of his race, of his class, of himself; he stood firm, and next morning, almost with a sense of relief, he started for the living grave.



'The struggle was decided,' Prince Metternich had said in the course  of the interview, 'and decided not only for our own, but for many generations. Those who still hoped to the contrary were madmen.'



Some years of outward quiet doubtless confirmed him in the first opinion, while the second was not likely to be shaken by the next attempt that was made to take up arms for freedom. On the 28th of June 1828, several villages in the province of Salerno rose in obedience to the harangues of two patriotic ecclesiastics, Canon de Luca and Carlo da Celle, superior of a capuchin convent. This was meant to develop into a general insurrection, but it was nowhere followed up, and the sword of vengeance fell speedily on the wretched villagers. Surrounded by the royal troops, they were forced into submission, many were shot on the spot, others were dragged in chains to Salerno, not even a drop of water being allowed them during the journey under the scorching sun. The village of Bosco was rased to the ground. The priest, the monk, and twenty-two insurgents were shot after the repression. The heads of the victims were cut off and placed in iron cages where their wives or mothers were likely to see them. A woman went to Naples to beg for the pardon of her two grandsons, by name Diego and Emilio. The King, with barbarous clemency, told her to choose one. In vain she entreated that if both could not be saved the choice should be left to chance, or decided by someone else. But no; unless she chose they would both be shot. At last she chose Diego. Afterwards she went mad, and was constantly heard wailing: 'I have killed my grandson Emilio.' This anecdote gives a fair notion of Francis I., whose short reign was, however, less signalised by acts of cruelty, though there were enough of these, than by a venality never surpassed. The grooms-in-waiting and ladies-of-the-bedchamber sold the public offices [Pg.48] in the daylight; and the King, who was aware of it, thought it a subject for vulgar jokes with his intimates. Francis died in 1830 of bad humour at the Paris revolution, and was succeeded by Ferdinand II., to be known hereafter as Bomba—then a clownish youth, one of whose first kingly cares was to create St Ignatius Loyola a Field-Marshal.



The revolution which upset the throne of Charles X., and ushered in the eighteen years' reign of the Citizen King, seemed likely to have momentous consequences for Italy. The principle of non-intervention proclaimed by French politicians would, if logically enforced, sound the death-knell of the Austrian power in Italy. Dupin, the Minister of War, enlarged on the theme in a speech which appeared to remove all doubt as to the real intentions of the Government. 'One phrase,' he remarked, 'has made a general impression; it expresses the true position of a loyal and generous Government. Not only has the President of the Council laid down the principle that France should abstain from intervention; he has declared that she would not tolerate intervention on the part of others. France might have shut herself up in a cold egotism, and simply said that she would not intervene; this would have been contemptible, but the proclamation of not suffering the interventions of others is the noblest attitude a strong and magnanimous people can assume; it amounts to saying: Not only will I not attack or disturb other nations, but I, France, whose voice is respected by Europe and by the whole world, will never permit others to do so. This is the language held by the ministry and by the ambassadors of Louis Philippe; and it is this which the army, the National Guard, France entire, is ready to maintain.'

2 comments:

  1. eccomi nel tuo Blog dopo tanto navigare!!Se cerchi aiuti e risorse free per il tuo blog vieni a trovarci.Un saluto ed una buona giornata..Dual.

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