The exiles of Italy

Front matter

THE EXILES OF ITALY BY C. G. 11. A sTHOIt OF " THE Cl> ItATE OV LINWOOD," " MOB3IAN LESLIE," ETC RTC. " We dwlN that from Ull mOuntnlDI to the s-uiin Italy nhall exUt— tliut one national n;\< mm. ni dull nil* un nil, MOlin to um a cinnmon law, a oommon cJucation, enable na to sultll our common rt-llBloui, political, arid MOW dutlM." Kiumhi H/icn'i LkctukR*. EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO. HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO, LONDON. MDCG-LV1I. EDIXFIVEs-H : T. CONSTABCtB, PRINTER TO HER MAJESTY.

Preface

. The following Narrative, though in the form of a Novel, is a strictly authentic History of the period embraced. Its materials have been compiled partly from the best published accounts, and partly from the oral nar ration and private correspondence of men who bore a prominent part in the scenes described. In all cases where circumstances permitted, the real names have been given of the persons introduced ; and (with one single exception, the incident of Bassi in the Robber's Cave) the account of their lives, actions, and sufferings, and of the deaths of those amongst them whose names have been added to the list of their country's martyrs, is simply true. The descriptions of personal appearance are correct, and, on nearly all special occasions, the words of the speakers are literally VI

PREFACE.

. rendered. The persons introduced under fictitious names, with hardly any exception, arc also real cha racters. The record of the sufferings and oppression endured by the Italians is far within the truth. Were the full horrors of despotism in Italy unveiled, the beholder would turn shuddering from the picture, and the design of its representation be defeated. November 1857. Since the time when the serpent first prowled amidst the bowers of Eden, the kingdoms of God and of Satan have been at war ; and in old time as now, Italy has been one of their most famous battle-fields. At the period when the Prince of Heaven appeared to head His armies, Rome was the mistress of the world ; and when He accomplished that stupendous act which de feated for ever the great scheme of the usurper, and riveted, by a tie closer than the imagination of the arch-fiend could conceive, the bonds he strove to break, it was before a Roman tribunal that the veiled mon arch stood, and it was on a Roman cross the fatally mistaken triumph of his enemy was achieved.

The deed accomplished, and the Great Commander ascended to the high ground from which he directs the movements of His host, the armies which bore His name and banner dispersed themselves over the world. The tide of battle rolled westward, and Italy became the arena of a conflict sharp and strong. Here, in the land native to the highest type of the human race, from which the streams of civilisation and of art flowed over the whole world, the usurper erected a system of government on the plan of his opponent's, closely imitating its economy and insignia ; whilst the better to accomplish his purpose of dominion, he called it by the name, and professed it to be the one against which, for more than four thousand years, he had warred, and stigmatized as rebels to the King of Heaven all who disowned its authority.

He pressed into its service the beauty 0/ art, and the sanctity of a false spiritualism, and placed on the throne a man whom he clothed with the attri butes of God, and named the vicegerent of Christ. Now, armed with this tremendous engine for carrying on the war of truth against falsehood, force against reason, the will of man against the laws of God, the usurper continued the contest under a new form, but cautiously, in the first place, assuming the aspect of a mild and spiritual authority. Deceived by this seeming holiness, many of the good and true became the subjects of this government, and diffused the faith of Christ, and spread abroad the glories of art, doing good service to the cause of God from their unconscious position in the enemy's country ; whilst the light they carried allured, they were tolerated, nay canonized ; but if it burned too clear, and, ceasing to invite, became a beacon to warn, they perished.

The nation in whose bosom this false empire was reared, has nobly and firmly upheld the standard of the true. Century after century has swelled the number of her witnesses, and recorded the names of her martyrs, whilst the fires of a self-devoting heroism have blazed the higher, because of all the blood poured forth to quench them ; and despots from every quarter have flocked around the usurper, and done his work. They have planned it with a steadfastness of purpose, and have carried it out with a vigour of execution, that have made that garden of the earth an Aceldama watered with tears. The French Revolution of 1790 seemed to usher in for Italy an era of hope : " When France became heroic against foreign aggression, Italy welcomed with enthu siam the conquerors of Austria, and the hopes of Italian independence allied themselves with the French cause."* The Napoleonic period, though it still withheld from the Italians the national independence and unity which were the goal of all their hopes, was an era of peace and prosperity, compared to the dark days which had preceded it, and the darker still which were destined to follow ; but the time of Napoleon's downfal arrived, and with it came a day-beam flashing across the twilight of Italy, to be quenched in the night which has ever since, save for one brief bright gleam, spread its veil of darkness over her fair face, from the mountains to the sea.

In 1814, as during all the centuries of glory or of gloom that had preceded it, the claim of Italy to na tional independence stood based on the immutable law of eternal right ; but at this period the arbitrary rules of diplomacy had also pledged themselves, by the solemn promise of the Allied Powers, that her birthright should not be interfered with. * Signor Saffi's Lectures on Italy. X HISTORICAL

Introduction

. " Italians," said Lord Bentinck, in their name, " be with us, and we shall make Italy again what she was in her best times." " The old feudal rights of the German empire had been abolished by the verdict of the Allies themselves, and the pretensions of Austria in Italy, in this respect, put out of the question."* Yet, in the face of this de cision, and in defiance of their own solemnly declared guarantee, the Italian nation was denied a voice in the councils of the Allies. " They refused to listen to the members of the Milanese Senate, who were sent to Paris to expound the wishes of the country. It was convenient to a few diplomatists to throw open a rich farm to the covetousness of the Viennese bureaucracy, and they assigned Lombardy and Venice, with all their goods and chattels, to the valets of the house of Austria, who have treated those provinces since then exactly as a private estate." . . .

" As regards the dispositions of the Emperor Francis and his successors towards the Italian people, they were and are those of tyrants, who hate and fear their slaves. The Austrian principles of government are strikingly portrayed in the catechism which the Italian school masters were commanded to read to their pupils. The beginning of the dialogue was such : — "Q. How must subjects bear themselves towards their sovereign ?" * Signor Saffi's Lectures on Italy. "A. They must bear themselves as faithful slaves towards their master." " Q. Why must they behave as slaves ?" " A . Because their sovereign is their master, and has power over their property as well as over their life."* " Italy having once more fallen under Austrian rule, on the 12th June 1814, the inhabitants of Milan, going out at morn for their business, read, wonderstruck, in a proclamation of Count Bellegarde, that they were no longer Italians but Austrians ; and they were taught, besides, that this was the most happy event that could befall them. ' We are convinced,' said the proclamation, ' that your hearts will be filled with joy, and that your gratitude will hand down to the remotest generations an everlasting proof of your devotion and your fidelity.' Such was the language of Austria, at the perpetration of the greatest offence that can be committed against a nation — viz., their subjection to a foreign yoke.

From that day a unanimous protest arose from the whole soul of Italy — a protest which grew deeper and deeper from year to year ; which embodied itself in all the manifestations of private and public life ; which at the first favourable occasion burst forth in open war ; which gave martyrs by thousands, in all classes of society, to the national cause, and which will never cease as long as there be one single drop of Italian blood in the last child of the last Italian mother." t * Signor Saffi's Lectures on Italy. f ID'd. HISTORICAL

INTRODUCTION.

. "But," it may be said, "the Austrian rule extends only over Northern Italy." Nominally it does, but virtually its influence covers the peninsula. In Piedmont alone, the tree of civil and religious liberty is planted, and bears fruit. The rulers of all the other states, for the most part of foreign descent, are in the Austrian interest, and the allies of its power. " From one end of that noble peninsula to the other, a continuous net-work of foreign domination, native official tyranny in the service of the foreigner, and priestly bigotry co-operating for ends of its own, is nailed down over a prostrate and struggling people." * In 18.8 the Italian people at last succeeded in bursting their chains, and Italy trembled on the verge of freedom. The Austrian rule in the North was shaken to its foundation.

In the South, the tyrant Ferdinand, obliged for a time to counterfeit the liberal monarch, granted a constitution, and sent a body of forces to Lombardy to assist in the war of independence. Rome surpassed the glory of her palmiest days, under the rule of Mazzini and his colleagues — a rule which for mildness and equity has never been excelled — which held its subjects by the binding chain of moral influence, and united the attraction of paternal love with the power of the magistrate ordained by God to enforce His laws. Under this wise and mild government, the wounds inflicted by political and religious tyranny began to heal, and the pulse of the people to * Professor Massou's Address of the Society of the Friends of Italy. throb with a new and glorious life. But in the very dawn of this brighter epoch, the old war recommenced.

Might once more took up arms against right, and in the guise of four Papal armies returned to the assault. Inspired by the spirit of a deathless heroism, the Italians defended their country, whilst their walls were beaten down, their houses in flames, their ramparts deluged with the blood of their best and bravest, and maintained its rights in their fearless protest, even when trodden down by overwhelming numbers, and unable to prolong the unequal contest, they were not van quished, but retired. Since that period, let the sword, the scaffold, and the dungeon, tell the history of Italy. In Lombardy, during the five days of Milan, the Austrian soldiers under Radetzky perpetrated atrocities at which humanity shudders — atrocities which formed a dark background to the humanity of the Milanese, whose forbearance and magnanimity heaped coals of fire on the heads of the people who had so long oppressed them.

" The Tyrolese and other police officers of every rank, the family of the director-in-chief of that corps, Baron Torresani Lanzenfeld, and, finally, Count Bolza, a man well known to the readers of Pellico and Andryane, all fell into the hands of the people, and all were spared. . . . The excited young men who had taken Bolza turned to Cattaneo to ask how the old offender should be dealt with: 'If you kill him,' said the people's man, 'you will do an act of justice; if you spare him, your deed will be holy,' — and the man was spared."* The wounded ene mies were tended in private houses, in the hospitals, by the fairest and tenderest hands — a charity too sadly contrasting with the heedlessness or brutality of the Austrian authorities, who, at the time of the January riots, had suffered the wounds of their prisoners to fester, undressed, till more than one of the unfortunate people died of gangrene, -f- They tended and feasted their prisoners, in many instances, with even exaggerate kindness, being anxious above all things to act up to the words of their proclamation of the 21st of March, in which, while expressing their determination to drive the enemies beyond the Alps, they add their best wishes that, " once there, they too might enjoy those very blessings of freedom and wellbeing which they hoped to have secured for themselves."!

Meanwhile, by the Austrians, the bearers of a flag of truce were fired upon, and the flag itself made the means of alluring the citizens into an ambush ; un heard of cruelties were committed on defenceless women and children, who were shockingly murdered and mutilated, and the sick and dying at the gates and in the suburbs of Milan, and all along the road of the retreating soldiers, shared their fate. These horrors were, if possible, exceeded by the scenes enacted before Brescia, under the detestable Haynau. "Every degree of every species of crime did that most skilful of all torturers— most wanton of all pro- * Cattaneo, p. 55. f Mariotti, Italy in 1848. X Proclamation in Cattaneo, page 91. fligates — most elaborately ingenious of all butchers — devise and execute. It was his delight to put children to death before their fathers' eyes — fathers before their children's — husbands in the arms of their wives, and brothers in the arms of each other.

The male prisoners, tarred or steeped in turpentine, were burned to death, while lasciviousness in its most revolting form drove many to desperation and suicide." * The military executions, and barbarous imprison ments, so graphically described by Felice Orsini, succeeded those scenes of horror ; and Austrian tyranny in Lombardy reached a point at which it has not scrupled to inflict upon women, as the penalty of love for their country, the cruel outrage of the lash. Tus cany, Parma, Modena, all under Austrian authority, have their most sacred rights trampled upon by the foreign usurper. Society is held down by the pres sure of military strength, and pervaded by a system of secret police, against which its victims possess no defence but in exile from their native land, fortunate if they still possess the power.

In the States of the Church, the ally of Austria, supported by the bayonets of France, maintains over his subjects the double terrorism of civil and religious oppression. Many executions have taken place, and the prisons are filled with thousands of unfortunate captives, whose only crime is that they love their country. Gangs of ruffian officials, called Sbirri, prowl through * Interpretation of the Apocalypse. — Appendix. HISTORICAL

INTRODUCTION.

. the streets, enter the houses, with or without a pretext) capture the inhabitants, and ill-treating them at their pleasure, carry them to prison, where they must remain without even the form of a trial. The Romagna is governed almost entirely by the Austrians. If an offensive weapon be found in the possession of any one, he is arrested and shot, within twenty-four hours. If an accidental expression of disaffection to their tyrants be uttered by any of the people, or a song sung of which the authorities disapprove, the offender is dragged into the public place, and the degradation of the lash is branded on the free spirit in characters of fire. " In the kingdom of Naples, counting nearly six millions of inhabitants, a sovereign, appointed as the theory is, to be the shepherd of these millions, prowls among them like a human wolf."* The 1 5th of May 1848, was appointed by Ferdinand for the opening of the Constitutional Parliament.

That morning rose bright with the hopes of his subjects, the night closed on a city drenched in their blood. With what design Ferdinand promised a constitution to his people, remains between God and his own conscience. The manner in which he has performed it has con victed it as a monstrous falsehood in the sight of God and men. In a declaration to his subjects immediately after the loth of May, the king reiterated, in the most solemn manner, his grant. " Neapolitans ! Profoundly afflicted by the horrible * Professor Masson's Address. calamity of the 15th of May, Our most lively desire is to mitigate as far as possible its consequences. It is Our most fixed and irrevocable will to maintain the Constitution of the 10th of February, pure and free from the stain of all excess.

As it is the only one compatible with the true and immediate wants of this portion of Italy, so it will be the sacrosanct altar upon which must rest the destinies of Our most beloved people and of Our crown " Resume, then, all your customary occupations ; con fide with the utmost fulness of your hearts in Our good faith, in Our sense of religion, and in Our sacred and spontaneous oath."* In the preamble there occurs this most solemn invo cation : — " In the awful Name of the Most Holy and Almighty God, the Trinity in Unity, to whom alone it appertains to read the depths of the heart, and whom We loudly invoke as the judge of the simplicity of Our intentions, and of the unreserved sincerity with which We have determined to enter upon the paths of the new political order ; Having heard with mature deliberation Our Council of State ; " We have decided upon proclaiming, and We do pro claim, as irrevocably ratified by Us, the following Con stitution." f * Farini, book iii., chap. viii. t Translated by the Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., from La Costituzione Politico, del Eegno di Napoli.

Presso Gaetano Ncbile, Strada Toledo, No. 166, 1849. historical introduction. The particular provisions of the Constitution then follow : — Article I. " The kingdom of the two Sicilies shall be from henceforward subject to a limited, hereditary, constitutional monarchy, under representative forms." So stands the article ; but the fact is, that the mon archy of Naples is absolute and unlimited. Beneath this declaration lies the true principle of its government, fully acted out by the king, and taught by his authority. The work entitled, C'atechismo Filosofico, per uso delle Scuole Inferiori, contains the following passages : — " Scholar. Can the people of itself establish funda mental laws in a State ? " Master. No ; because a Constitution or funda mental laws are of necessity a limitation of the Sove reignty ; and this can never receive any measure or boundary, except by its own act, otherwise it would no longer constitute that highest and paramount power ordained of God for the wellbeing of society.

" _.. If the people, in the very act of electing a Sovereign, shall have imposed upon him certain condi tions and certain reservations, will not these reserva tions and these conditions form the Constitution and the fundamental law of the State ? " M. They will, provided the Sovereign shall have granted and ratified them freely. Otherwise they will not, because the people, which is made for submission and not for command, cannot impose a law upon the HISTORICAL INTRODUPTION. XIX Sovereignty which derives its power not from them but from God. " S. Suppose that a Prince, in assuming the Sove reignty of a State, has accepted and ratified the Con stitution or fundamental law of that State ; and that he has promised or sworn to observe it, is he bound to keep that promise, and to maintain that Constitution and that law ?

" M . He is bound to keep it, provided it does not overthrow the foundations of Sovereignty ; and provided it is not opposed to the general interests of the State. . . . " S. Whose business is it to decide when the Consti tution impairs the right of Sovereignty, and is adverse to tiie welfare of the people ? " M. It is the business of the Sovereign ; because in him resides the high and paramount power established by God in the State, with the view to its good order and felicity."* Article IV. " The legislative power resides jointly in the King, and in a National Parliament, consisting of two Chambers — the one of Peers, the other of Deputies." But neither the Chamber of Peers nor the Chamber of Deputies exist. In Article XXIV, " Personal liberty is guaranteed. No one can be arrested, except in virtue of an instru ment proceeding in due form of law from the proper authority ; the case of flagrancy or quasi-flagrancy * Letters of the Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. XX HISTORICAL

INTRODUCTION.

. excepted. In the case of arrest by way of preven tion, the accused must be handed over to the pro per authority within the term at furthest of twenty four hours, within which also the grounds of his arrest must be declared to him."* The events of the last nine years afford a vivid com mentary on the manner in which the guarantee of per sonal liberty is observed. Innumerable arrests followed the struggle of the 15th of May, and a political persecu tion, specially directed against the classes on which the wellbeing of a State depends, and against the men of unimpeachable character, and of moderate opinions, whom a Government of the smallest possible latent spark of wisdom would have endeavoured to attach to its interests, has descended like an avalanche, gathering force as it advanced, until the whole nation is overwhelmed in its desolating fury.

The Baron Poerio, Settembrini, and many other illustrious names, were amongst the first victims. After a long detention in the loathsome dens of the Neapolitan prisons, they were tried with forty fellow-prisoners in 1850. Poerio was one of the Ministers of the Crown, under the Con stitution, and held also one of the most prominent positions under the Neapolitan Parliament. He is a man of high talent and blameless integrity, a refined and accomplished gentleman ; no man could more per fectly deserve, or possesses in a higher degree, the confidence and affection of his countrymen. This man * Ibid. was accused of high treason, and put upon trial for his life, on the testimony of Iervolino, formerly a beggar, and, at the time of his accusation, a disappointed applicant for some low office. During the course of the trial, the innocence of Poerio was manifested in every step, and the perjury of his accuser proved in a manner that in any court of equity would have consigned him to signal punishment ; yet, upon this testimony, Poerio was found guilty, and sentenced to twenty-four years' imprisonment in irons.

Settembrini, an advocate of high standing, with a character as pure and blameless as that of Poerio, was tried at the same time, upon grounds as equitable, and condemned to death. The sentence was afterwards commuted to imprisonment for life in " double irons, upon a remote and sea-girt rock ; nay, there may even be reason to fear that he is directly subjected to physical torture."* But to speak of imprisonment conveys a faint idea of these Neapolitan dens of horror. Their filth is revolting. In many cases under the level of the ground, the damp exhalations from the walls are perilous in the extreme to the health of those confined in them. The officers appointed to superintend, except at night, scarcely ever enter them. The only food allowed to the prisoners consists of coarse black bread, and soup so nauseous that extreme hunger alone can overcome the repugnance of nature to taste it. " I have seen the * Letters of the Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. HISTORICAL

INTRODUCTION.

. official doctors not going to the sick prisoners, but the sick prisoners, men almost with death on their faces, toiling up stairs to them at that charnel-house of the Vicaria, because the lower regions of such a palace of darkness are too foul and loathsome to allow it to be expected that professional men should consent to earn bread by entering them." " I will now give your Lordship another specimen of the treatment administered at Naples to men illegally arrested, and as yet uncondemned. From the 7th of December last to the 3d of February, Pironti, who was formerly a judge, and is still a gentleman, and who was found guilty on or about the last named day, spent his whole days and nights, except when on his trial, with two other men, in a cell at the Vicaria about eight feet square, below the level of the ground, with no light except a grating at the top of the wall, out of which they could not see This was in Naples, where by universal consent matters are far better than in the provinces.

The presence of strangers has some small influence on the Government ; the eye of humanity or of curiosity pierces into some dark crannies here, that are wholly unpenetrated in the remoteness of the provinces, or in those lonely islands scattered along the coast, whose picturesque and romantic forms delight the eye of the passing voyager, ignorant of what huge and festering masses of human suffering they conceal When I left Naples in February, the Baron Porcari was con fined in the Maschio of Ischia. He was accused of a share in the Calabrian insurrection, and was awaiting his trial. This Maschio is a dungeon without light, and twenty-four feet, or palms, I am not sure which, below the level of the sea. He is never allowed to quit it day or night, and no one is permitted to visit him there, except his wife — once a fortnight Whatever capital punishment maybe in other points of view, I do not hesitate to say it would be refined humanity in respect to the amount of suffering which it inflicts, in whatever form, through the agency of man, as compared with that which is actually undergone in sentences of imprisonment.

In February last (18-51), Poerio, and sixteen of the co-accused, were confined in the Bagno of Nisida, near the Lazaretto The whole number of them, except, I think, one, then in the infirmary, were confined night and day in a single room, of about sixteen palms in length, by ten or twelve in breadth, and about ten in height, I think, with some small yard for exercise. Something like a fifth must be taken off these numbers, to convert palms into feet. When the beds were let down at night, there was no space whatever between them ; they could only get out at the foot, and being chained two and two, only in pairs On one side, the level of the ground is over the top of the room, it therefore reeked with damp, and from this, tried with long confinement, they declared they suffered greatly. There was one window — of course unglazed — and let not an Englishman suppose that this constant access of the air in the Neapolitan climate is agreeable or innocuous ; on the contrary, it is even more important to health there than here to have the means of excluding the open air, for example, before and at sunset.

Vicissitude of climate, again, is quite as much felt there as here, and the early morning is sometimes bitterly cold. Their chains were as follows : Each man wears a strong leather girth around him above the hips. To this are secured the upper ends of two chains. One chain of four long and heavy links descends to a kind of double ring fixed round the ankle. The second chain consists of eight links, each of the same weight and length with the four, and this unites the two prisoners together, so that they can stand about six feet apart. Neither of these chains is ever undone day or night. The dress of common felons, which, as well as the felon's cap, was there worn by the late cabinet minister of King Ferdinand of Naples, is composed of a rough and coarse red jacket, with trousers of the same material, very like the cloth made in this country, from what is called Devil's dust ; the trousers are nearly black in colour.

On his head he had a small cap, which makes up the suit ; it is of the same material. The trousers button all the way up, that they may be removed at night without disturb ing the chains. The weight of these chains is, I under stand, about eight rotoli, or between sixteen and seven teen English pounds for the shorter one, which must be doubled when we give each prisoner his half of the longer one. The prisoners had a heavy limping movement, much as if one leg had been shorter than the other. But the refinement of suffering, in this case, arises from the circumstance of men of education and feeling chained incessantly together. For no purpose are these chains undone ; and the meaning of these last words must be well considered : they are to be taken literally ..." About the time when Poerio and his companions were sent to Nisida, an order came from Prince Luigi, the brother of the King, who, as Admiral, has charge of the island, ordering that double irons should be used for those who had been brought into the prison since a rather recent date, I think July 22, 1850.