Chapter 16
Section 16 of From Metternich to Bismarck by Lionel Cecil Jain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 6. The Restoration of Order, Part 2. Charles Albert, indeed, had entered on the war without a plan, without stores, without consideration. He might have made up for his inferiority in actual resources by falling at once on the Austrians, while they were still disheartened by the success of the rising at
Milan. But though he gained an initial success at Gojito, he failed altogether to profit from this advantage. While he aimed at crushing the republican element in the revolted provinces, and at inducing them to accept union with Piedmont, and while he strenuously refused to receive French aid or admit British mediation, he did nothing to justify the confidence which he demanded from his supporters. His utter lack of idea enabled the Austrians to consolidate
their position in the quadrilateral. The victory of Curtatone, May 1848, restored the prestige of the imperial arms, and the capitulation of the papal forces at Vicenza both gave back an important fortress to the Habsburgs and damped the somewhat faint enthusiasm of the other Italian states for their Sardinian leader. It was not revived by the proof which that leader gave of his original theories on the art of war by laying siege to the almost impregnable fortress of Mantua without
artillery. Indeed, the Italian cause rapidly drifted to destruction, and the useless marches of Charles Albert presently culminated in the utter overthrow of Custodza. His army was practically annihilated, he was compelled to beg for an armistice, to abandon Milan, and to evacuate Lombardy, and for all practical purposes the war was ended. But the king had become a confirmed optimist. He was not yet reconciled to the inevitable. He would not yet recognize that
his strength and capacity were alike unequal to the task which he had undertaken. The open revolt of Hungary led him to hope that the embarrassments of the Habsburgs might be turned to his advantage. The visions of an enthusiastic nun offered, in his opinion, a heaven-sent plan of campaign. When the armistice expired, he hastened to put into the field an army composed of unwilling conscripts and untrained recruits, commanded by an unpopular alien and without any adequate
resources. Rodetsky hardly troubled to plan the defeat of so contemptible an enemy, and had the Sardinian king's military capacity been even half as great as his optimism, the Austrians might have sustained a serious reverse. But the marshal was justified by results. In March 1849 at Novara, the Sardinians were defeated even more decisively than at Custoza. The king was once more driven to sue for peace, and now his hope had vanished, and he laid down his crown as the last sacrifice which
he could make for the cause which he loved not wisely but quite well. While his son and successor, Victor Emanuele, inaugurated his reign by the conclusion of a humiliating peace, and while the last trace of opposition to Austria was removed by the surrender of Brescia, Charles Albert left Italy to die, the broken-hearted victim of indecision and hopeless optimism. Vain optimism, which believed that sentimental ardor could make up for the lack
of material resources, was indeed fatal to the Italian cause throughout the peninsula, and most of all, it was fatal at Venice and Rome. The former city had revolted simultaneously with Milan, but no real effort was made to unite the two movements or by joint action to cut the communications between Radetzky and Vienna. On the contrary, the Venetian revolt fell under the direction of Manin, a most eloquent and patriotic lawyer whose good sense was somewhat
obscured by his idealism. To him as to Mazzini, a republic was the one thing needful for any true progress, and he rejected at first all idea of compromising his utopia by admitting any sort of agreement with the Sardinian government, which was degraded because monarchical. And thus he was viewed with suspicion by Charles Albert, and not less so because he showed a marked inclination to lean upon the support of the sister Republic of France. The progress of the Austrians, indeed,
somewhat modified Manin's ideas. On the morrow of Cousteau, when the steppe no longer possessed any value, and when the imperial forces were already beginning to close round the doomed city, Venice decided for union with Piedmont. But it was now too late to prevent the catastrophe. The defense, though signalized by some heroic deeds and invested with interest by the presence of Garibaldi, was hopeless from the first. In August 1849, the city soon capitulated,
and Manin, a refugee in Paris, was able to devote his remaining years to the task of discovering how misplaced was his pursuit of perfection. Failure to cooperate with Sardinia had destroyed any chance of success which the rebels might have had, since it secured the defeat of the only army which might have won a victory. And the shock of the Sardinian defeats was felt equally in central Italy. The Battle of Novara decided the fate of the rebellion in Tuscany,
where Mazzini intensified grand ducal vengeance by the extravagance of his propaganda at Livorno in Modena and in Parma. The arms of Austria bore the expelled princes back to power, and since the governments, after their restoration, were on the whole rather more tyrannical than before, the situation was hardly changed for the better. Habsburg ascendancy was rather more complete, for the rulers, conscious of the lack of love in the hearts of their subjects,
depended more than ever upon foreign support, and only the operation of international jealousy prevented Austrian control of the whole peninsula. As it was, not imperial but republican kindness gave back to the Pope his lost temporal authority. That authority had been destroyed when Pius IX ceased to be loved by all liberal adorers and the very gem of progressive virtue. Despite his condemnation of the war, the Pope had for a while continued to attempt the impossible
task of maintaining the existing control of his dominions by the cardinals and avoiding any open breached with orthodox and reactionary governments while making concessions to the reforming spirit. But he soon found that this policy was too illogical to be successful, and that he was bound either to follow in the train of possible atheistical revolutionaries or to sacrifice his pleasant popularity by entering into a contest with his people. Any hesitation as to the course
which he must adopt was removed by the murder of his minister Rossi. Such violence appalled the gentle bishop, and he fled from his blood-stained capital to the arms of the king of Naples at Gaeta. His flight was regarded by the Roman populace as tantamount to abdication of his temporal power. In February 1849, a republic was proclaimed. A somewhat disorderly mob assumed control of the city, and the inevitable Mazzini appeared to give his blessing and to clothe in high-sounding
language the new revolutionary government. He was joined by another subject of Charles Albert, Garibaldi, whose services had been declined by his king because his opinion savored of the irregular, and who became from that moment a freelance in the noble army of liberators. Committed in this way to the care of a hare-brained enthusiast and a guerrilla captain, the fate of the Roman Republic was sealed, and the seal was strengthened by the triumph of Austrian arms in the Lombard
Plain and the revival of French jealousy of Habsburg power. While the imperial troops occupied Ferrara and advanced upon Rome from the north, an expedition from France landed at Civitavecchia, and two powers, one absolutist, one republican, contended for the honor of restoring a pope. The French won in the contest partly because the incident of Novara distracted Austrian attention, partly because they had a satisfactory handicap in the matter of distance,
partly because the Roman people preferred to fall into the hands of a sister republic. Rome capitulated in July 1849 to Udino, the French general. The papal government received a fresh lease of life and was granted the protection of a republican power, and the Habsburgs were forced to accept this limitation upon their sphere of influence in Italy. Pius IX returned to his capital, having seen his Neapolitan friends return to absolute government
and cured forever of all tendency to coquette with the fascinating siren of popularity. The reaction in Italy was complete, and Metternich could smile contentedly at the justification of his assertion that if emperors disappear, it is only when they have despaired of themselves. And the ex-chancellor must have viewed with peculiar satisfaction the collapse of the Italian Revolution, since that collapse completed the salvation of the Austrian Empire. The weakness
of the imperial government had been due largely to lack of adequate military force, since the army was loyal, and, if freed from Italian complications, quite capable of crushing all attempts at revolt. And that this was the one need of the government was well illustrated by the course of the Bohemian Revolution. Beginning as a more or less loyal demand for autonomy, it was first met by concessions on the part of the emperor, but these concessions were not enough for Czech patriots. Discontent
was increased by the appointment of a new governor of Prague, Vindiskretz, who had already shown his lack of sympathy with revolution and his immunity from sentimental weakness during a brief dictatorship at Vienna. Riots followed, and for a few days the mob, assuming the title of a provisional government, controlled the Bohemian capital. But Windisch-Greetz had that determination of mind which most of the Austrian commanders lacked. He turned his artillery upon Prague
and was able to report to Vienna that the Czechs had been converted once more into loyal and peaceful subjects of the imperial crown. The methods which he had employed might have been applied almost immediately to Vienna also, had it not been that the ministers lacked decision of character, and still more lacked leadership. Ferdinand was not yet reconciled to the idea of meeting violence by force. He had not yet learned that if concession be made to riot,
riot becomes revolution. Thus the real control of the capital was allowed to fall into the hands of the mob. The cabinet openly admitted that it could not maintain order, and a committee of public safety, created with its consent, really governed Vienna. The emperor lay in his palace, the victim of fear and illness, not daring to fly from a situation which he could not face. A pitiable spectacle of incapacity and weakness, and the Austrian parliament was equally powerless to
organize any systematic government. This state of practical anarchy culminated in another violent outbreak in October 1848. Hunger had been increasing among the poor of the city as the year advanced, and the ranks of the disaffected were swelled by soldiers unwilling to obey orders to march against the Hungarians. More rioting ensued. Latour, the minister of war, was murdered by an infuriated crowd, and Ferdinand, trembling more than ever, fled or was hurried by his advisors
to Olmutz. Though the assembly continued formally to sit, and though the presence of a solitary minister might seem to invest it with some semblance of legality, all government was really at an end. The cabinet had followed the emperor, and a large number of deputies had imitated this example. In such a situation, Windes Gretz found an opportunity after his own heart. Declaring that he was determined to restore the authority of Ferdinand, he advanced upon Vienna,
and received on his way belated imperial sanction for his action. The task which he had so boldly assumed was rendered more easy of accomplishment by the conduct of the assembly, which he had resolved to crush. In place of seeking the help of the Hungarians, who might have saved them, the deputies indulged in some mild play-acting. They could not believe that the rude hands of a soldier would touch their sacred persons. They were filled with an almost pathetic confidence
in the efficacy of mere forms and words. Brought face to face with facts, when Vindysgrz approached the suburbs of the capital, they called upon Hungary to save them. Jelicik defeated the advancing Madjars at Svechat, October 1848, and a short bombardment placed Vienna at the mercy of the conqueror of Prague. A military dictatorship was established, and its character pointedly marked by the execution of Blum, November 1848, who having
come to Vienna as ambassador of the Frankfurt Parliament, had remained to bear his part in the defense of anarchy and whose death was a dramatic warning to German nationalists. It was clear enough that as soon as the Habsburgs had set their own house in order, they would take the field as the champions of conservatism in Germany. The process of setting that house in order now proceeded rapidly, for the government, possessing once more the necessary military strength,
found also a man capable of using that strength without hesitation. While the parliament was requested to transfer its valuable deliberations to Kremsieh, an obscure Moravian town, Prince Schwarzenberg, assumed the office of chief minister. He was fully alive to the realities of the situation. He saw that under a trembling emperor, the empire would also tremble, always on the verge of dissolution, and therefore his first care was to find an efficient substitute
for the incapable Ferdinand. The imperial invalid was induced to care for his many infirmities in a less prominent position than on the throne of the Habsburgs, December 1848. The next heir resigned his rights of succession, and the crown passed to Francis Joseph, who was young enough to make it reasonable to expect that he would reign under the guidance of his minister. Having thus removed the most trying obstacle in his path, Schwarzenberg dissolved the Kremsmier Parliament
and established the Unitary Edict, by which equal constitutional rights were nominally conferred upon all dominions of the House of Austria, March 1849. This concession, however, was hardly intended to disguise the military rule which was to be established, and even had it been meant as a serious measure of reform, its working would nonetheless have been impracticable, owing to the attitude adopted by Hungary. For the practical answer to the unitary edict
was Kosut's declaration of Hungarian independence, and the partial union of those elements upon the division of which the imperial government had relied, insofar as it pursued any consistent plan. But neither consistency nor firmness had characterized the policy of the Court of Vienna towards the agitations in the non-Austrian provinces. Since the recognition of the responsible ministry in Hungary, it had vacillated perpetually between two conflicting courses.
At one time, Ferdinand seemed resolved to abide by his promises and loyally to support the Magyar ministers, even when they left Pressburg for Pest, and so fell under the influence of disorderly, enthusiastic half-educated students. At another time, he appeared to place his trust in the services of the Ban of Croatia and to be ready to use them to crush the growing independence of Hungary. The truth is, perhaps, that as long as the Italian War was continued, it was felt to be
of paramount importance to retain in Lombardy every available regiment, and for this purpose, to conciliate both Madyaris and Croats. Thus Ferdinand constantly gave way to the pressure of those nearest to him. He granted all the prayers of Batiani, the Hungarian premier, when he complained that the ban was threatening Madyara domination over the non-Madyara provinces and dignifying a mere Slav agitation by the sacred term national. And he turned a ready ear
to the persuasive accents of Jelicik when he pointed out what services he could render to the cause of the Habsburg supremacy. At one moment, Hrubovsky, commanding the Hungarian army, was ordered to reduce the Slavs. When he had been defeated by the revolted Serbs, the imperial government cautiously applauded successful resistance to its orders. End of Section 16
