The life of Count Cavour, from the French of M. Charles de Mazade

Preface

This book is composed of the public records of a memorable history, together with less known documents, which I owe to treasured private communications and some personal knowledge of the facts. It is devoted to a man who will ever be ranked as one of the rarest of human kind ; for in him there was the union of strength, suavity, passion, suppleness, boldness, and prudence, and he succeeded in all that he undertook.

It may be said with truth that Count Cavour was among the most illustrious of the favourites of fortune in our century. He was not one of those chance favourites whom a happy accident, interest at court, or the winning of popularity, launches to a fleeting renown ; but he was of the few that, being privileged to deserve success by the exercise of a consummate skill, leave their names inscribed upon imperishable works.

His mission was fulfilled within the space often years — less than the cycle of Tacitus. These ten years sufficed for vi PREFACE.

him to realise a dream of nationality that seemed beyond realisation, and more particularly at the beginning of his parliamentary life ; to raise up his country, and to become himself the greatest of Italians, among the foremost of the political men of all time, European in influence, glory, and genius.

It would be writing with levity to say that he was happy, even in his premature end, in escaping, as he did, through an opportune and sudden death, the perplexities of his task. If ever there was a man who needed not to fear to live, and who knew how to precombine and prearrange all for the attainment of a special object, and then to assure his success by guarding himself against the reverses of fortune and the risk of unforeseen events, it was he. Better than any other he knew the right moment when to adventure and to stop, so as always to remain master of the crisis he brought to a head or unwound so daringly, in which none but he was able to preserve a perfect serenity of mind.

Those who knew him, who were mixed up with his labours — and there is one among them, M. Nigra, whose name friendship permits me to write beside that of his first instructor in public affairs — have not forgotten the ready resource, the simple ease, the correctness of judgment in midst of the gravest situations and the keenest contests, displayed by Cavour. He overcame everything. He had arrived at that point when he no longer feared to be unequal to the final trials ; he felt

PREFACE. vii

sure of completing that which he had begun, and more ; for since his death Italy has been sustained by his breath, and whatever has been done, has only been the completion of projects left behind by him, and animating his mind up to his last moments.

There is in the life of such a man a profound attraction for those who love the spectacle of a nature marvellously gifted to grapple with events. It has, moreover, at the present time, almost a direct and practical interest ; for, apart from the lively remembrance I have retained of Count Cavour, I must confess that one of my objects, when I wrote this book in the Revue cles Deux Mondes, arose from a desire to bring before those who may stand in need of the example, this striking image of a man who knew how to be a great Liberal as well as a downright head of the Government. It is what I would term the moral lesson of this work. If the aforesaid moral is made sufficiently prominent, it maynot perhaps be inopportune at a time when, if care be not taken, party spirit will disturb and confound everything, from the simplest ideas of Liberalism to the most elementary conditions of Government.

The signal superiority of Count Cavour consists in his having been a real Liberal, in the strongest and fullest acceptation of the word. The liberty in which he believed, both from instinct and reason, was to him no empty formula, nor was it an engine of destruction, or an implement of war against the Church or the State ; it viii PREFACE.

was a regular system of public guarantees, impartially applied and patiently worked out, as free from subterfuge as from violence. In the working of institutions, even in the boldest undertakings, he carried a mind free alike from revolutionary prejudice and timid scruples. Confidence was a part of his nature, and, granting whatsoever was due to liberty, he was still, and above all, the man made to govern. Let me explain.

Premier of a parliamentary State, he was compelled to secure to himself a majority ; he required it, for he understood that, to use his own expression, "there is no governing on needles' points ; " but the majority he needed was of his creating ; he knew how to direct and guide it ; he did not abandon it to its own inexperience, its doubts and phantasies ; he thought for it, and at the right moment ; he did not shrink from the responsibility of taking a desperate initiative. When he debated within himself on the advisability of an alliance with France and England in the Crimea ; when he ventured to propose to his little Piedmont such works as economical reform, or the boring of a tunnel through Mont Cenis, he proved that he had no intention of allowing the reins of Government to slacken and grow weak in his grasp. However deferential his attitude before public opinion and the Chambers, he knew how to outshoot and make a way for them.

I admit that he leaned upon a solid and popular monarchy, and in this he gathered strength ; he was

PREFACE.

IX supported by a king who was a pattern of patriotic and constitutional sovereignty ; lie was assisted by fellowworkers, such as La Marmora, in the reconstruction of an army. But it was Cavour who obtained the money wherewith to do it, as Avell as the opportunities of making use of it ; adding to the fecundity of his contrivances and the certainty of his combinations an indomitable power in willing and executing. Had he awaited the good pleasure of parties in all his resolutions, he would have waited long ; and on more than one occasion he ran great risks, in concert with La Marmora, to carry out military undertakings which have subsequently been the saving of Piedmont in the hour of danger. He did not hesitate to pledge himself, convinced that the affairs of a nation were only placed in his hands for guidance and judicious direction, even under a parliamentary regime ; and thus he knew how to unite in the fullest measure the spirit of government with the spirit of Liberalism ; thus it was that he was more than an eminent man in power, he was a living and working policy, and, after having recast a little country, he created a new nation.

Another name, that of one who may take rank as a competitor in the arena of political conflicts, naturally rises to the mind at the present time. It is now difficult to speak of Count Cavour without being reminded of the Prussian minister who has been enabled to perform in Germany what the Piedmontese minister x PREFACE.

achieved in Italy. Events are interlinked ; men follow but do not always resemble one another. I have no desire to undervalue the German chancellor ; coming from a Frenchman this would be childish and unworthy. In Prince Bismarck we have good reason to see an enemy, aud we do not combat him with idle disparagements. All we can say is, that if Count Cavour and Prince Bismarck appear to have a similar fortune, at least till now, in analogous undertakings, they differ in genius, character, and mode of proceeding, as widely as Italy differs from Germany.

Several private letters written by Prince Bismarck in the course of his career have been published within the last few years ; and they unveil a strangely complex nature ; they reveal the whole man. A man assuredly of powerful originality, impetuous, crabbed, abrupt, and familiar ; of feudal stamp, a Teuton by temperament and education ; mixing confidential communications as to his capacities as a drinker, and the effects of moonlight on the banks of the Rhine, with visions of grandeur and power ; a Mephistophelean politician and diplomatist, despising diplomatic and parliamentary formulas ; impatient for action at all cost, ferro et igne, and defining himself with the air of a ruffled giant, from a heap of violent contradictions, in his disturbing and discomposed figure of conqueror.

That is not the portrait of Count Cavour, whom his contemporaries knew and saw at his work. Doubtless,

PREFACE. xi

Prince Bismarck is a great German. Count Cavour was rather, and in the broad humane sense, a great man. He, too, had strength of will and genius, but with perfect cordiality and a very taking charm. Prince Bismarck began by showing himself independent of his parliament, and even in some degree ridiculing it ; he provoked the conflict and defied " rebellious " majorities ; and if he ended in overruling the Chambers, it was by making his power and success a necessity to his country. Count Cavour worked always with the aid of public opinion and of parliament on his side. What he had been aided by liberty in accomplishing, he leaned on liberty to consolidate, with no despotic impatience, no persecution of beliefs.

And, furthermore, if Prince Bismarck has been a German Cavour, it cannot be said that Cavour was ever an Italian Bismarck. The Piedmontese minister copied no model ; he was the first on this field ; and what makes his greatness is, that in an unprecedented enterprise, even in success, he has left behind him an example of forethought, judgment, and moderation worthy to be studied universally where politics is still a business.

Had Cavour been solely a great Italian, he would by right have belonged to his fellow-countrymen ; and who has better revived his image than my excellent friend Massari, writing with tender fidelity and veneration his volume of recollections, II conte di Cavour, Ricordi xii PREFACE.

biogrctfici ? "" Such as he was, Cavour belongs not only to Italy, but to the world ; and it has struck me that in writing this great life, in showing how a man was able to raise up a fallen nation by genius and policy, it would be a work of service to the conquered, and not without a lesson for the conquerors.

* Count Cavour has been the subject of much literary work, both in and out of Italy. It is my duty to mention, besides the substantial literary study by S. Massari, the attractive work by M. de la Rive : Le Cotnte de Cavour, re'cits et souvenirs, and a very interesting preface, with which S. Artom has headed a collection of Cavour's principal speeches, translated into French. It is, however, only an abridgment of the large collection of Cavour's Speeches (12 vols.), published by order of the Chamber of Deputies. I should also mention the Historia documentata della diplomazia europea in Italia, by S. Nicomede Bianchi, now in the Record Office at Turin, as being instructive as to contemporaneous history. Many other works might be cited.

Contents

PAGE

PREFACE v— xii

CHAPTEE I.

Chapter I. The Youth Of Cavour Piedmont And Italy After

THE DEFEAT.

L Liberal Conservative — Origin and Antecedents of Cavour — His Family — - His Education and Military Life — A young Piedruontese Citoyen — • Agricultor's Life at Leri — Journeys in Switzerland, in France, and in England— Piedmont and Italy under Charles Albert — Cavour's first political Ideas — Events preliminary to 1818 — Cayour a Journalist — The constitutional Order of Things at Turin — First War in Lombardy — Revolutionary Agitations — Battle of Novara — Piedmont after the Defeat — Communism at Genoa — D'Azeglio's Ministry and the Conclusion of Peace — • The Standard and Liberal Institutions — The Beginning of Retribution — Cavour in Parliament and in the Ministry: — Piedmont and the 2nd of December — The Two Policies — The Connubio — Political Development of Cavour.

One of the most extraordinary revolutions of the century has made Italy a constituted nation, and has raised her on a level with the Powers of the world. This can hardly be called a resurrection ; Italy, seeing her as she has emerged from contemporary events, in no way resembles what she has ever been before ; the sky illumining her, the seas into which she dips on every

B

2 LIFE OF COUNT OAVOUR.

side, and the many traditions of those twenty brilliant cities which are now joined together in national unity — these are all that she has in common with the past. Modern Italy is a new creation; a work prepared by history, no doubt, but one also which is the combined result of policy, of circumstances, high daring, and profound astuteness.

Now that this work is completed, we regard it as natural and simple ; it has become so intimately allied with the general order of things, that we can hardly imagine the successive reactions and upheavings which would be required to destroy it. Only five-and-twenty years ago it seemed an impossibility, so many conditions and events did it presuppose that could not even be reasonably conceived as realisable.

To establish it as a reality, the agents have been European revolutions, changes in the balance of power and of national equilibrium, and wars unexpected, though sagaciously planned ; these, together with diplomatic dramas, the disappearance of local sovereignties, and a complete transformation of that which struck the mind as the most immovable of institutions — the temporal power of the Pope. It needed, too, that there should be at the foot of the Alps a small but disciplined and devoted people, of exemplary courage, and at the head of these people a prince made popular by his patriotic sentiments, it may be by an ambition in his blood ; and in the councils of this prince and this people, one of those great ministers, who seem to have been created for the most complicated as well as the most perilous of enterprises.

ITALY AND CAVOTJR. 3

To enter upon a public career at so critical a period ns 1848, and boldly to take in hand the affairs of his country immediately after a national disaster, which threatened to be for a long time irremediable ; and in a condition of internal revolution full of uncertainty, to go through all the difficulties of reorganisation amidst the shiftings of European policy, without wavering or a moment's deviation in making everything concur in one aim ; to conspire openly for ten years — in the noblest of causes it is true, but in one the triumph of which could realise itself only at the cost of almost impossible changes ; and to succeed in gathering to his side alliances and sympathies, I might almost say the force of facts ; then suddenly to disappear when the work has reached a point where the past appears as a dream — such was the destiny of Count Cavour.

What Italy would have been without him — what she would still be — one can no longer conceive; it is through him that she has become what she now is ; she has become developed, disciplined, and concrete in despite of all her divisions ; Italy has become a new power, and she has found in that little Piedmont the framework ready-made of a living nationality ; and this work of energy, perseverance, suppleness, and profound combinations, is one of the most complete and instructive lessons in the art of governing.

It teaches how a country, overwhelmed by defeat, can be raised again, and how a parliamentary system and established liberty may contribute to carry out a national idea ; it shows us how this policy, patiently and strenuously followed under a patriotic inspiration, can

b 2 frustrate those fatal concurrencies of reaction and revolution which endanger the justest of causes. And, finally, it demonstrates what a Liberal Conservative is, who tempers his genius to identify himself with his country and his time ; — supple in turning all to his purposes, even his adversaries or the unforeseen, while concealing the depth of his calculations under the most equable air ; - — knowing how to prepare and command events by the power of a penetrating and unerring reason, and by a constantly inventive boldness in the execution of new and ever- enlarging designs.

One day, towards the autumn of 1850, on the eve of entering for the first time into office as a simple Minister of Commerce, journeyiug through the provinces of Piedmont, Cavour stopped at Stresa, on the borders of Lago Maggiore, at the house of Eosmini the philosopher, where he met Manzoni. These eminent men conversed on the future destiny of Italy from the top of the villa Bolongaro, keeping their eyes fixed upon the opposite shore, which was then, and seemed likely long to remain, a part of the Austrian dominions. Manzoni, in the simplicity of his soul, did not cease to hope ; Eosmini smiled sadly at this poet's dreams, but Cavour rubbed his hands — it was even at that time a peculiar habit with him — and repeated with persuasive liveliness : " We will do something."

The man who thus lightly disposed of the future was still young and full of life, having lately tried his maiden steel in the revolutionary turmoil of 1848 — one who carried with him into the whirlwind of public affairs a clear mind, great strength of will, the most liberal of

PARENTAGE OF CAVOUR. 5

natures, and a disposition every way fitted for action. He was not a revolutionist meditating the renewal of conspiracies when he spoke of " doing something ; " he was, on the contrary, the man of all men the most politic, having in him at once the solidity of the old Piedmontese race without any of its prejudices ; and he had, moreover, the patriotic and liberal sap of the later generations, without having ever been a conspirator.

His good fortune consisted in his coming at the right moment, and being prepared by his birth and his education, as well as by his temperament, to meet the chances which might befall him. He was born at Turin, on August 1, 1810, in one of those periods when indeed no one would have said or thought that he who had then received breath would one day, for the benefit of princes then discrowned or banished, revive that name of Italy, with which the whimsical caprice of a glorious despot embroidered a fiction of nationality. He was the second son of the Marquis Michael Benso di Cavour, the last of one of those ancient Piedmontese houses issuing from the little republic of Chieri, called the Republic of the Seven B's, because of seven families having lived there which had all made their way in the world : the Bensi, the Balbi, the Balbiani, the Biscaretti, the Buschetti, the Bertoni, the Broglie, destined to figure in another land.'"'' By his paternal grandfather Camillo Cavour was

* I recall, as a further characteristic trait of those who love to follow out the genealogies, that the first founder of the house appears to be a personage of the name of Hubert, who conies from Saxony with Frederic Barbarossa. This Hubert, on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, espouses, at Chieri, the heiress of the Bensi, of whom he takes the name, and at the same time he obtains several fiefs, amongst which is the estate of Santena, where now the last descendant of the race reposes. The title of Marquis of Cavour

C LIFE OF COUNT GAVOUB.

linked with Savoy and the amiable race of St. Francois de Sales ; Geneva claimed him on his mother's side, a de Sellon ; and he was drawn to France by many relations — by the two sisters of his mother, who were married, one to the Due de Clermont-Tonnerre, a personage of distinction at the court of the Eestoration, the other to the Baron d'Auzers, a gentleman of Auvergne, who, after having been a functionary of the empire beyond the Alps, settled at Turin.

It was in this varied, though very united, social centre, which often met either at Turin or at Geneva, and in this wholesome and strengthening atmosphere, that Camillo Cavour was bred and born : as a child, robust, enjoying his life, sparkling, and bringing happiness to all about him ; a young man of a most liberal spirit, prompt and open, with a mind seizing and understanding everything.

Cavour was among the youngest of a generation that, after the Eestoration of 1815, and when still oppressed by prolonged reactions, began, in the heavy

elates only from the last century; it was given by King Charles Emmanuel III., in recompense for military services to Michael Antonio Benso, lord of Santena, ami lieutenant-general. The Castle of Cavour, situated on the summit of a rock, in the province of Pignerol, is no more than a ruin since Catinat destroyed it in 1691. One day Cavour was asked how it chanced that his armorial bearings were headed by a German motto, " Gott will Eecht." " It is supposed," answered he, "that my family originated in Saxony, and that a pilgrim of my name came to Piedmont in 1080. Hence the shells that you see in my coat-of-arms, and the motto which ornaments them. Do you believe this ? " — " No." " Neither do I ; " and he burst into laughter. Cavour always entertained the broadest and most liberal notions in all that pertains to titles, external dignities, honorary distinctions, but without using any affectation, or ever condescending to natter base democratic instincts. He was naturally familiar and simple ; with his good-humoured frankness he possessed also a well-bred ease, and a sense of personal dignity, which it was well not to offend.

MILITARY LIFE. 7

darkness of absolutist reigns, to ripen for the ultimate freedom of Italy.

In 1815, when the tragic warfare which swept away the French Empire had made Piedmont independent, he was only five years of age. At the age of ten he was admitted to the Military Academy, the school of the young nobility, and soon obtained the position of page in the household of the Prince di Carignano — the future Charles Albert — where at once the impetuous vivacity of his natural temper burst out in revolt against this gilded servitude.

At eighteen he was the most brilliant and amiable of sub-lieutenants of engineers, leading a light-minded soldier's life at Vintimille, Turin, and Genoa — especially at Genoa, in which he found the freedom and the attractions of a city of business and pleasure.

In his twenty-second year he had already sent in his resignation, after having undergone the disgrace of a sort of exile at a small station in the Alps, for having uttered a few risky words, which were merely a cry of generous emotion and sympathy, hailing the French Revolution of 1830.

Reduced, for his sole pastime, to play at tarok with the contractors for the building of the fort of Bard, his place of exile, and menaced with being always suspected at headquarters, he had resigned himself to be no more than an " obscure citizen of Piedmont," as he termed himself, a son of good family stopped on the threshold of a brilliant career. But this " obscure citizen of Piedmont," this young man whom a breath of liberty come from France had set quivering — this retired officer of twenty-two — was of the order of those who reach the goal by all roads, and who do not allow themselves to be discouraged, or even irritated, by a misunderstanding or a disgrace.

Thus exiled from a soldier's life, on the morrow he was brisk and resolute ; he combined the study of agricultural affairs with the enjoyment of the pleasures of the world and a course of travel, taking with him into this larger sphere an inexhaustible store of activity, together with those precociously fixed ideas of liberty and patriotism which gave rise to his utterance that " in his youthful dreams he already saw himself Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy ; " which also made him write to his aunt, Madame de Sellon, after the "decisive step" of his resignation: "Do not imagine that all I have suffered — morally, be it understood — has in any way abated my love for the views which I previously entertained. These ideas form a part of my existence. I s"hall profess, teach, and uphold them as long as I have a breath of life." Already we see the whole man in the resigning officer of 1832, and in the rebellious youth of the beginning of the reign — that of Charles Albert — a reign destined to conclude with a national explosion, but which for the moment remained under the hand of Austria and the Jesuits.

ii.

Three things contributed to the development and expansion of this happy nature, while giving it the impress of originality. It is evident that Cavonr always

FAMILY INFLUENCES. 9

felt the influence of the family life which had been his first education. He gathered from it that which forms the man and the character. He had become morally developed in a centre where habits of affection and companionship tempered all differences in political and even in religious views ; for if in Turin that society of the Cavours, Auzers, Clermont-Tonnerres was profoundly attached to traditions of supremacy, both religions and monarchical, at Geneva, the Comte de Sellon, a Protestant and a Liberal, kept faithful allegiance to all that was lofty in the ideas of the eighteenth century, and of the French Eevolution.

Divided between these family influences, Camillo Cavour was able to reconcile them in his liberal nature. With his uncle, M. de Sellon, he suffered himself to succumb to the fascination of new ideas. With Baron d'Auzers, an Absolutist by conviction, but a man of good intelligence and of agreeable company, who liked discussion even with young men, his mind was sharpened. At that school of maternal grace, when with Madame d'Auzers, who had the quick, lively, and animated nature of her nephew, and with Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre, a woman of extreme Eoyalist notions, but of the most perfect charity, he had imbibed a beautiful amenity and a love of tolerance, together with an easy dignity, mixed perhaps with pride, which sometimes made itself felt through all his familiar heartiness.

Let no one be deceived : with the most liberal opinions on the rights and claims of birth, Cavour was never a renegade aristocrat, denouncing the traditions of race or the spirit and customs of his family. At the highest elevation of his political fortune he was and remained the same. In the " house of the Cavours," which he did not cease to inhabit, even when he was Minister, and which was the patrimonial mansion, his eldest brother held the highest place ; and it chanced only a short time before his death, that as one day he was travelling by train a few miles from Turin, Cavour looked out on the flying landscape, and said to a fellowtraveller : " Do you see that spire half hidden among the trees ? it is the spire of the Church of Santena. There is the hereditary chateau of my family ; it is there that I wish to rest after my death ! " Thus, before he disappeared, with the pride of a great name, he wished to give testimony to the surviving power of those first impressions which had contributed to his moral development when young.

Another perceptible influence in this supple and vigorous organisation, was the almost exclusively scientific education of the Military Academy. Indeed Cavour had but little literary instruction. " In my youth," he used to say, " I was never taught to write ; I never had a professor of rhetoric, nor even of the humanities." At times, during his active life, he has indulged in a sort of coquettish ignorance, pretending that he neither knew Latin nor Greek, and he maintained lightly that to him it " was easier to make Italy than to make a sonnet." He had supplied that which was wanting, by the determination or the curiosity of a mind which knew how to take an interest in everything, even in a new novel ; and he boldly set to work to learn English, in the history of Lord Mahon.

STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 11

His intelligence was disciplined and shaped on the mathematics, which he had successfully studied at the Military Academy, under the able geometrician, Giovanni Plana : " That is what builds a head and teaches you to think. From the study of triangles and algebraic propositions, I passed to those of men and things ; and now I know how useful this study has been to me, by what I am able to do with things and men." He believed himself to owe to this primary teaching the faculty " of keeping in his head a long series of theorems and corollaries which always maintained their order of battle." It is indubitable that the study of mathematics developed in him a disposition to preciseness, clearness, and exactitude ; it had given him an amazing aptitude to play with figures and calculations.