Lecture V: From the end of Genoa as a separate state to the unification of Italy in 1861

Luigi Speranza

The Genoese when they adopted the French form of Republic in 1797, although preserving a nominal independence, in reality by that act extinguished their political existence, and they experienced a bitter proof of their true position only two years afterwards when Massena made use of the town as a resisting point against the Austrians. When Napoleon, on his return from Egypt, had by his coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire obtained, as first Consul, virtually supreme power in France, his first thought was to regain Italy from the allied forces, and Massena was ordered to divert the attention of the Austrians on Genoa, while he - the Consul - threw an army across the Alps in order to attack the enemy on the flank. During the last months of 1799, and through the whole of the spring of 1800, Massena carried out with admirable perseverance and daring the task assigned to him, and every one of the forts that circle the town, as well as each of the prominent points of the grand ampitheatre of mountains at the foot of which Genoa rests, became the scene of desperate hand to hand struggles between French and Austrians. Massena was at last outnumbered and had to keep within the walls, where however he would still have probably held his own for an indefinite period if he had only had food. But the strict blockade kept up at sea by the English fleet under Admiral Keith, combined with the cordon of the besieging force on land, entirely intercepted the supply of provisions, and when all those in store were exhausted a time of horror and suffering came over the unhappy town that surpassed even the black days of the Great Plague. Although some show of justice was kept up in the distribution of such means of subsistance as were left, it was well understood that the soldiers should be looked to first, while every attempt at secretion on the part of the inhabitants was punished with death, so that at last it seemed as if the townspeople must entirely perish either from sheer starvation or from the diseases contracted by the filthy nature of the substances swallowed to prolong life. Massena, as insensible to compassion as he was tenacious of purpose, refused to listen to all proposals of surrender, hoping from day to day for the promised presence in Piedmont of Napoleon and his army which would at once raise the siege; and it is hard to imagine anything more bitter than the feeling of the Genoese that they were being tortured and killed, not in a struggle for liberty, but that they might have French instead of Austrian masters. At last Massena perceived that if he did not yield his men would all die, and the town fall equally into the hands of the enemy, so on the fourth of June, 1800, a meeting was arranged between him, the Austrian General Otto and Admiral Keith, in the little chapel that stands in the middle of the Bridge of Cornigliano. Massena found no difficulty in obtaining easy terms, as both of the allied commanders, and especially Admiral Keith, were full of admiration of his gallantry, and that same evening the French troops marched out of the town with all the honours of war and free to go where they chose. Provisions were then sent in such abundance into the famine-stricken city that we hear of a fresh set of the victims of this disastrous siege in the persons of the many who died of over-eating.

The Austrian occupation of Genoa lasted but a very short time; as Napoleon's victory at Marengo, in the summer of 1800, made him master of Italy, and the Republican form of government was again tolerated for a few years, but when Napoleon made himself Emperor in 1804, and still more when in 1805 he assumed the iron crown of Lombardy, the position of Genoa as a Republic became an anomaly, and it was intimated to the Senate that a cession of the State to France would be advisable. Under the circumstances, to hear was to obey, and the Emperor proceeded from Milan to Genoa in order to receive with much pomp at the hands of the last of the Doges, Gerolamo Durazzo, the gift of the city and territory of Genoa as a definite addition to the French Empire. Napoleon was lodged in the Palazzo Doria, in the same rooms that had been occupied by Charles Fifth when a guest of the Great Admiral, and we read of as many feasts and rejoicings being given in his honour as if he had come to liberate the town instead of to annex it.

But however galling to the Genoese from a patriotic and historical point of view may have been the final extinction of their autonomy, there is no doubt that the annexation of the Ligurian State to France was anything but an unmixed misfortune. The firm hand of the Imperial Government at once gave complete protection to life and property, justice was promptly and impartially administered, and energetic steps were taken to improve the land communications of Genoa along both Riviere; while the return to their homes of a considerable number of Genoese, who in the last weak years of the Republic had been taken captive to Africa by the Corsairs of the Mediterranean and to whom the awe

inspired by the name of Napoleon procured immediate liberation, caused in many households the change of nationality to be hailed with enthusiasm. Apart from, and still better than, mere material advantages the period of Napoleonic rule in Genoa connects itself with the recognition of intellect and the encouragement of philantrophy. In the name of the Via Assarotti, one of the most familiar streets of the town, we have the record of a great humanitarian work which, without the help of Napoleon, might perhaps never have been realized and would certainly have been delayed. Assarotti was a large hearted and exceptionally gifted priest who was the first in Italy to take up the education of the deaf and dumb, and if we consider that in this country the proportion of this afflicted class to the whole population is about one per mil, that is to say that the number of deaf mutes at the beginning of the century was very nearly eighteen thousand and is now about twentyfive thousand, we can understand what true claims to gratitude and honour are possessed by the man to whom it is due that this host of unfortunates, instead of going through existence like brute beasts, as they had been allowed, to do before, were now brought fully up to the intellectual and spiritual level of their fellow creatures. It seems that Father Assarotti's interest in the cause was first awakened, at the beginning of this century, by a very pleasing looking deaf and dumb little boy who used to sweep the vestry of his church, and whom he determined to try and teach to read. In order to better carry out his plan of instruction he collected four other deaf mutes, and this small class of five was the nucleus of deaf and dumb education in Italy. The teaching gave such remarkable results that the fame of Father Assarotti soon spread, and Napoleon, when he came to Genoa in 1805, showed warm interest in the work, granting the necessary funds to start a school. Five years later a further proof of Imperial favour was given in the donation of the present Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the building at the top of Via Serra, accompanied by a sufficient endowment to allow the Institute not only to take firm root in Genoa but to serve as a model for similar organization in aid of the deaf and dumb in most of the principal towns of Italy. Another town name as well known as Via Assarotti, Piazza Corvetto, does not indeed recall, in the person of Count Corvetto, so splendid an example of a true benefactor, but still Corvetto is a man of whom the Genoese may well be proud, and he was fully appreciated by the Emperor. Of a respectable but not noble family he early gained eminence at the bar, and, when the old aristocratic Republic was overthrown in 1797, Corvetto was chosen for one of the members of the new Government. Although not in the least Republican in his sympathies he very wisely decided to accept power, even in a form that was distasteful to him, rather than by his abstention to leave room for men less moderate than himself, and, in fact, it was undoubtedly due to him that the new Genoa Republic, amid all the frenzy of the French Revolution, kept free to a quite remarkable extent from acts of bloodshed and violence. Corvette's abilities and his eminent moral qualities gave him great weight with the representatives of the different foreign powers that occupied Genoa at the close of last century, and even the inflexible Massena so far felt his influence, that the horrors of the siege of 1799 might have been still further aggravated if Corvetto had not been there to plead the cause of his countrymen. Napoleon, coming into contact with Corvetto on the occasion of the annexation of Genoa, at once recognized his worth and offered to place him on the State Council of the Empire if he would come and settle at Paris. Corvetto accepted the proposal and soon acquired the distinction of being one of the very few men whom the Emperor would condescend to listen to, while his talents made him so independent of any question of party that, after the fall of the Empire, Louis XVIII named him Minister of Finance. The monetary position of France was at that time most difficult, the cost of the Napoleonic wars and the indemnity due to the Allied Armies having reduced the country to the verge of bankruptcy, and Corvetto by his admirable management restored the equilibrium of the budget and brought the country back into full credit. In short, he would have been a Cavour if he had been born fifty years later, and it is not one of the least pieces of good fortune that the unification of Italy has brought to Genoa that any great Ligurians of the future will no longer be obliged, like Andrea Doria or Corvetto, to serve foreign masters in order to become famous.

There is no record now left in Genoa of Napoleon himself, the rabble with their usual mischievousness having knocked down a statue that was raised to him in 1810, on the occasion of the festivities for the Marie Louise marriage. The statue stood for four years on the square, near the Principe railway station, which had been called in 1797 Piazza della Liberta in honour of the new Republic and which was re-named Piazza Napoleone in honour of the Emperor, and it was destroyed when General Bentinck took possession of the town in the name of England in 1814.

The eight months occupation of Genoa by the English — from April to December 1814 — compares pleasantly with the other foreign dominations of the period. Lord William Bentinck not only behaved with strict justice and moderation towards the town but he made himself thoroughly liked by the inhabitants, owing to the liberality with which he allowed an autonomous form of government to be carried on without any apparent interference on his part. The kindly feeling between English and Genoese was however much cooled at the close of the year by the bitter and most unreasonable disappointment felt in

the town at the decision of the Congress of Vienna, which was supposed to have been brought about by the action of Lord Castlereagh, to annex Genoa to Sardinia. The Genoese had clung with blind obstinacy to the idea of maintaining their enfeebled and shrunken dominions as a separate state, even at the cost of putting themselves under the protection of Spain as had been done in Andrea Doria's time, and now, when the door of true greatness was opened to them by incorporation with the future makers of Italy, they set up a yell of despair as if they and their country had been doomed to destruction.

It is impossible however to deny that although quite unfounded, as proved by results, were the lamentations of the Genoese over their fate, the condition of Italy, as confirmed by the Congress of Vienna, was the very negation of unity and liberty: so they were not altogether to blame for not immediately recognizing the advantages of their new position. Italy, that mere geographical designation, as Metternich scoffingly termed it, consisted in 1815 of eight separate states, the

three kingdoms of Sardinia, Two Sicilies and Lombardo Venetia, the four Duchies of Tuscany, Parma, Modem and Lucca, and the Papal Dominions; all in the hands of rulers who, while absolutely averse from taking any common action in the direction of a national policy, were fully at one in the oppressive treatment of their subjects and their unbending resistance to progress. Those same rulers too, who had been swept like dead leaves from their thrones by the whirlwind of Napoleon's power, crept out of their hiding places after his fall with a rancorous spite against any measure or reform, even if not political and however useful, connected with his name or his time. The Code Napoleon, as recognizing the equality of all classes before the law, was abolished as a matter of course, while the decimal system (exactly what now exists in Italy) shared the same fate merely because Napoleon had introduced it, and each state returned to the old separate arrangement for computing money, weights and measures, which was in most instances almost' as complicated as that which we are enjoying in England at the present moment. French time (I mean the ordinary twelve hour reckoning from midnight to noon and from noon to midnight) on account of the name was suppressed in Rome, as soon as the Pope returned from the certainly unjustifiable imprisonment to which Napoleon had subjected him, and the Romans were forced to go back to the antiquated system of counting from sunset to sunset, thus altering their time each day. French t-' s, as symbols of revolution, were proscribed all over Italy, and more than one instance is given of Government clerks losing their situations owing to their having used the new form of letter, probably on account of its coming easier to their pen than the conservative Italian r and quite apart from any political consideration. A crowning point of absurdity in the way of gallophobia was very nearly reached in the gravely projected destruction of one of the handsomest bridges across the Po at Turin for the simple reason that it had been built by Napoleon, but, however, this particular piece of reprisal did not come off, and the bridge still stands. From a political point of view the Genoese were perhaps better off than most of their neighbours, since their new King, Victor Emanuel I, was amiable in character and quite inclined to be fond of his subjects, but he possessed a full share of the dislike of progress that characterised the restoration, and one of his favourite speeches used to be that he had been asleep for the sixteen years during which Napoleon had banished him to Sardinia, and that he had woken up to find things just as before! His idea of government also, if paternal, was thoroughly autocratic, as may be judged by the answer made by the Governor of Genoa, in the early years of his reign, to one of the nobles who wished to obtain an introduction at Court for an acquaintance on the plea of his being, although not of high birth, one of the leading citizens. « You must learn » said the Governor « that there are no citizens now, we have « only the King who governs, the nobles who « carry out his orders, and the people who obey. »

No wonder then, with rulers not only tyrannical but ridiculous in their senseless rejection of all the great advantages in civilization and science with which the Napoleonic era had enriched the world, that the Italians, from the moment that the Congress of Vienna had rearranged their destinies, gave stealthy but unmistakable symptoms of discontent, and Genoa soon took a leading position in the popular cause by producing the man who, however profoundly we may disagree with his later opinions and actions, cannot be denied the merit of having been the first to prepare his countrymen for ultimate emancipation. Giuseppe Mazzini was born in Genoa in 1805, in the house in Via Lomellini half way up to the right as you go towards the Piazza Annunziata, where a slab and inscription record the fact. He showed from the first remarkable quickness of intellect and love of reading; history and literature, the writings of Dante above all, were his favourite studies, and even as a boy Mazzini's whole mind became possessed with the possibility of a free and united Italy, such as in the old days had been the admiration of the world and such as the great Tuscan poet, with the prophetic insight of genius, had not despaired of in the future, in spite of the internecine struggles of Guelph and Ghibelline, the foreign invasions and the domestic tyrannies with which his own times were rife. In 1821 an event occurred which gave a practical turn to the young enthusiast's aspirations. This was the rising in Piedmont against Victor Emanuel , based upon the demand of a constitution similar to that which

King Ferdinand had at that time been compelled to grant in Spain. The mild Victor Emanuel, who hated violence but could not make up his mind to make concessions, solved the difficulty by abdicating in favour of his brother Charles Felix, in whom were combined the most intense dislike of reform and unrelenting rigour. By the new monarch the constitutional movement was at once stamped out, and hundreds of refugees hurried to Genoa to take ship and put themselves in foreign countries out of the reach of martial law. The sight of these hitherto hated and alien Piedmontese, braving death and enduring exile for the sake of national liberty, made a profound impression upon the boy Mazzini, and he at once decided to begin the work of his life by teaching the Genoese that all Italians were their fellow countrymen: no easy task if we consider that for nearly eight centuries the policy of the Republic had been persistently to look upon all outsiders, whether living in the Peninsula or not, as either enemies or trade customers, to kill or to plunder according as there was war or peace, but in no wise to consort with and still less to admit as sharers in political aspirations. For the next ten years, while pursuing his studies with great distinction at the Genoa University, he worked indefatigably at this object, taking frequent journies, under cover of literary research, to Bologna and Tuscany and undoubtedly doing immense service in developing the spirit of nationality and welding together the elements of resistance against the intolerable despotism then prevailing. A fellow worker of Mazzini at that time, although on different lines, was our own poet Byron, who hated the regime of brute force as keenly as the Italian did, and who left Genoa in 1823, after a year's residence, to throw himself into the Greek struggle for independence against the Turks. Byron lived at San Francesco d'Albaro in the Villa Saluzzo, that fine palace on the main thoroughfare where a memorial slab marks his stay, and, as you will remember, he died at Missolonghi within a twelvemonth of his departure from these shores.

One may perhaps be allowed to wish that Mazzini had also died young, or at least that the exile to which he was sentenced in 1831, when the Government became aware of his power as a revolutionary agent, had been so complete as altogether to cut him off from political life, for the moment that he settled down in the foreign but neighbouring retreat of Marseilles he appears only as the evil genius of the cause of liberty. It is quite natural that, with such representatives of monarchy as ruled Italy in Mazzini's earlier years, including Charles Felix of Sardinia and even Charles Albert such as he showed himself when first seated on the throne, a Republican form of Government should have seemed to Mazzini the , only hope for the country, but the series of revolts which he organized from his French home were mere waste of life and fruitless causes of irritation to the authorities, leaving matters worse than before. A still greater fault on his part was his blind hatred of kings as such, without any distinction of purpose or actions, Charles Albert in his later years, when he granted a Constitution and lost his throne for the cause of national independence, being in his eyes equally a ruler to be resisted and overthrown with the earlier Charles Albert, who certainly was to all appearance the incarnation of absolutism and opposition to reform. You will find in Genoa a record of one of Mazzini's conspiracies in a tablet, let into the wall below the tower of the Ducal Palace where the prisons are, which says that Jacopo Ruffini - this is the brother of the well-known writer - consecrated the place with his blood in 1833. Ruffini, however, was not executed in the prison, as the words would imply, but was merely placed under arrest and met his death voluntarily by cutting his throat, in order, as his friends said at the time, to make it impossible for the Government to obtain any information from him. This arrest of Ruffini took place in consequence of the discovery of a plot organized on a large scale by Mazzini, with Genoa as its head quarters, having for its object the dethronement of Charles Albert and the proclamation in the Sardinian States of a Republic, to be extended as rapidly as possible to the rest of Italy. Great numbers of proselytes had been won over to the Republican cause in all parts of the Sardinian State and among all classes, including the army, and it was upon soldiers especially that punishment came down with an iron hand. In Genoa three military men, including a young officer who was well known and much liked, were condemned to death and shot on an early June morning of the same year, 1833, at the battery of the Cava under Carignano. The press of those days was entirely under official control, and the local papers only record the bare fact of the sentence having been carried out, but I have heard by word of mouth from people living in Genoa at the time that the execution made a deep effect in the town, so much so that the Governor, by way of diverting the attention of the populace, ordered the Casaccie to come out next day and promenade the streets.

I must make a digression in order to say a few words about the Casaccie, or religious processions, for they were quite one of the characteristics of Genoa in the first half of this century. The institution is of great antiquity, dating back some six hundred years to the time when the exhortations of S. Francis of Assisi brought into existence a number of religious confraternities who used to go about in bodies, scourging themselves, exhibiting holy relics and calling sinners to repentance. Genoa produced her full share of these brotherhoods, or, as they were called, Houses, « Case » , who in their early days carried out so fully the monastic idea of poverty and dirt in

their dress and appearance that the people applied to their name the contemptuous inflection of «Casaceie,» i. e. ugly houses. The epithet remains, but the circumstances that gave rise to it soon passed away, as the sackcloth and scourges of the original processionists were not long in being replaced by silken robes and silver wands. At the time of the Revolution the Casaccie were suppressed and most of them finally disappeared, but when the annexation of Genoa to the French Empire restored the liberty of worship a few of these .companies revived, and with even gr'eater splendour than before. Two in particular, the Casaccia of Portoria and that of the Marina, were eminent for the richness of their dresses and decorations, and the greatest possible jealousy existed Sls to which of the two made the best show. Owing to the fact of the figure on the Crucifix being in one case flesh - tinted, while the other was of dark wood, the rival companies were familiarly known as those of Cristo il Bianco and Cristo il Moro, and the respective followers of the White and of the Black Christ used not unfrequently to quarrel and use their knives with an energy almost recalling the street fights of old days of Guelphs and Ghibellines. I have friends still living who remember the Casaccie, and judging from their description they must have been very thoroughly spectacular, quite as effectively got up as the historical processions which were so much thought of here a few years ago, and with the great advantage of making their display in the summer months with all the additional attraction of blue sky and warmth, instead of, like the Carnival pageants of our days, exposing the spectators to an amount of cold wind that makes enjoyment impossible. The Casaccia used to be headed by a military band and escorted by a picked detachment of troops in full uniform, and the long line of procession was made up of every variety of ecclesiastical costume, displaying all the colours of the rainbow in the richest stuffs that money could buy or ingenuity manufacture. Cloth of gold and silver in profusion, flowered yellow brocades and red damasks, Genoa velvets in blue, crimson and black, and satin and lace everywhere; while the many banners blazed with gold and silver, and the principal personages carried staves surmounted by images of the saints in one or other of the precious metals. The centre of attraction was the Crucifix which it was the ambition of every Genoese, high or low, to carry, but, as it weighed over two hundredweight and was very difficult to balance, the task required, besides religious zeal, considerable strength and skill. A friend of mine has told me that his grandfather, one of the leading nobles, could carry the Crucifix up the steps of San Lorenzo and through the big door into the church without a halt, and with his hands behind his back, the whole weight being balanced in a socket attached to a leathern girdle worn round the waist and supported from the shoulders. This feat was naturally thought a good deal of, and it lives in the annals of the family much as we should record in England the fact of one of our ancestors having stroked the 'Varsity boat or having been the Captain of the Eton Eleven. Another great object of interest in the procession, was the « Cassa » , a kind of platform bearing full sized figures representing some episode in the life of the Patron Saint of the Casaccia and so heavy that not less than thirty bearers were required. These were all men specially trained to the work, acting with military precision under the orders of two managers or « Timonieri », as they were called, who seem to have had a marvellous facility for steering the huge machine smoothly through the narrow lanes, up and down the steep hills and round the sharp corners of the town, so that the movements of the Cassa were a real pleasure to watch. I have said enough to show that the Casaccie, although retaining so little of the original religious spirit in which they had been founded, were sufficiently attractive to explain the action of the Governor of Genoa in calling them out when he was afraid of a popular ferment. It is certainly a wonder what the present century has done for Italy in the way of civilization. It's hard to believe that in the city of Genoa, scarcely more than fifty years ago, there could be on one day men put to death solely on political grounds, and on the next a mock religious amusement provided, by command, for the people so as to keep them from thinking how they were governed.

To return to history, we have at this time the first appearance in Genoa as a political character of Mazzini's great contemporary, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the man who, while fully equal to Mazzini in his extraordinary power of enthusiasm over his countrymen for the cause of liberty, was infinitely superior to him in discrimination as to the means by which the cause would be best served. From the moment that the House of Savoy came forward as the champion of Italy for the Italians, Garibaldi, leader of men, consented to be led, and he, Victor Emanuel and Cavour made Italy, while Mazzini continued to sulk and to plot. Garibaldi who was born at Nice in 1807 was sent to sea in the merchant service as a boy and rapidly made himself known as a first rate seaman, but he kept entirely apart from politics until 1833, when, on a voyage in the Black Sea, a chance conversation with one of the leading spirits of the « Giovane Italia », the revolutionary association that had been founded by Mazzini, awoke in his mind an unquenchable desire to work for the cause of independence. Garibaldi took the earliest possible opportunity of going to Marseilles to see Mazzini, and in this first meeting of this remarkable pair the impressions were mutually favourable, Garibaldi fully sharing the fascination that Mazzini exercised on all who approached him,

while in the Garibaldi of those days, when, as I have said before, monarchy in Italy was a synonym for despotism, Mazzini found a willing instrument to forward his theory of a Republic. Mazzini was at that time engaged in organizing another plot, to repair if possible the ill success of that of the summer. This time the rising was to begin in Geneva, where all the political refugees - whose number had been much increased by the recent proscription - were to collect and to march into Savoy, which then formed, as you will remember, part of the kingdom of Sardinia. It was arranged that Garibaldi should go to Genoa and prepare the ground for a simultaneous revolt in that quarter, and he accordingly came here in the autumn of 1833 and, with the view of better furthering his object, enrolled himself as a common sailor under an assumed name on one of the Sardinian men of war lying in this port. In this capacity he continued for some months, making an active propaganda among the crews of the royal fleet, which at that time was stationed in Genoa, and keeping up communications with Mazzini, by whom it was at last announced that one of the first days in February 1834 had been chosen for

the outbreak, aud that the assault of the barracks in the Piazza Sarzana would give the signal for a general revolt in the town, during which Garibaldi was to seize the ships. On the day or rather night named Garibaldi went up to the Piazza Sarzana and waited anxiously for hours for the appointed attack to be made. Instead however of an organized and eager band of insurgents he found himself at last confronted only by one or two disheartened and isolated colleagues who told him that all Mazzini's Savoy plans had failed, that the Genoa insurrection had been disclosed to the authorities, and that the troops were already patrolling the town. Indeed, the soldiers appeared at that moment on the Piazza, and Garibaldi would infallibly have been taken, if he had not run into a fruit shop on the Piazza which had just opened, and obtained from the woman who kept it the use of her husband's clothes as a disguise in which he was fortunate enough to be allowed to pass through the ranks. A slab recently erected over the fruit shop records the escape of Garibaldi and the good action of the woman, and it is indeed an episode well worthy of a tablet. That long night watch of Garibaldi was fateful for the future history of Italy. He came to the Piazza an admirer and fellow worker of Mazzini, ready to sacrifice his life for the opinions and actions of the Republican; but the reflections passing through his mind during those hours of waiting taught him to disbelieve in a scheme of national liberation based upon the theories of a single individual who, in the solitude of his chamber, drew up plans of campaign and gave out exact days and hours for striking the decisive blow. Garibaldi and Mazzini never worked together afterwards. If they had, the map of Italy at this day would be very different. Garibaldi, after escaping, as we have said, from the Piazza Sarzana, managed also to get out of the town unmolested and made his way as quickly as possible through his native town of Nice over the frontier to Marseilles, where he had the disagreeable surprise of reading, in the first newspaper that came into his hands after his arrival, the sentence of the Court Martial of Genoa that condemned him to death for conspiracy. Garibaldi felt that France was not safe for him, nor even perhaps Europe, and in a very short time, employed under an assumed name on a merchant vessel, he made sail for South America, where in the course of the next fourteen years he acquired such fame as the leader of the forces of the Argentine Republic as fully to justify the term « Hero of the Two Worlds » applied to him in later life by his admirers.

After this second abortive attempt at a revolution Genoa had a period of peace. Mazzini retired to London and practically disappeared from political life, the rule of Charles Albert relaxed in severity from year to year, and the ground was slowly but surely prepared for constitutional reform and a war of independence against the hated Austrian. At last, in 1846, the decisive step was taken in the quarter in which it might least have been expected. Pius IX on his accession gave a full amnesty to all political prisoners and openly blessed the national cause. One must have lived in those times to realize what a whirlwind of enthusiasm swept over Italy at the sight of the Pope standing forth as the champion of Liberty. It was quite the poetical period of the Italian regeneration, and until the spring of 1848, when the French Revolution again brought the democratic idea to the front, it really seemed as if all classes and parties in Italy were preparing to work together on the lines of moderate progress. A striking manifestation of the improved state of feeling in Genoa, due largely, I think one may say, to the removal of Mazzini's inflence, was given at the end of 1847, when on the occasion of the anniversary of the victory over the Austrians in 1746 when Balilla became famous, a monster procession took place to the Church of Orregina. This Church, situated above the Principe railway station , is one of the objects of interest in Genoa, and although the road up to it is very steep the view alone will repay the trouble of a visit, to say nothing ol the history. It was built about the middle of the seventeenth century in honour of Our Lady of Loreto, and in order to identify the Church with the name there was put up in the centre of the nave an exact full sized copy of the Holy House of Loreto, that is to say the house where the Virgin Mary lived in Nazareth, and which, as tradition says, was carried by angels in the year 1291 from Galilee to Dalmatia and from across the Adriatic to Loreto, a small town near Ancona, where it finally rested. Here

a cathedral was built over the precious deposit, and troops of pilgrims, flocking with their offerings to the shrine uninterruptedly for centuries, made the Loreto Church so rich that we hear of Pope Pius VI in 1796, when money was needed to pay a war indemnity to the French, getting a sum equivalent to ten million pounds sterling out of the Loreto Treasury. As I said above, the Sacred House in the Genoa Church is a reproduction of that at Loreto, and there is also a painting representing the house being carried through the air by angels, so that without the trouble of a journey we can realize for ourselves one of the most extraordinary pieces of superstition that are chronicled in the whole range of ecclesiastical legendary history. Ever since the Austrians were driven out of Genoa in 1746 a yearly mass of thanksgiving had been held at the Church of Orregina, the reason for the choice being the fact of one of the monks, while the town was still in the hands of the Austrians, having had a vision of the approaching liberation. The commemoration therefore of the Balilla day necessarily implied a religious ceremony, and it is a pleasing proof of how well Church and State went together at this period that a great political demonstration should have taken the form of a pilgrimage. Judging from the description which has been given me by one who took part in it, the procession of 1847 must have been truly imposing. It was on so large a scale that, although the processionists walked in close files, the head of the cortege had reached Orregina before the last ranks had left the Acquasola, and still more remarkable than mere numbers was the thoroughly representative character of the assemblage. Soldiers and priests, nobles and mechanics, men of business and students, ladies of fashion and peasant women,the old and the young, the most advanced and the most conservative elements of society, all took part in this great parade and joined in the shouts that filled the air, now for the King, then for the Pope, for Italy or for war against the foreign oppressors. At the Orregina Church the monks were in waiting to perform the service of thanksgiving and to bless the crowd and the banners. Two of the latter, I believe the Sardinian and the Tuscan flags, (the present tricolour not having yet been adopted) were left in the Church and are still there: only after 1848, when the Church seceded from the cause of independence, they were tightly furled and are not therefore seen to advantage.

The year 1848 opened brightly for Genoa, the Constitution granted to the Sardinian States by Charles Albert in the beginning of February giving at one stage to the citizens the full amount of liberty and representation in Government that any Englishman now enjoys. This Constitution too, as befitted the kingly word of the future sovereigns of Italy, was religiously respected under all circumstances of difficulty and disaster, while similar concessions, made in the same eventful period of the early months of 1848 to their subjects by King Ferdinand of Naples, the Grand Duke of Tuscany and Pope Pius IX, were revoked within the year, either, as in the case of Ferdinand, from sheer bad faith or from the pressure of Austrian interference. An equally momentous step on the part of Charles Albert was his declaration of war to Austria in March, when he crossed the Mincio with the tricolour flag flying and called upon all Italians to join his army in the national cause. It really seemed as if the wishes of the Orregina pilgrims of the year before were going to become facts, and one would naturally expect the new born loyalty of the Genoese, as expressed on that occasion, to have been strengthened by the course of events; but, as I said above, the overthrow of Louis Philippe and the proclamation of the Republic in France produced a most unsettling effect all through Italy, and the presence at the same time at Milan of Mazzini revived to a very great extent in Genoa the old feelings of suspicion of monarchical government. We have a proof before our eyes of this distrust of their rulers in the ruins of the Castelletto Fort, the demolition of which it was the first act of the Genoese representatives in the Sardinian Parliament to procure. I described in a former lecture how this famous fortress, ever since it was built in the year 1400 by Boucicault with the object of keeping the hold of the French on the town, had been to the townspeople a visible and hateful sign of foreign oppression, and there was great joy when it was finally dismantled. A much more serious symptom of the return to Republican tendencies was shown in the following year 1849, in the behaviour of Genoa after the battle of Novara. When the news arrived in the town of that fatal twenty third of March, when the Piedmontese army was utterly crushed and when Charles Albert, after displaying on the field even more than the traditional bravery of the House of Savoy, had nobly determined to abdicate so as to give his son, Victor Emanuel, a better chance of making terms with the Austrians than he himself could have hoped for, the Mazzinian party here at once decided to profit by the event to make an insurrection. On the ridiculous pretext that the Kings of Sardinia, father and son, had proved traitors to the national cause by stopping hostilities, Genoa declared her independence, and a provisional Government, headed by a Colonel or General Avezzana, gave orders in name of the Republic. Owing to the weakness or treachery of the officer in command, the Piedmontese garrison, which was quite strong enough to have opposed a serious check to the revolt, capitulated without striking a blow, and the Mazzinians were left in easy possession of the town. They did not however hold it long, as General La Marmora, with a few thousand men, marched down from Turin within a week after the Revolution began,

and in another week, in spite of the scantiness of his forces as compared with the great strength of the line of fortifications, had taken the town. Great clemency was shown by Victor Emanuel in dealing with the insurgents, a general amnesty being granted to all except the members of the Provisional Government and a very few others, but the necessary loss of life and damage to property inflicted by the Piedmontese soldiers in their assault left a bitter feeling, and Genoa relapsed into almost the same hatred of Turin as. had existed in the early days of Charles Albert's reign. The Republican idea continued to be fostered here from year to year and again broke out in 1857, when Mazzini made another, and happily the last, abortive attempt to detach Genoa from the Sardinian Crown. This rising of 1857 was to be in connection with the expedition (needless to say a complete failure) of Pisacane to Naples, and the first object of the revolt was to procure fron the Government stores a supply of arms and ammunition for Pisacane, who, it was hoped, would be able to proclaim the Republic in the kingdom of Naples almost simultaneously with Genoa. Mazzini came here in person to superintend operations, and, exactly as had happened before, in his two carefully schemed insurrections of 1833 and 1834, the whole plan was divulged to the authorities just at the critical moment. A considerable number of arrests were made, but Mazzini with his usual good fortune got clear away, and the pitiful figure that he cut on this occasion undoubtedly weakened his influence with the Genoese malcontents, so that Mazzinianism in these parts has not been really formidable since.

We next come to a singularly picturesque page in the records of modern Genoa, the departure from these shores of Garibaldi and his Thousand, an enterprise which, from its combination of romance and political importance, has but few parallels in history. Garibaldi terminated his South American career and returned to Italy in 1848, when he at once threw himself with a band of volunteers into the campaign against the Austrians in Lombardy, but it was his gallant defence of Rome in the following spring against the combined Neapolitan and French forces that first revealed to his countrymen his extraordinary powers as a soldier and a leader. After Rome he was again forced to return to his old profession of the s;a, partly from the necessity of gaining a livelihood , partly because political reasons made it dangerous for him to remain at home, and it was not until 1855 that he was able to settle down in Italy, in the little Island of Caprera which his residence has made famous. Here Garibaldi spent some most quiet and happy years, but when the war of 1859 broke out he showed all his usual enthusiasm in entering the field against the Austrians, this time putting himself unreservedly under the orders of Victor Emanuel for whom he had a strong affection, and whom he proclaimed openly to his followers as the future King of United Italy. After the most disappointing peace of Villafranca which prematurely arrested the work of Italian regeneration, leaving the greater part of the Peninsula in as hopeless a state as before, Garibaldi retired in deep discontent to his Island, but his personal sympathies for the King and the consummate skill of Cavour prevented a breach, so that, when during the course of the winter and following spring the expedition to Sicily was. arranged, it was fully understood that its ultimate object was to be Monarchical Government under the House of Savoy. Cavour was intensely anxious that this expedition should take place, as he recognized in Garibaldi the fit instrument for a successful insurrection, but at the same time, from fear of France, no official help could possibly be given, and the resources therefore at the disposal of the General, whether as regards men, money or arms, were to all appearance wholly inadequate to the task before him. Only one thousand men could be enrolled, not from want of volunteers but simply because the resources of the Garibaldian Committee could not equip a larger number, thirty thousand francs were raised for the war fund, and a private arrangement was made with Rubattino, the well known steamship owner here who died a few years ago, to allow two small steamers, the «Piemonte» and the «Lombardia» , to lie in the port of Genoa until they were seized and carried away by the expeditionists, this pretence of violence being considered necessary to save appearances. All was got ready for the end of April i860, and the signal for action was eagerly waited for from the great Chief who was in Genoa, or rather at Quarto, staying with a friend in a house just above the Villa Carrara. You most of you know the spot, or at least the bit of shore below the Villa , and deeply interesting it is, not merely on account of the monument that marks the place of embarkation but because it was on those rocks that, for several days, the hero of the two worlds sat and wrestled out in a tumult of solitary thought the crowning event of his own and his nation's career. Not with a light heart did Garibaldi play the great card. When, evening after evening, after long hours of silent station on the beach with his eyes so keenly fixed on the South as if he would pierce the horizon and see for himself whether the distant Sicily wished for him or not, he came back to the Villa, his friends would gaze anxiously at the clouded countenance, and, while not daring to question him, would sorrowfully ask themselves if their leader would ever move. At last, on the first of May, as if the Book of the Future had been thrown open to him, a sudden and welcome change came over Garibaldi's spirit. Doubt and discouragement vanished, and, with all the old fire in his eye and voice, he gave the word for

immediate departure. Immediate of course it could not be, but on the fifth of May, i860, about midnight, the General, his chief officers and part of the volunteers took boat at the rock where the pillar now stands and made their way to the port to gain the two steamers which, as already mentioned, had gone through the form of being pirated by another band of Garibaldians. I saw myself, happening to be on that night in the house of a friend at Albaro, and at the window, the boats go by bearing Garibaldi and his fortunes. The enterprise had been kept quite secret, so that there was no common talk on the subject in the town, and I was too much of a boy at that time to try and find out for myself what it all meant, but I shall never forget the deep impression, as a picture, made on my mind by the line of boats standing out vividly in the moonlight, with the sea as smooth and the air as balmy as fancy could conceive or heart desire. The expedition was directed to Marsala at the extreme west of Sicily, and on its very first arrival was threatened with a danger that must have involved utter destruction, if it had not been for the fortunate presence in the port of two English men of war under the

orders of Admiral Fanshawe. The Neapolitan Navy had got wind of the expedition, and three frigates got the two steamers in chase off the coast of Sicily, caught them up at Marsala and would infallibly have sunk them, during the necessary halt for disembarkation, if the little vessels had not put themselves in between the English men of war and the shore. The Neapolitans wanted Admiral Fanshawe to get out of the way, but this he peremptorily refused to do, while at the same time he let it be clearly understood that, although the Neapolitans were free to fire on the rebels, they must by no means fire upon him, and thus, while preserving all the forms of strict neutrality, the representative of England was on this occasion able to render a most substantial service to the cause of Italian Liberty. Scarcely was Garibaldi safely landed when he found himself confronted with another danger almost as great as that of the frigates, and this time he had no help. Over three thousand regular troops were sent from Palermo to meet the insurgents, hoping at one blow to sweep the pests from the island, and they took up a strong position at Calafatimi, across the road which Garibaldi and his band were forced to follow in their march. The fight at Calafatimi was epoch - making for Italy. The Garibaldians, one to three, in the teeth of a most galling fire, dislodged at the point of the bayonet the Neapolitans from their cover and sent the whole force flying in disorder; and when the heights of Calafatimi were won Garibaldi felt that the cause was won also. From that day indeed the successes gained by the expedition were truly astounding. Palermo, with its fortifications, its garrison and its artillery, was actually taken before the end of May by the handful of men who had left Genoa and about an equal number of very poorly armed and wholly undisciplined Sicilians who had joined them, and about a month later the victory of Melazzo allowed the Garibaldian forces, which by this time were considerably recruited, to cross the Straits of Messina without molestation. Once on the mainland Garibaldi's progress was simply a triumph. Not only did the provincial towns on his way open their gates to him but, on his approaching Naples, the king himself actually ran for it, so that, on the seventh of September, Garibaldi entered the capital without striking a blow and was instantly proclaimed Dictator by an adoring crowd. One more effort was made by the Bourbons to retrieve their fortunes. All their available forces, some forty thousand men, were massed on the Volturno near Capua, and on the first of October an attack was made on the Garibaldian army numbering scarcely more than half, but the Royalist army after a few hours was completely broken up, and the battle of the Volturno remains on record as the greatest of Garibaldi's victories. His work was now complete, for the Neapolitans, by a most emphatic Plebiscite held under his auspices, voted their annexation to Victor Emanuel; and when the King, in November, arrived in Naples Garibaldi, after having handed over to the new Monarch the result of the Plebiscite, quietly withdrew to Caprera, taking his departure by steamer in the early morning, and with only a very few friends, so as to attract no notice. He took on board with him a sack of potatoes, a parcel of seeds and a bale of dried codfish, and these were the only spoils of war reserved to himself by the Conqueror of the two Sicilies.

I conclude this sketch by relating' a curious incident that happened in Genoa, also in i860, in connection with one of the principal events of this most stirring year. This was the cracking of the great bell of the Ducal Palace tower when ringing in honour of the annexation of Tuscan)' and the Emilia, this latter region including the Duchies of Parma and Modena and part of the States of the Church. It was on the sixteenth of March, a Friday and therefore an unlucky day, but in the opinion of devout Catholics the rejoicing over the spoliation of the Pope's dominions was more unlucky still, and the cracking of the bell was by many people at the time held to be a direct consequence of the use to which it was put. Without going into controversy we can all agree that it was a great pity the accident happened, as the deep notes of the bell were a distinctive feature of Genoa. The bell was nearly three hundred years old, and its main office was to summon the nobles to the gatherings of the great Council of the Republic, a purpose for which it seems to have been well adapted, as we are told that the sound went as far as Savona. It is interesting to note with regard to this bell that its beginning, as well as end, are connected with great events, as it was swung almost for the first time in 1571 to com

LECTURE V.

From The End Of Genoa As A Separate State To The Unification Of Italy In 1861. Siege and famine of the town under Massena. Napoleon annexes the State to France. Advantages of Imperial rule. Assarotti. Corvetto. Cession of Genoa to Sardinia by the Congress of Vienna. Prejudiced and despotic rule of the Restoration. First efforts of Mazzini in the cause of Liberty: his exile and fruitless plots. The Casaccie processions. Garibaldi and his early enthusiasm for Mazzini. Dawn of constitutional liberty in Genoa and the great demonstration of Orregina. The final demolition of C.istelletto fort. Attempt at revolt after the defeat of Charles Albert at Novara. Embarcation of Garibaldi and his Thousand lor Sicily and conquest of the Kingdom of Naples. The great bell of G:noi Page 184-229