ATDTDA 724-747 Italy

[Glenn Scheper]

Part 5 of 9.

Between 1453 and 1492 Italy continued to be prosperous and tranquil. Nearly all 
wars during this period were undertaken either to check the growing power of 
Venice or to further th ambition of the papacy. Having become despots, the popes 
sought to establish their relatives in principalities. The worc nepotism 
acquired new significance in the reigns of Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII. Though 
the country was convulsed by rn great struggle, these forty years witnessed a 
truly appalling increase of olitical crime. To be a prince was tantamount to
being the mark of secret conspiracy and assassination.

Venice rapidly declined throughout the 17th century. The loss of trade 
consequent upon the closing of Egypt and the Levant, together with the discovery 
of America and ~e~ilne the sea-route to the Indies, had dried up her thief of 
Vonl~e source of wealth. Prolonged warfare with the Otto- and mans, who forced 
her to abandon Candia in 1669, Spain. as they had robbed her of Cyprus in 570, 
still further crippled her resources. Yet she kept the Adriatic free of pirates, 
notably by suppressing the sea-robbers called Uscocchi (1601-1617), maintained 
herself in the Ionian Islands, and in 1684 added one more to the series of 
victorious episodes which render her annals so romantic. In that year Francesco 
Morosini, upon whose tomb we still may read the title Peloponnesiacus, wrested 
the whole of the Morea from the Turks. But after his death in 1715 the republic 
relaxed her hold upon his conquests. The Venetian nobles abandoned themselves to 
indolence and vice. Many of them fell into the slough of pauperism, and were 
saved from starvation by public doles. Though the signory still made a brave 
show upon occasions of parade, it was clear that the state was rotten to the 
core, ahd sinking into the decrepitude of dotage.

On the death of Maria Theresa in 1780, the emperor Joseph II. instituted much 
wider reforms. Feudal privileges were done away with, clerical influence 
diminished and many monasteries and convents suppressed, the criminal law 
rendered more humane and torture abolished largely as a result of G. Beccarias 
famous pamphlet Dei delitli e delle pene.

The democratic propaganda, which was permeating all the large towns of the 
peninsula, then led to the formation of numerous and powerful clubs and secret 
societies; and the throne of Victor Amadeus III., of the house of Savoy, soon 
began to totter under the blows delivered by the French troops at the mountain 
barriers of his kingdom and under the insidious assaults of the friends of 
liberty at Turin. Plotting was rife at Milan, as also at Bologna, where the 
memory of old liberties predisposed men to cast off clerical rule and led to the 
first rising on behalf of Italian liberty in the year 1794. At Palermo the 
Sicilians struggled hard to establish a republic in place of the odious 
government of an alien dynasty.

Bonaparte, though by no means remiss in the exaction of gold and of artistic 
treasures, was laying the foundation of a friendly republic.

He summed up his conduct in the letter of the 8th of May 1797 to the French 
directory, I cool the hot heads here and warm the cool ones.

Alike in political and commercial affairs they were for all practical purposes 
dependencies of France. Finally, after the proclamation of the French empire 
(May 18, 1804) Napoleon proposed to place his brother Joseph over the Italian 
state, which now took the title of kingdom of Italy. On Joseph declining, 
Napoleon finally decided to accept the crown which Melzi, Marescalchi, 
Serbelloni and others begged him to assume. Accordingly, on the 26th of May 
i8o5, in the cathedral at Milan, he crowned himself with the iron crown of the 
old Lombard kings, using the traditional formula, God gave it me: let him beware 
who touches it.

Under Pius VII. and his minister Cardinal Consalvi oppression had not been very 
severe, and Metternichs proposal to establish a central inquisitorial tribunal 
for political offences throughout Italy had been rejected by the papal 
government. But on the death of Pius in I823, his successor Leo XII. (Cardinal 
Della Genga) proved a ferocious reactionary under whom barbarous laws were 
enacted and torture frequently applied. The secret societies, such as the 
Carbonari, the Adelfi and the Bersaghieri dAmerica, which flourished in. 
Romagna, replied to these persecutions by assassinating the more brutal 
officials ans spies. The events of 1820-1821 increased the agitation in Romagna, 
and in 1825 large numbers of persons were condemned to death, imprisonment or 
exile. The society of the Sanfedisti, formed of the dregs of the populace, whose 
object was to murder every Liberal, was openly protected and encouraged.

The emperor Napoleon, almost alone among Frenchmen, had genuine Italian 
sympathies. Napoleon But were he to intervene in Italy, the intervention Ita~ly. 
a would not only have to be successful; it would have to bring tangible 
advantages to France. Hence his hesitations and vacillations, which Cavour 
steadily worked to overcome. Suddenly on the 14th of January 1858 Napoleons life 
was attempted by Felice Orsini a Mazzinian Romagnol, who believed that Napoleon 
was the chief obstacle to the success of the revolution in Italy. The attempt 
failed and its author was caught and executed, but while t appeared at first to 
destroy Napoleons Italian sympathies and led to a sharp interchange of notes 
between Paris and Turin, the emperor was really impressed by the attempt and by 
Orsinis letter from prison exhorting him to intervene in Italy. He realized how 
deep the Italian feeling for independence must be, and that a refusal to act now 
might result in further attempts on his life, as indeed Orsinis letter stated.

At Meanwhile, the Venetian question was becoming more and ce ore acute. Every 
Italian felt the presence of the Austrians in in the lagoons as a national 
humiliation, and between ml ::~~:: I8~9 and 1866 countless plots were hatched 
for their Ta expulsion. But, in spite of the sympathy of the king, Dl e attempt 
to raise armed bands in Venetia had no success, and wa became clear that the 
foreigner could only be driven from the of ninsula by regular war.

In December 1869 the XXI. oecumenical council began its sittings in Rome, and on 
the 18th of July 1870 proclaimed the infallibility of the pope (see VATICAN 
COUNCIL). Two days previously Napoleon. had declared war on Prussia, and 
immediately afterwards he withdrew his troops from Civitavecchia; but he 
persuaded Lanza to promise to abide by the September convention, and it was not 
until after Worth and Gravelotte that he offered to give Italy a free hand to 
occupy Rome. Then it was too late; Victor Emmanuel asked Thiers if he could give 
his word of honor that with 100,000 Italian troops France could be saved, but 
Thiers remained silent. Austria replied like Italy: It is too late. On the 9th 
of August Italy made a declaration of neutrality, and three weeks later 
ViscontiVenosta informed the powers that Italy was about to occupy Rome. On the 
3rd of September the news of Sedan reached Florence, and with the fall of 
Napoleons empire the September convention ceased to have any value. The powers 
having engaged to abstain from intervention in italian affairs, Victor Emmanuel 
addressed a letter to Pius IX. asking him in the name of religion and peace to 
accept Italian protection instead of the temporal power, to which the pope 
replied that he Italian would only yield to force. On the 11th of September 
occupaGeneral Cadorna at the head of 60,000 men entered ilon of papal territory. 
The garrison of Civitavecchia sur- Rome. rendered to Bixio, but the 10,000 men 
in Rome, mostly French, Belgians, Swiss and Bavarians, under Kanzler, were ready 
to fight. Cardinal Antonelli would have come to terms, but the pope decided on 
making a sufficient show of resistance to prove that he was yielding to force. 
On the 20th the Italians began the attack, and General Maze de la Roches 
division having effected a breach in the Porta Pia, the pope ordered the 
garrison to cease fire and the Italians poured into the Eternal City followed by 
thousands of Roman exiles. By noon the whole city on the left of the Tiber was 
occupied and the garrison laid down their arms; the next da~, at the popes 
request, the Leonine City on the right bank was also occupied. It had been 
intended tc leave that part of Rome to the pope, but by the earnest desin of the 
inhabitants it too was included in the Italian kingdom At the plebiscite there 
were 133,681 votes for union and I 50~ against it. In July 1872 King Victor 
Emmanuel made hi~ solemn entry into Rome, which was then declared the capita of 
Italy. Thus, after a struggle of more than half a century, ix spite of 
apparently insuperable obstacles, the liberation an the unity of Italy were 
accomplished.

Sella had found himself in 1865 compelled to propose the most hated of fiscal 
burdensa grist tax on cereals. This tax (macinato) had long been known in Italy. 
Vexatious methods of assessment and collection had made it so unpopular that the 
Italian government in 1859-1860 had thought it expedient to abolish it 
throughout the realm. Sella hoped by the application of a mechanical meter both 
to obviate the odium attaching to former methods of collection and to avoid the 
maintenance of an army of inspectors and tax-gatherers, whose stipends had 
formerly eaten up most of the proceeds of the impost.
Before proposing the reintroduction of the tax, Sella and his friend Ferrara 
improved and made exhaustive experiments with the meter. The result of their 
efforts was laid before parliament in one of the most monumental and most 
painstaking preambles ever prefixed to a bill. Sella, nevertheless, fell before 
the storm of opposition which his scheme aroused. Scialoja, who succeeded him, 
was obliged to adopt a similar proposal, but parliament again proved refractory. 
Ferrara, successor of Scialoja, met a like fate; but Count Cambray-Digny, 
finance minister in the Menabrea cabinet of 1868-1869, driven to find means to 
cover a deficit aggravated by the interest on the Venetian debt, succeeded, with 
Sellas help, in forcing a Grist Tax Bill through parliament, though in a form of 
which Sella could not entirely approve. When, on the 1st of January 1869, the 
new tax came into force, nearly half the flour-mills in Italy ceased work. In 
many districts the government was obliged to open mills on its own account.
Inspectors and tax-gatherers did their work under police protection, and in 
several parts of the country riots had to be suppressed menu inililari. At first 
the net revenue from the impost was less than 1,100,000; but under Sellas firm 
administration (1869-1873), and in consequence of improvements gradually 
introduced by him, the net return ultimately exceeded 3,200,000. The 
parliamentary opposition to the impost, which the Left denounced as the tax on 
hunger, was largely factitious. Few, except the open partisans of national 
bankruptcy, doubted its necessity; yet so strong was the current of feeling 
worked up for party purposes by opponents of the measure, that Sellas 
achievement in having by its means saved the financiai.situation of Italy 
deserves to rank among the most noteworthy performances of modern parliamentary 
statesmanship.

Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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