1815-1830 - Concert of Europe
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 took down from the theater of Italy all Bonaparte's decorations, and set up the old scenery in very nearly the old places. Vittorio Emmanuele I received back his kingdom of Sardinia, with the addition of Genoa. Venice and Milan were formed into the province of Lombardo-Venezia for F'rancis II., emperor of Austria. The old duchy of Parma was given for her lifetime to Maria Louisa, who, though the wife of Bonaparte, was still an Austrian princess. Upon her death it was to be restored to its former Bourbon princes, who received in the meanwhile Lucca as an equivalent. The Austrian Ferdinand III. was once again grand-duke of Tuscany, with the reversion of Lucca after Maria Louisa's decease. Francis, son of the Austrian archduke Ferdinand and Beatrice d'F.ste, became duke of Modcna, with the reversion of Lunigiana on the same event. Pius VII got back all the states of the church, and on his reentry into Rome restored the Jesuits, who had proved their indispensability to tyrants. The Bourbon Ferdinand I. again joined Naples to his crown of Sicily.
Care is needed to label these Ferdinands and Francises with their respective names of Austrian and Bourbon, in order that the partition of Italy between the two dynasties, and the large preponderance of Austrian over Bourbon influence, might be apparent. One significant detail has been omitted. The congress of Vienna recognized the independent republic of San Marino. On the top of a little mountain at the outskirts of the Apennines which overlook the sea by Rimini, sat Liberty, the queen of a few hundred citizens, surveying the muddy ocean of Franco-Spanish, Italo-Teutonic despotism which drowned Italy through all her length and breadth.
The Italian sovereigns, on returning to their respective states, proved that exile and the revolution had terrorized them into more determined tyranny. The civil and political reforms which had been instituted at the end of the last century were abandoned. The Jesuits were restored; many suppressed monasteries were reestablished; and the mortmain laws were repealed. Elementary education was narrowed in its limits, and thrown into the hands of the clergy. Professors suspected of liberal views were expelled from the universities, and the press was placed under the most rigid supervision. All persons who had taken part in the Napoleonic governments, or who were known to entertain patriotic opinions, found themselves harassed, watched, spied upon, and reported. The cities swarmed with police agents and informers. The passport system was made more stringent, and men were frequently refused even a few days' leave of absence from their homes. The Code Napoleon was withdrawn from those provinces which had formed part of the Italian kingdom, while, in the papal states, the administration was placed again in the hands of ecclesiastics.
This political and spiritual reign of terror, which had for its object the crushing of Italian liberalism, was sanctioned and supported by Austria. Each petty potentate bound himself to receive orders from Vienna, and, in return for this obedience, the emperor guaranteed him in the possession of his throne. The Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, powerfully defended and connected with Austria by land and sea, became one huge fortress, garrisoned with armed men, in perpetual menace of the country.
Under these conditions the Italians were half maddened, and thousands of otherwise quiet citizens, either in the hope of finding redress and protection, or only from a feeling of revenge, joined secret revolutionary societies; for it must not hesupposed that the revolution had left the Italians as passive as it found them. A new spirit was astir, which was not likely to be checked by the arrangements of the European congress-the spirit of national independence. During the convulsions caused by Napoleon's conquest of Italy, the allied powers had themselves fostered this spirit, in order to oppose French rule. The Austrians, the English, and Murat in turn, had publicly invited the Italians to fight for their national independence. And now the people, who relied upon these proclamations and expected the fulfillment of so many promises, found themselves by the consent of Europe delivered over, tied and gagged, to a foreign oppressor.
To take but one example: Ferdinand, when he quitted Naples in May, 1815, addressed a proclamation to his subjects, solemnly engaging to respect the laws that should in his absence be decreed by a constitution. In June he pledged himself at Vienna to introduce into his kingdom no institutions irreconcilable with those which Austria might establish in her own dependencies. Accordingly in 1816 he put an end to the Sicilian constitution of 1812.
Tyranny was met by conspiracy, and in a short while, the Carbonari societies, with Sanfedisti and many other revolutionary associations, had extended their organization through the length and breadth of the peninsula. The discontent of the Italians smoldered for live years; but in 1820 it broke into open flame. On January 1st in that year the Spaniards proclaimed their constitution of the Cortes, which was modeled on the type furnished by the earlier French Revolution. Moved by this example, the royal army mutinied at Naples in July 1820, and a few days afterward Palermo rushed to arms. Ferdinand was so surprised by the sudden outbreak of this revolt that he hastily granted the constitution, named his son Francis vicar-general of his kingdom, and betook himself to Austria. The Austrians marched 80,000 men into Lombardy, and Great Britain and France sent their fleets down to the Bay of Naples. At a congress held in the spring of 1821 at Laybach, the allied powers authorized Austria to crush the revolution in Lower Italy. Austrian troops entered Naples on March 23d; and, when Ferdinand followed them, he had nothing to do but to execute vengeance, by mock trials, on his insurgent subjects.
While these events were taking place, another military insurrection broke out at Piedmont, where the Spanish constitution was proclaimed. The king felt himself bound by the congress of Laybach, and refused to make any concessions. Therefore, on March 13th, he abdicated; and in the absence of his brother and heir, Carlo Felice, his distant cousin, Carlo Alberto, prince of Carignano, was appointed regent. Carlo Alberto represented a branch of the reigning house, which had been separated nearly two centuries from the throne. Educated, during the French occupation, more like a private citizen than like a prince, he grew up with liberal inclinations, and there is no doubt that his concessions to the insu-rectionists in Piedmont at this moment were actuated by sympathy rather than by any vulgar desire to g«in power. When, however, Carlo Felice returned and declared that his brother's abdicatiwn had been forced and therefore illegal, Carlo Alberto's sense of loyalty to the dynasty overcame his literal instincts. He submitted to the new king's authority, and the old regime was reestablished in Piedmont on as absolute a basis as before.
These movements were followed by state trials and executions, and the terrorism of the tyrannies augmented. Silvio Pellico, at the close of a disturbance at Milan, was sent to life-imprisonment at Spielberg. In the papal-states, Leo XII adopted a coercive policy still more grinding and humiliating.
For nine years the despots and the conspirators confronted each other, until the July revolution of Paris in 1830 gave new hope and energy to the latter. On this occasion the conflagration burst out at Modena, where the duke Francesco IV had been, for some time past, in secret negotiation with the patriotic party headed by Ciro Menotti. It appears that the secret object of this autocrat was to employ the revolution against his neighbors, and to make himself sovereign of upper Italy by the help of the conspirators. But when the revolution declared itself, and spread to Parma, Bologna, and the Romagna, Francesco turned upon his friend Menotti, and succeeded in putting him to death. It took but little time or trouble to check this revolt, which was unsupported by armed force. Austrian troops moved into Emilia and Romagna, restored the old order, and marched on to Rome, which they occupied. Louis Philippe, now king of the French, being jealous of the Austrians at Rome, occupied Anoma for the French in 1832; but the cause of Italian liberty received no support from the bourgeois king, who strove to keep on good terms with established authorities.
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