Chapter 5 THE GREAT MINISTRY

Cavour went abroad with the full intention of preparing for the day when his voice would be that of Piedmont, if not of Italy. He attached importance to personal relations, which helped him to keep in touch with European politics and politicians, and he was anxious to find out how the Connubio was regarded by foreigners, among whom, till lately, Rattazzi had been looked upon as a revolutionary firebrand. But thinking men abroad understood the reasons which had dictated the coalition.

In London Cavour met with a friendly reception from Lord Malmesbury, who was then Foreign Minister, and who assured him that the English Government would be glad to see him back in office. With characteristic presence of mind he framed his answer to provoke a more definite pronouncement. He could not, he said, return to office alone or abandon the party he had been at so much pains to create. "Naturally," answered Lord Malmesbury, "you cannot return to power without your friends." Reassured as to the sentiments of one great political party, Cavour approached the other in the person of Lord Palmerston, than whom he never had a firmer political friend or more sincere admirer. Lord Palmerston saw the larger meaning of the experiment of freedom in Piedmont, and he was one of the first to see it. If that experiment succeeded, the Italian tyrannies were doomed; how, he did not discern, but the fact was apparent to him. He heard, therefore, with much interest what Cavour had to tell him of the gradual taking root of constitutional government in the Sardinian kingdom, and he promised him the moral support, not of one party or another, but of England, "in pledge of which," he added, "we have sent you our best diplomatist." This allusion was to Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Hudson, whom Lord Palmerston had called back from the Brazils in the spring of the year, because by a singular intuition he guessed him to be the very man to help the Italian cause. It was intended to send him to Florence, but when he reached the Foreign Office, which Lord Palmerston had just vacated, he received instructions to go to Turin, a fortunate change of plan. No two men were ever better fitted to work together than Cavour and Sir James Hudson. Without ceasing to be particularly English and strictly loyal to the interests of his own country, the British Minister at Turin served Italy as few of her sons have been able to do. Beneath a rather cold exterior he concealed the warmest of hearts, and he had the power of attaching people to him, so that they never forgot him. It is greatly to be regretted that he left no record of the stirring years of his mission, which coincided with the rise and ascendency of Cavour.

Enchanted with the country, and "more Anglomane than ever," Cavour left England for Paris, where he laid himself out to conciliate political men of all shades, from Morny to Thiers, who advised him to be patient and not to lose heart: "If, after giving you vipers for breakfast, you have another dish served up for dinner, never mind"-such was the diet of politicians. What Cavour once called "his powerful intellectual organisation" made an immediate impression on the Prince President, as he was still styled. Louis Napoleon cultivated an impassible exterior, but at bottom his character was emotional, and, like all emotional persons, he was susceptible to the magnetism of a stronger brain and will. Cavour summoned Rattazzi to Paris to present him to the future Caesar. "Whether we like it or not," he wrote at this time, "our destinies depend on France; we must be her partner in the great game which will be played sooner or later in Europe." A few weeks later Napoleon declared at Bordeaux that "the empire was peace," but like all intelligent onlookers Cavour received the statement with incredulity. Possibly the only person who believed in it was the speaker-for the moment; he may have thought that "bread and games" was a formula by which he could rule France, or rather Paris, but he was soon to find it insufficient.

Cavour sought out several of the Italian exiles who were leading a life of privation and obscurity in Paris, one of whom was Manin, the Dictator of Venice. With him Cavour expressed himself "very much satisfied, though his sentiments were rather too Venetian": sentiments which Manin sacrificed-a last act of abnegation-when he finally gave his support to Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel, carrying with him two-thirds of the republican party, who could brave the charge of changed allegiance if so incorruptible a patriot led the way. Cavour also saw Gioberti, "always the same child of genius, who would have been a great man had he had common sense." Gioberti, however, had made a great stride towards common sense, for instead of dreaming of liberating popes, he was now imagining a renovating statesman, and he had inscribed Cavour's name under his new portrait. In a book published in Paris, Gioberti drew the Cavour of the future with a penetration and a sureness of touch which would make a reader, who did not know the date, suppose that the words were written ten years later. Men of great talent, he said, rarely threw aside the chance of becoming famous; rather did they snatch it with avidity; and what fame more splendid could now be won than that of the minister of the Italian prince who should re-make the country? He fixed his hopes on Cavour, because he alone understood that in human society civilisation is everything, all the rest, without it, nothing. "He knows that statutes, parliaments, newspapers, all the appurtenances of free governments, even if they are of use to individuals, are miserable shams to the commonalty if they fail to help forward social progress." He was willing to forgive him the generous error of treating a province as if it were a nation, when he compared it with the pettiness of those who treated the nation as if it were a province. He invoked some great and solemn act of Italianità on his part, which should pledge him irrevocably to the national cause. Cavour was too little influenced by others for it to be safe to say that this was one of the prophecies which tend to their own fulfilment; still it is worth noticing that he read the passage and was struck by it.

Cavour had scarcely returned to Piedmont when a ministerial crisis occurred through the rejection by the Senate of a far from stringent Bill for permitting civil marriage, which had passed in the Chamber of Deputies. The situation was further complicated by the state of mind into which the king had been driven by the remonstrances of his wife and mother, both near their end, and by the answer which he received from Rome in reply to a direct appeal to settle matters amicably, the Pope having said, in effect, that he was not going to help him to legalise concubinage in his dominions. D'Azeglio, harassed on all sides and ill through the reopening of his wound, resigned office, and advised the king to send for Cavour. "The other one, whom you know, is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, and then, he enjoys it so much!" he wrote to a friend, with the pathetic wonder of the artist, romancist, and grand seigneur, who had never been able to make out what there was to enjoy in politics. Victor Emmanuel followed his advice, but he allowed Cavour to see that he hoped that the new ministry would make up the quarrel with Rome. Cavour knew that only one path could lead to peace-surrender. Though anxious for office he declined to take it on these terms, and he recommended the king to call Count Balbo to his counsels; but Balbo, persuaded that a ministry only supported by the Extreme Right could not stand even for a few weeks, in his turn suggested the recall of D'Azeglio. Here the saving good sense of the king interposed; little as he liked Cavour he recognised that he was the only man possible, and he charged him, without conditions, with the formation of a ministry. D'Azeglio had fallen on a point on which Cavour was for and not against him; his successor desired to show that there would be no violent change of policy, and he therefore reconstructed the Cabinet as it was before, except for the change of head. He reserved for himself the Presidency of the Council and the Ministry of Finance. Rattazzi, who still occupied the Speaker's chair, was willing to wait for the present for a seat in the Cabinet, especially when he heard that the king, who was at first very hostile to the Connubio, had quite expected him to take office.

So the gran ministero, as it was called, entered upon its functions: great by reason of its chief, who infused his own life and vigour into what was before a weak administration. Cavour was a born man of business; he hated disorder in everything-except, indeed, dress, in which his carelessness was proverbial. He had not the common belief that, muddle them how you may, there will always be a providence which looks after the affairs of the State and prevents the collapse that would attend a private commercial enterprise conducted on the same system. He took in hand the financial renewal of Piedmont in the same spirit in which, when he had only just reached maturity, he volunteered to restore his father's dilapidated fortune. It was for this that he chose the Ministry of Finance: Piedmont, as he saw, could never sustain a national and Italian policy abroad without having first set its own house in order. He started with two principles: taxation must be increased and the resources of the country must be so developed as to enable it to pay its way without sinking into hopeless stagnation. It was a disappointment to some to see Cavour devoting himself with more ardour to putting on new taxes than to producing any of those decorative schemes for hastening the millennium which are expected from a new and ambitious minister. But, though ambitious, he cared for the substance, power-not for the shadow, popularity.

If there had been no other reason for the compact with the moderate liberals, the necessity for fresh taxation would have been a sufficing one. The Extreme Right and Left proposed to meet the existing difficulties by cutting down expenditure, but, if sound in theory, in practice this policy would have reduced Piedmont to complete impotence. While a part of the Left Centre voted with the extremists, it was only by the greatest efforts that a grant of ￡100,000 was obtained for the fortifications of Casale, which had been declared by the war minister, La Marmora, to be absolutely necessary for the defence of the State. The radical deputy Brofferio said that States wanted no other defence than the breasts of their citizens. From the Chamber, as then constituted, there was little hope of obtaining the imposition of new burdens, in part designed to meet Sardinian liabilities, but in part also to render possible the reorganisation of the army, which was urgently required if the future was not to witness disasters worse than those already experienced. Prince Metternich had said that, even if Piedmont were so troublesome as to persist in her liberal infatuation, she would have to keep quiet, at a moderate computation, for twenty years-just the time which it took her king to unite Italy. The two campaigns of 1848-1849 and the war indemnity had cost about 300,000,000 frs. The annual expenditure was doubled. Added to this, the one source of wealth, agriculture, was almost ruined by the oidium disease which destroyed the vines, and by harvests so bad that the like had not been seen since the celebrated scarcity which followed the wars of Napoleon. As Cavour saved his father's property not by burying the last talent in a safe place but by laying it out in bold improvements, so now he did not fear to spend largely and even lavishly, not only on the army, but also on public works. He completed the railway system and employed what Brofferio called "a portentous activity" in extending the roads, canals, and all the means of communication which could stimulate industry. It must be remembered that Piedmont was then lamentably backward; a long obscurantist régime, succeeded by war and havoc, had left her destitute of all the accessories of modern life. This was changed as if by the wand of the magician. In his first budget, Cavour put on new taxes to the amount of 14,000,000 frs., one being the so-called tax on patents, or on the exercise of trades and professions, which excited much adverse criticism. At the same time he reduced the salt tax and initiated several free-trade measures, to be ultimately crowned by the abolition of the corn laws. On the whole, however, his line of policy was not such as would recommend itself to the crowd, and in October 1853 a furious mob attacked the Palazzo Cavour, repeating the old cry that the minister was a monopolist who robbed the poor of their bread. Luckily the doors were barred, but next day Cavour was threatened as he walked along the streets. Just then the Ministry of Justice fell vacant, and it was offered to Rattazzi, who, to his credit be it said, did not hesitate to take office at a time when the head of the Government was the target of unscrupulous abuse, and it was even thought that his life was in danger. Rattazzi was afterwards transferred to the Home Ministry, which he held till the Connubio broke up, more on personal than on political grounds, in 1858.

Though Cavour's alliance with Rattazzi was not eternal, it lasted till it had served its purpose. By help of it he imposed his will on king and country until he was strong enough to impose it by force of his own commanding influence. He always considered the Connubio one of the wisest acts of his political life. It is not uncommon to hear it still denounced in Italy as the origin of the political demoralisation, the mixing up of private and public interests, the lack of fixed principles; which later times have witnessed. If the fact were admitted, it would not show that Cavour could have governed in any other way. Had the country trusted him from the first it would have been different, but the country did not trust him. Even after the combination of the two Centres, whenever there was a general election it was doubtful if the Government would obtain a working majority. The accusation of corruption was frequently made against the Ministry in general and Rattazzi in particular, since it was he who presided over the electoral campaigns. Of corruption in the literal sense there was probably little, but constituencies were led to believe that it would be to their advantage to return the ministerial candidate. On one occasion Rattazzi tried to prove that such hints did not constitute "interference." Cavour got up in the course of the same debate and not only acknowledged the "interference," but said that without it constitutional government in Piedmont would collapse. His biographers have preferred to be silent on this subject, but he would have despised a reserve which conceals historical facts. The apathy of one section of the electors, the fads and jealousies of another, the feverish longing to pull down whomsoever was in power, inherited from a great revolutionary crisis, the indefatigable propaganda of clerical wire-pullers, all tended to the formation of parliaments so composed as to bring government to a standstill. The result of a protracted interruption might be the fall of the constitution itself, or it might be civil war. Cavour took the means open to him to prevent it, and, whether he was right or wrong, his career cannot be judged if the difficulties with which he had to cope are kept out of sight.

Piedmont needed some years, not of rest, but of active and consecutive labour before it could enter the lists again as armed champion of Italian independence. The disastrous issue of the last conflicts had been attributed to every cause except that which was most accountable for it: a badly led and badly organised army. The "We are betrayed" theory was caught up alike by republicans and conservatives, who accused each other of ruining the country rather than give the victory to the rival faction. Whatever grain of truth there was in these taunts, the military inefficiency of the forces which Charles Albert led across the Ticino in March 1848 remained the main reason why Radetsky was able to get back Lombardy and Venetia for his master. This Cavour knew, and he was anxious not to precipitate matters till La Marmora, to whom he privately gave carte blanche, could say that his work was done. He began treating Austria with more consideration than she had received from Massimo d'Azeglio, who was a bad hand at dissembling. Count Buol was gratified, almost grateful. But these relatively harmonious relations did not last long. In February 1853 there was an abortive attempt at revolution in Milan, of which not one person in a thousand knew anything till it was suppressed. It was the premature and ill-advised explosion of a conspiracy by which Mazzini hoped to repeat the miracle of 1848: the ejection of a strong military power by a blast of popular fury. But miracles are not made to order, though Mazzini never came to believe it. As a reprisal for this disturbance, the Austrian Government, not content with executions and bastinadoes, decreed the sequestration of the lands of those Lombard emigrants who had become naturalised in Piedmont. Cavour charged Austria with a breach of international law and recalled the Sardinian minister from Vienna. It was risking war, but he knew that even for the weakest state there are some things worse than war. It was reversing the policy of prudence with which he had set out, but when prudence meant cowardice, Cavour always cast it to the winds. The outcry in all Europe against the sequestration decree deterred the Austrian Government from treating the Sardinian protest as a casus belli. Liberal public opinion everywhere approved of Cavour's course, and in France and England increased confidence was felt in him by those in authority. Governments like to deal with a strong man who knows when not to fear.

Only such a man would have conceived the idea which was now taking concrete form in Cavour's mind. This was the plan of an armed alliance with the Western Powers on the outbreak of the war, which as early as November 1853 well-informed persons looked upon as henceforth inevitable. Cavour would never have been a Chauvinist, but he was not by nature a believer in neutrality. He was constitutionally inclined to think that in all serious contingencies to act is safer than not to act. The world is divided between men of this mould and their opposites. La Marmora told him that the army, which had made incredible progress considering the state in which it was a short time before, could place in the field a force for which no country would have reason to blush. If not a great general, the Piedmontese Minister of War might fairly be called a first-class organiser. For the rest, Cavour believed that the ultimate school of any army is war. Above all, he believed that this was the hour for a great resolve or a gran rifiuto. If the House of Savoy stood still with folded arms it might retire into the ranks of small ruling families, which leave the rearrangement of maps to their betters. It was secretly reported to Cavour that Napoleon III. was beginning to drop enigmatical remarks about Italian affairs, and it was these reports that finally decided him to strain every nerve to make his audacious design a reality.

Russia had broken off diplomatic relations with Sardinia in 1848, and when Victor Emmanuel communicated the death of his father to the Powers, the only one which returned no response was the empire of the Czar. It would be absurd to adduce this lack of courtesy as an excuse for war; still it gave a slightly better complexion to an attack which the Russian Government was justified in calling "extraordinarily gratuitous." Cavour had one person of great importance on his side, the king. In January 1854 he broached the subject with the tentative inquiry, "Does it not seem to your Majesty that we might find some way of taking part in the war of the Western Powers with Russia?" To which Victor Emmanuel answered simply, "If I cannot go myself I will send my brother." But it is not too much to say that the whole country was against him. The old Savoyard party opposed the war tooth and nail, and from the "Little Piedmont" point of view it was perfectly right. The radicals, headed by Brofferio, denounced it as "economically reckless, militarily a folly, politically a crime." Most of the Lombard emigration thought ill of it, and the heads of the army were lukewarm or contrary; this was not the war they wanted. The Tuscan romancist Guerrazzi wrote, with unpardonable levity, that republicans ought to rejoice because this was the final disillusion given to Italians by monarchy, limited or not. One republican, however, Manin, saw in the Italian tricolor displayed with the French and English flags in Paris the first ray of hope that had gladdened his eyes since he left Venice, and Poerio; when he heard of the alliance in his dungeon, "felt his chain grow lighter." It seemed as if those who had suffered most for Italy had a clearness of vision denied to the rest.

What, if persisted in, would have been the most serious obstacle was the opposition of Rattazzi, but he was won over to assent, if not to approval, by Giuseppe Lanza, a new figure on the parliamentary scene, who had lately been elected Vice-President of the Chamber. Lanza (who was destined to be Prime Minister when the Italians went to Rome) was then only slightly acquainted with Cavour; from being independent, his favourable opinion carried more weight. With Rattazzi's adhesion the majority of the Centres was secured. It was not an enthusiastic majority, but it quieted its forebodings by the argument which was beginning to take hold of people's minds: that Cavour must be let do as he chose. Hardly any one liked him, but to see him stand there, absolutely unhesitating and sure, among the politicians of Buts and Ifs, began to generate the belief that he was a man of fate who must be allowed to go his way.

It is easy to be wise after the event, and it may seem strange now that the alliance with the Western Powers found so few, so very few cordial supporters. But Cavour himself called the risks which attended it "enormous." The great question for Sardinia was what Austria would do. If she did nothing, the pros and cons were perhaps evenly balanced; if she joined Russia, the pros would be strengthened; if she joined the allies, the situation for Sardinia would be grave indeed. The republicans were already calling the war an alliance with Austria. Were the description verified, it was hard to see how the utmost genius or skill could draw aught but evil from so unnatural a union.

The first invitation to Sardinia to co-operate came separately from England, which had vetoed a monstrous proposal on the part of Austria to occupy Alessandria, in order, in any case, to prevent Piedmont from attacking her during the war. Lord Clarendon instructed Sir James Hudson to represent to Cavour that Austria's fears would be set at rest if a portion of the Sardinian army were sent to the East. The chief English motive was really the conviction that numbers were urgently required if the war was to succeed, and also the desire to lessen the large numerical superiority of the French. In the first instance Cavour replied that although he had been all along in favour of participating in the war, his Cabinet was too much against the idea for him to take any immediate action. But the subject was revived. An alliance with Piedmont was popular in England, where the Government was in an Italian mood, having been made terribly angry by the King of Naples' prohibition of the sale of mules for transport purposes in the East. In December 1854 Cavour was formally invited to send a corps which would enter the English service and receive its pay from the British Exchequer. He would rather have sent it on these terms than not at all, but the scheme met with such unqualified condemnation from La Marmora and General Dadormida, the Foreign Minister, that it was set aside as not becoming to the dignity of an independent nation. Meanwhile something had occurred which reinforced the arguments of those who were against sending troops at all. After hedging for a year, Austria signed a treaty couched in vague terms, but which appeared to debar her, at any rate, from taking sides with Russia-Italy's most flattering prospect. Napoleon III. expected much more from it than this; he thought that Austria was too much compromised to avoid throwing in her cause with the allies. It must be said of Napoleon that among the men responsible for the Crimean War he alone aimed at an object which, from a political, let alone moral view, could justify it. He did not think that it would be enough to obtain a few restrictions, not worth the paper on which they were written, and the prospect of a new lease of life to Turkish despotism. He certainly had one paltry object of his own; he wished to gratify his subjects by military glory. He began to suspect the hollowness of the testimony of the plebiscite; the French people did not like him, and never would like him. A war would please the populace and the army; it would also make him look much more like a real Napoleon. But when he had decided to go to war, he hoped to do something worth doing. He thought (to use his own words) "that no peace would be satisfactory which did not resuscitate Poland." There, and nowhere else, were the wings of the Russian eagle to be clipped. Moreover, the entire French nation, which cared so little for Italy, would have applauded the deliverance of Poland. On the Polish question the ultramontane would have embraced the socialist. France was never so united as in the sympathy which she then felt for Poland, except in that which she now feels for Russia. But Napoleon did not think that he could resuscitate Poland without Austrian assistance. At the close of 1854 he made sure of getting it.

Cavour clung to his project. Probably his penetrating mind guessed that Austria could not fight Russia, which had saved her from destruction in 1849. There now arose a demand for some guarantee which should give Piedmont, if she took part in the war, at least the certainty of a moral advantage. The king remarked to the French Ambassador that all this wrangling about conditions was folly "If we ally ourselves promptly and frankly, we shall gain a great deal more" Doubtless Cavour thought the same, but to satisfy the country it was necessary to demand, if nothing else, a promise from the Western Powers that they would put pressure on Austria to raise the sequestrations on the property of the Lombard exiles. But the Powers, which were courting Austria, refused to make any such promise, on which the Foreign Minister, General Dadormida, resigned, notwithstanding that the Lombard emigrants generously begged the Government not to think of them. Cavour offered the Foreign Office and the Presidency of the Council to D'Azeglio; under whom he would have consented to serve, but D'Azeglio declined to enter the Ministry, whilst engaging not to oppose its policy Cavour then took the Foreign Office himself, and at eight o'clock on the evening of the same day, January 10, 1855, the protocol of the offensive and defensive alliance of Sardinia with France and England was, at last, signed.

Wilting of the Crimean War in after days, Louis Kossuth observed that never did a statesman throw down a more hazardous and daring stake than Cavour when he insisted on clenching the alliance after he had found out that it must be done without any conditions or guarantees. Cicero's Partem fortuna sibi vindicat applies to diplomacy as well as to war, "but the stroke was very bold and very dangerous."