The Liberation of Italy, 1815-1870 Part 20

M. Rouher's 'Never'--Papal Infallibility--Sedan--The Breach in Porta Pia--The King of Italy in Rome.

Mentana had its epilogue in the debate in the French Corps Legislatif, which lasted from the 2nd to the 5th of December. Jules Favre proposed a vote of censure on the Ministry for their Roman policy. The most distinguished speaker who followed him was Thiers, who said that though in opposition, he would support the Government tooth and nail in their defence of French interests at Rome. The debate was wound up by the memorable declaration of the Prime Minister, Rouher, that 'never' should Italy get possession of Rome. 'Is that clear?' he asked. It was quite clear. The word escaped him, he afterwards said, in 'the heat of improvisation.' The French Chamber confirmed it by throwing out Favre's motion by 237 votes against 17.

Now, indeed, the Ultramontanes were jubilant throughout the world.

Napoleon was compromised, enmeshed beyond extrication.

Of all these events, Prussia, or rather the great man who was the brain of Prussia, took attentive note. He was convinced that the wonders accomplished by the Cha.s.sepot at Mentana would soon lead France to try the effect of the new rifle on larger game. Among the measures which he took with a view to that contingency, his correspondence with Mazzini is not the least remarkable. It began in November 1867, and was continued for a year. The object of both Bismarck and Mazzini was to prevent Italy from taking sides with France. The negotiations were carried on partly through Count d'Usedom, Prussian Minister at Florence, and partly through other intermediaries. Mazzini began by saying, that although the Chancellor's methods of unification had not his sympathy, he admired his energy, tenacity and independence; that he believed in German unity and opposed the supremacy which France arrogated to herself in Europe. He engaged to use his influence in Italy to make it difficult for an Italian Government to take up arms for the victors of Mentana.

Bismarck was well aware that in speaking of his influence the writer used no idle phrase, but possibly one of his reasons for continuing the correspondence was to find out what Mazzini knew of the hidden plots and counter plots then in manufacture both in Paris and at Florence, because the Italian was more conversant with diplomatic secrets than any man living, except, perhaps, Cardinal Antonelli. In April 1868, Mazzini received through the Prussian Emba.s.sy at Florence, a doc.u.ment which even now possesses real interest on the relative advantages to Italy of a French or German Alliance. The whole question turned, observed the Prussian Chancellor, on the mastery of the Mediterranean: here France and Italy must find themselves at variance whether they willed it or not. 'The configuration of the terrestrial globe not being amenable to change, they will be always rivals and often enemies.' Nature has thrown between them an apple of discord, the possession of which they will not cease to contest. The Mediterranean ought to become an Italian lake. 'It is impossible for Italy to put up with the perpetual threats of France to obtain the mastery over Tunis, which would be for her the first stage to arriving in Sardinia.'

At the Berlin Congress eight years later, Prince Bismarck pressed the same views upon Count Corti, the Italian delegate. He would have been glad to see the Italians go to Tunis, but Count Corti ingenuously replied: 'You want to make us quarrel with France.' Meanwhile the Englishman who represented France and the Englishman who represented England were discussing the same subject, and out of their discussion arose the French occupation of Tunis. Disquieting rumours got about at once, but they were dispelled. 'No French Government would be so rash,' said Gambetta, 'as to make Italy the _irreconcilable_ foe of France.' M. Waddington declared that he was personally opposed to the acquisition of Tunis, and gave his word of honour that nothing would be done without the full consent of Italy. What was done and how it was done is known to all. And so it happens that a great French naval station is in course of construction almost within sight of Sicily _and of Malta._

In the doc.u.ment communicated by Bismarck to Mazzini, there is a curious inclusion of Trieste among Italian seaports which seems to indicate that he was still not averse from a rectification of the Italian north-east frontier. Whence it may be supposed that he expected to find Austria ranged on the part of France in the struggle for the Rhine bank. To explain how it was that this did not happen, we must leave the Chancellor and the Revolutionist, and see what at the same time was going on between Napoleon on the one side and Austria and Italy on the other.

The French Emperor was not so infatuated as to court the risk of making war on Prussia single-handed if he could avoid it. He hoped for a triple alliance of France, Austria and Italy, or, if that could not be compa.s.sed, a dual alliance of France with either of these Powers.

Now, wisely or unwisely, both the Italian and Austrian Governments were far from rejecting these proposals off-hand. The secret negotiations lasted from 1868 till June 1869. They took the shape of informal letters between the King of Italy and Napoleon, and of private communications with Count Beust through Prince Metternich, the Austrian Amba.s.sador in Paris, who was the intimate friend and confidant of the Emperor and Empress. General Menabrea was not let into the secret till later. With regard to Victor Emmanuel, there is no doubt that he wished with all his heart to be able to do a good turn to his Imperial ally of 1859 if the occasion presented itself.

Some men see their wives even to old age as they saw them when they were young and fair. The first print on the retina of the mental vision was so strong that no later impression can change or efface it.

This hallucination is not confined to the marital relations.h.i.+p, and Victor Emmanuel never left off seeing Napoleon in one sole light: as the friend of Solferino. It may be that he perceived what the Italians did not perceive: that the obligation was owed to Napoleon alone, while all France had a part in the subsequent injuries. At any rate the idea of refusing the Emperor's appeal was repugnant in the extreme to the Italian King, who personally would have strained any point rather than give that refusal.

The King, however, and General Menabrea, who was finally admitted into the conspiracy, could not be blind to the fact that an unpopular war might create so great an agitation in the country that the dynasty itself would be in danger. A war for France while the French were in Rome would have raised one storm of indignation from Palermo to Turin.

So their ultimatum was this: Rome capital of Italy, or no alliance.

There remained Austria, but if Napoleon ever hoped to conclude a separate treaty with her, he was to discover his mistake. From the moment that Austria resigned the Iron Crown, the symbol of her Italian power, she acted towards Italy with a loyalty that has few parallels in history. And she, too, replied to Napoleon: Rome capital of Italy, or no alliance.

The Vatican has never forgiven this to Austria. At the present hour, while republican France with her open antagonism to all religion, is the favoured daughter of the Church, Austria, the only country in Europe except Spain where the Roman Catholic cultus retains all its original pomp and almost all its mediaeval privileges, meets from the Vatican a studied plan of opposition, the object of which can only be to bring her Government to a deadlock. From France the Pope still hopes for aid in the recovery of his temporalities; from Austria he knows that he will never receive it. So much have politics and so little has religion to do now, as in all ages, with the motives that govern the Holy See.

Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!

The years 1868 and 1869 pa.s.sed uneventfully for Italy. In the former year Prince Humbert married his cousin Margherita of Savoy. He was previously engaged to the Archd.u.c.h.ess Matilda, the only daughter of the Victor of Custoza, but the young Princess met with a terrible death just when the betrothal was about to be announced. No one worthier to receive from Adelaide of Burgundy the lovely t.i.tle of Queen of Italy could have been found than the Princess Margaret, who inherited the sunny charm which had endeared her father, the Duke of Genoa, to all who knew him.

In the autumn of 1869 another domestic event, the severe illness of Victor Emmanuel, gave rise to an incident which made a deep impression in Italy, and attached the nation by one link more to the King of its choice. The illness which seized Victor Emmanuel at his hunting-box of San Rossore, in a malarious part of Tuscany, proved so serious that his life was despaired of. A priest was called to hear the King's last confession, and to administer the Sacraments for the dying. After hearing the confession, the priest said he could not give absolution unless Victor Emmanuel signed a solemn retractation of all the acts performed during his reign that were contrary to the interests of the Church. The King answered, without a moment's hesitation, that he died a Christian and a Catholic, and that if he had wronged anyone he sincerely repented and asked pardon of G.o.d, but the signature demanded was a political act, and if the priest wished to talk politics his ministers were in the next room. Thither the ecclesiastic retired, but he very soon returned, and administered the rite without more ado.

What had pa.s.sed was this: General Menabrea, with a decision for which he cannot be too much praised, threatened the priest with instant arrest unless he surrendered his pretensions. Only those who know the extraordinary terror inspired in an Italian Catholic by the prospect of dying unshriven can appreciate the merit of the King, whose faith was childlike, in standing as firm in the presence of supernatural arms as he stood before the Austrian guns.

Menabrea's administration was then upon the eve of falling. The cause was one of those financial crises that were symptomatic of a mischief which has been growing from then till now, when some critics think they see in it the fatal upas tree of Italy. The process of transforming a country where everything was wanting--roads, railways, lines of navigation, schools, water, lighting, sanitary provisions, and the other hundred thousand requirements of modern life--into the Italy of to-day, where all these things have made leaps almost incredible to those who knew her in her former state, has proved costly without example. During the whole period it has been necessary to spend in ever-increasing ratio on the army and navy, and this expenditure, though emphatically not the chief, has yet been a concomitant cause of financial trouble. The point cannot be inquired into here of how far greater wisdom and higher character in Italian public servants might have limited the evil and reconciled progress with economy; but it may be said that if the path entered upon by the man who took charge of the exchequer after Menabrea's fall, Quintino Sella, had been rigorously followed by his successors, the present situation would not be what it is.

Giovanni Lanza a.s.sumed the premiers.h.i.+p in the government in which Sella was Minister of Finance. Both these politicians were Piedmontese, and both were known as men of conspicuous integrity, but Lanza's rigid conservatism made it seem unlikely that the Roman question would take a fresh turn under his administration. In politics, however, the unlikely is what generally happens; events are stronger than men.

On the 8th of December the twenty-first Ec.u.menical Council a.s.sembled in Rome. From the day of its meeting, in spite of the strenuous opposition of its most learned and ill.u.s.trious members, there was no more doubt that the dogma under consideration would be voted by the partly astute and partly complaisant majority than that it would have been rejected in the twenty preceding Councils. On the 18th of July 1870, the Pope was proclaimed Infallible.

That was a moment of excitement such as has not often thrilled Europe, but the cause was not the Infallibility of Pius IX. On the 16th, Napoleon declared war with Prussia. War, like death, comes as a shock, however plainly it has been foreseen; besides, it was only the well-informed who knew how near the match had been to the powder-magazine for two years and more. Whether the explosion, at the last, was timed by Napoleon or by Bismarck is not of great importance; it could have been but little delayed. Napoleon was beset alike by the revolutionary spectre and by the gaunt King of Terrors; he knew the throw was desperate, but with the gambler's instinct, which had always been so strong in him, he was magnetised by it because it was desperate. Pitiful egotist though he was, history may forgive him sooner than it forgives the selfish Chauvinism of Thiers, who had been goading his countrymen to war ever since Sadowa, or the insane bigotry of the party which, having triumphed over revolution at Mentana, now sought to triumph over heresy in what the Empress called 'Ma guerre.'

Napoleon had the remaining sagacity to see the extreme danger of leaving a few thousand men isolated in Rome at a time when, happen what might, it would be impossible to reinforce them. Directly after declaring war, notwithstanding the cries of the Ultramontanes, he decided on recalling the French troops. He induced the Italian Government to resume the obligations of the September Convention, by which the inviolability of the Papal frontier was guaranteed. Lanza is open to grave criticism for entering into a contract which it was morally certain that he would not be able to keep. Perhaps he hoped that Napoleon would himself release Italy from her bond. But the 'Jamais' of Rouher stood in the way. Could the Emperor, after such boasting, coolly throw the Pope overboard the first time it suited his convenience? Moreover, his present Prime Minister, M. Emile Olivier, when the question was put to him, did not hesitate to renew the declaration that the Italians must not be allowed to go to Rome.

Napoleon made some last frantic efforts to get Austria and Italy to befriend him unconditionally. How far he knew the real state of his army before he declared war may be doubtful, but that he possessed overwhelming proof of it, even before the first defeats, cannot be doubted at all. His heart was not so light as his Prime Minister's. At the end of July he sent General Turr on a secret mission to try and obtain the help of Austria and Italy. The Hungarian general wrote from Florence, that unless something could be done to a.s.sure Italy that the national question would be settled in accordance with the wishes of her people, the Italian alliance was not possible. The Convention, he pointed out, was a bane instead of a boon to Italy. This letter was answered by a telegram through the French Amba.s.sador at Vienna: 'Can't do anything for Rome; if Italy will not march, let her stand still.

As in the former negotiations, Austria took her stand on precisely the same ground as Italy. And thus it was that France plunged into the campaign of 1870 single-handed.

After Worth, and once more after Gravelotte, the endeavour to draw Italy into the struggle was renewed. Napoleon was aware that Victor Emmanuel was wildly anxious to come to the rescue, and on this personal goodwill his last hope was built. Prince Napoleon was despatched from the camp at Chalons to see what he could do. At this eleventh hour (19th August) Napoleon was ready to yield about Rome. At the camp, the influence which guided him in Paris was less felt, or it is probable that he would not have yielded even now. Prince Napoleon carried a sheet of white paper with the Emperor's signature at the foot. He showed it to Lanza when he reached Florence, and told him to fill it up as he chose. Whatever he asked for was already granted. A month before, such terms would have won both Italy and Austria--not now.

The Prince found his father-in-law eager to give the 50,000 men that were asked for, but the ministers protested that the Italian army was unprepared for war. Still, to satisfy the King, who signified his irritation so clearly to Lanza that this good servant was on the point of resigning, they agreed to submit the case to Austria; if Austria would co-operate, they would re-consider their decision. Austria replied: 'Too late.'

When, in 1873, Victor Emmanuel paid a visit to Berlin, he caused some sensation at a grand State banquet by saying to his host: 'But for these gentlemen' (and he waved his hand towards the ministers who accompanied him) 'I should have gone to war with you.' Courtiers did not know which way to look, but the aged Emperor was not displeased by the soldierly bluntness of the avowal.

Prince Napoleon remained in Florence, throwing away his eloquence, till the 2nd of September cut short the argument. When he had left his cousin, the Emperor was resolved to fall back on Paris according to MacMahon's plan, but the ministers and the Empress Regent forced him to his doom. On the 2nd of September Sedan was lost; on the 4th the Empire fell.

'And to think,' exclaimed Victor Emmanuel when he heard the news, 'that this good man was always wanting to give me advice!'

From the date of the declaration of war, and still more since the evacuation of Rome by the French troops (begun on the 29th of July, ended on the 19th of August), Italy had been too deeply agitated for any sane person to suppose that the prescriptive right of the nation to seize the opportunity which offered itself of completing its unity could be resisted by the artificial d.y.k.e of a compromise which made the Government the instrument of France. Lanza was determined to maintain order; he had Mazzini arrested at Palermo, and suppressed disorders where they occurred, but the rising tide of the will of the people could not be suppressed, and had the ministry resisted it, something more than the ministry would have fallen.

In justification of Lanza's slowness to move, and of the apparent, if not real, unwillingness with which he took every forward step, it is contended that more precipitate action would have caused what most people will agree would have been a misfortune for Italy, the departure of the Pope from Rome. It was only on the 20th of August that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Visconti-Venosta, sent a memorandum to the European Powers which announced that the Government had decided on occupying Rome at once. A week after, the fall of the Empire came as a G.o.dsend to the ministry which had possibly hardly deserved such a stroke of luck. They were no longer hampered by the September Convention, because the September Convention was dead. This was amply admitted by Jules Favre, though he declined to denounce the treaty formally; even a French Radical, in the hour of setting up the Republic, was afraid to proclaim aloud that France renounced all claim to interfere in her neighbour's concerns.

Of the other Powers, Switzerland signified her approval, and the rest engaged to abstain from any opposition.

The King addressed a letter to the Pope, in which, with the affection of a son and the faith of a Catholic, he appealed to his spirit of benevolence and his Italian patriotism to speak the word of peace in the midst of the storm of war that was distracting Europe, and to accept the love and protection of the people of Italy in lieu of a sovereignty which could not stand without the support of foreign arms.

Pius IX. merely answered by saying that the letter was not worthy of an affectionate son, and that he prayed G.o.d to bestow upon His Majesty the mercy of which he had much need. To the bearer of the royal appeal, Count Ponza di San Martino, he said that he might yield to violence, but would never sanction injustice.

This was about the time that the Pope, on his side, wrote an appeal not, be it observed, to any Catholic monarch, but to King William of Prussia, who would certainly not have read unmoved the complaint of one who, like himself, was crowned with white hairs, but Count Bismarck took the precaution of causing the letter not to reach his master's hands till the Italians were in Rome.

The day following the Pope's interview with Count Ponza, the 11th of September, the Italian troops received the order to enter the Papal states. For several weeks five divisions under General Cadorna had been in course of concentration along the frontier; this force now marched on Rome. Bixio was sent to Civita Vecchia where resistance was expected, and had been ordered by Kanzler, but the native element prevailed over the foreign in the garrison, and the Spanish commandant, Colonel Serra, interpreting the wishes of the Roman troops, surrendered without firing a shot.

Great was the indignation of the French and Belgian Zouaves. They were resolved that the same thing should not happen in Rome. That there was a chance of avoiding bloodshed may be inferred, from Count Arnim's numerous journeys between the Vatican and General Cadorna's headquarters outside Porta Salara; the Prussian representative hoping till the last moment to arrange matters in a pacific sense. Cardinal Antonelli is said to have been nearly persuaded, when he received a message from Colonel Charette in these terms: 'You had better go and say ma.s.s while we look after defending you.' The war party so far carried the day that the Pope adhered to his plan of 'sufficient resistance to show that he yielded only to force.'

At half-past five on the morning of the 20th of September, all attempts at conciliation having failed, the Italian attack was opened upon five different points, Porta San Pancrazio, Porta San Giovanni Laterano, Porta San Lorenzo, Porta del Popolo and Porta Pia. General Maze de la Roche's division attacked the latter gate, and the wall near it, in which a breach was rapidly effected by the steady fire of the Italian batteries, though it was not till past eight o'clock that it seemed large enough to admit of an a.s.sault. Then the 41st of the line, and the 12th and 34th Bersaglieri were ordered up, and dashed into the breach with the cry of 'Savoia! Savoia!' The challenge was returned by the Zouaves with their 'Vive Pie Neuf.' They had been already ordered to desist, as the Pope's instructions were clear, 'to stop when a breach was made;' but on the plea that the order was sent to them verbally they continued firing. When the written order came, they displayed a white handkerchief fastened to a bayonet, and at this point the fight was over. Hundreds of Roman exiles poured through the breach after the soldiers; 15,000 of them had arrived or were arriving at the gates of the city.

At the same time the white flag was hoisted on Porta Pia, but on the advance of the 40th Regiment and a battalion of Bersaglieri, shots were fired which killed and wounded several officers and men; when they saw their companions falling, the troops could not be restrained from scaling the barricade which had been formed to defend the gate, and surrounding and capturing the Zouaves who were behind it. The whole Diplomatic Corps now came out in full uniform to urge General Cadorna to effect the occupation as quickly as possible, that order might be maintained. By midday, the Italian troops had penetrated into most parts of the city left of the Tiber; as yet there was no formal capitulation on the part of the Zouaves, and their att.i.tude was not exactly rea.s.suring. This did not prevent the population, both men and women, from filling the streets and greeting the Italians with every sign of rejoicing. They cheered, they wept, they kissed the national flag, and the cry of _Roma Capitale_ drowned all other cries, even as the fact it saluted closed the discords and the factions of ages.

In the afternoon all the Papal troops were persuaded to lay down their arms, which, in the case of the foreigners, were given back to them.

Next day they were reviewed by General Cadorna. As the Italians presented arms to the retiring host, some of the Antibes Legion shouted at them: 'We are French, we shall meet you again.' The Roman troops were sent to their homes; the foreigners conducted to the frontier, Charette and other of the French officers went to the battlefields of their prostrate country, and thus it came to pa.s.s that the Pope's defenders were found fighting side by side with Garibaldi; they, indeed, only doing their simple duty, but he, acting on an impulse of Quixotic generosity which was repaid--the world knows how!

Cadorna received three pressing requests from the Pope to occupy the Leonine City, and the third he granted. The idea of leaving the part of Rome on which the Vatican stands under the Pope's jurisdiction had been long favoured by a certain cla.s.s of politicians, and Lanza made a last effort to give it effect by excluding the Leonine City from the plebiscite which was ordered to take place in Rome and in the Roman province on the 2nd of October. It was in vain. The first voting urn to arrive at the Capitol on the appointed day was a gla.s.s receptacle borne by a huge Trasteverino, and preceded by a banner inscribed: 'Citta Leonina Si.' As the Government had not supplied the inhabitants with an official urn, it occurred to them to provide themselves with an unofficial one in which they duly deposited their votes. The Roman plebiscite yielded the results of 133,681 affirmative and 1507 negative votes.

In December the Italian Parliament met for the last time in the Hall of the Five Hundred. 'Italy,' said the King in the speech from the throne, 'is free and united; it depends on us to make her great and happy.' Of this last session at Florence the princ.i.p.al labour was the Act embodying the Papal guarantees which was intended to safeguard the legitimate independence and decorum of the Holy See on the lines formerly advocated by Cavour. Neither extreme party was satisfied, but it seemed at first not unlikely that the Pope would tacitly acquiesce in the arrangement. The first monthly payment of the national dotation, calculated to correspond with his civil list, was accepted.

But though the influence of Cardinal Antonelli and the Italian prelates had been sufficient to keep the Pope in Rome, the influence of those who wished him to leave it was strong enough to establish at the Vatican the intransigent policy which has been pursued till now.

During the flood of the Tiber which devastated the city that winter, the King of Italy paid a first informal visit to his capital, accompanied only by a few attendants, and bent on bringing help to the suffering population. In July 1872, he made his solemn entry, and at the same time the seat of Government was transferred to the Eternal City.

Victor Emmanuel could say what few men have been able to say of so large a promise: 'I have kept my word.' He gathered up the Italian flag from the dust of Novara, and carried it to the Capitol. In spite of the grandeur of republican tradition in Italy, and the lofty character of the men who represented it during the struggle for unity, a study of these events leaves on the mind the conviction that, at least in our time, the country could neither have been freed from the stranger nor welded into a single body-politic without a symbol which appealed to the imagination, and a centre of gravity which kept the diverse elements together by giving the whole its proper balance. The Liberating Prince whom Machiavelli sought was found in the Savoyard King. 'Quali porte se gli serrerebbono? Quali popoli gli negherebbono la obbedienza? Quale invidia se gli opporrebbe? Quale Italiano gli negherebbe l'ossequio?' To fill the appointed part Victor Emmanuel possessed the supreme qualification, which was patriotism. Though he came of an ambitious race, not even his enemies could with any seriousness bring to his charge personal ambition, since every step which took him further from the Alps, his fathers' cradle, involved a sacrifice of tastes and habits, and of most that made life congenial.

When his work was finished, though he was not old, he had the presentiment that he should not long survive its completion. And so it proved.

In the first days of January 1878, the King was seized with one of those attacks on the lungs which his vigorous const.i.tution had hitherto enabled him to throw off. But in Rome this kind of illness is more fatal than elsewhere, and the doctors were soon obliged to tell him that there was no hope. 'Are we come to that?' he asked; and then directed that the chaplain should be summoned. There was no repet.i.tion of the scene at San Rossore; the highest authority had already sanctioned the administration of the Sacraments to the dying King, nay, it is said that the Pope's first impulse was to be himself the bearer of them. At that hour the man got the better of the priest; Francis drove out Dominic. The heart that had been made to pity and the lips that had been formed to bless returned to their natural functions.

When the aged Pius heard that all was over, exclaimed: 'He died like a Christian, a Sovereign and an honest man (galantuomo).' Very soon the Pope followed the King to the grave, and so, almost together, these two historical figures disappear.

Six years before, solitary and unsatisfied, Mazzini died at Pisa, his heart gnawed with the desire of the extreme, as the hearts have been of all those who aspired less to change what men do, or even what they believe, than what they are. More deep than political regrets was the pain with which he watched the absorption of human energies, in the race for wealth, for ease, for material happiness; he discerned that if the egotism of capital led to oppression, the egotism of labour would lead to anarchy. To the end he preached the moral law of which he had been the apostle through life. His last message to his countrymen, written when the pen was falling from his hand, was a warning to Italian workingmen to beware of the false G.o.ds of the new socialism. When others saw darkness he saw light; now, Ca.s.sandra-like, he saw darkness when others saw light; yet he did not doubt the ultimate triumph of the light, but he no longer thought that his eyes would see it, and he was glad to close them.

Less sad, notwithstanding his physical martyrdom, were Garibaldi's last years. Italy showed him an unforgetting love; when he came to the continent, the same mult.i.tudes waited for him as of old, but instead of cheers there was a not less impressive silence now, lest the invalid should be disturbed. Soon after the transfer of the capital he went to Rome to speak in favour of the works by which it was proposed to control the inundations of the Tiber, and it was curious to hear it said on all sides that, of course, the Tiber works must be taken in hand as Garibaldi wished it. Pius IX. summed up the situation wittily in the remark: 'Lately we were two here; now we are three.' The old hero invoked the day when bayonets might be turned into pruning-hooks, but he by no means thought that it had arrived, and in the meanwhile he urged the Italians to look to their defences, and above all, 'to be strong on the sea, like England.' In the matter of government he remained the impenitent advocate of the rule of one honest man--call him Dictator or what you please, so he be one! Garibaldi died at Caprera on the 2nd of June 1882. The play was ended, the actors vanished:

[Greek: Dote kroton, kai pantes hymeis meta charas ktypesate.]