A History of the Nations and Empires Involved and a Study of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict Part 12

Accordingly, when Victor Emmanuel entered Sessa, at the head of his army, Garibaldi was easily induced to place his dictatorial power in the hands of the king, to whom he left the completion of the work of the union of Italy. After greeting Victor Emmanuel with the t.i.tle of King of Italy, and giving the required resignation of his power, with the words, "Sire, I obey," he entered Naples, riding beside the king; and then, after recommending his companions in arms to his majesty's special favor, he retired to his home on the island of Caprera, refusing to receive a reward, in any shape or form, for his services to the state and its head.

The progress of the Sardinian army compelled Francis to give up the line of the Volturno, and he eventually took refuge, with his best troops, in the fortress of Gaeta. On the maintenance of this fortress hung the fate of the kingdom of Naples. Its defense is the only bright point in the career of the feeble Francis, whose courage was aroused by the heroic resolution of his young wife, the Bavarian Princess Mary. For three months the defense continued. But no European Power came to the aid of the king, disease appeared with scarcity of food and of munitions of war, and the garrison was at length forced to capitulate. The fall of Gaeta was practically the completion of the great work of the unification of Italy. Only Rome and Venice remained to be added to the united kingdom. On February 18, 1861, Victor Emmanuel a.s.sembled at Turin the deputies of all the states that acknowledged his supremacy, and in their presence a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of King of Italy, which he was the first to bear. In four months afterwards Count Cavour, to whom this great work was largely due, died. He had lived long enough to see the purpose of his life practically accomplished.

WATCHWORD OF THE PATRIOTS

Great as had been the change which two years had made, the patriots of Italy were not satisfied. "Free from the Alps to the Adriatic!" was their cry; "Rome and Venice!" became the watchword of the revolutionists. Mazzini, who had sought to found a republic, was far from content, and the agitation went on.

Garibaldi was drawn into it, and made bitter complaint of the treatment his followers had received. In 1862, disheartened at the inaction of the king, he determined to undertake against Rome an expedition like that which he had led against Naples two years before.

In June he sailed from Genoa and landed at Palermo, where he was quickly joined by an enthusiastic party of volunteers. They supposed that the government secretly favored their design, but the king had no idea of fighting against the French troops in Rome and arousing international complications, and he energetically warned all Italians against taking part in revolutionary enterprises.

GARIBALDI MARCHES AGAINST ROME

But Garibaldi persisted in his design. When his way was barred by the garrison of Messina he tuned aside to Catania, where he embarked with 2,000 volunteers, declaring he would enter Rome as a victor, or perish beneath its walls. He landed at Melito on the 24th of August, and threw himself at once, with his followers, into the Calabrian mountains. But his enterprise was quickly and disastrously ended. General Cialdini despatched a division of the regular army, under Colonel Pallavicino, against the volunteer bands. At Aspromonte, on the 28th of August, the two forces came into collision. A chance shot was followed by several volleys from the regulars. Garibaldi forbade his men to return the fire of their fellow-subjects of the Italian kingdom. He was wounded, and taken prisoner with his followers, a few of whom had been slain in the short combat. A government steamer carried the wounded chief to Varignano, where he was held in a sort of honorable imprisonment, and was compelled to undergo a tedious and painful operation for the healing of his wound. He had at least the consolation that all Europe looked with sympathy and interest upon the unfortunate hero; and a general sense of relief was felt when, restored to health, he was set free, and allowed to return to his rocky island of Caprera.

Victor Emmanuel was seeking to accomplish his end by safer means.

The French garrison of Rome was the obstacle in his way, and this was finally removed through a treaty with Louis Napoleon in September, 1864, the emperor agreeing to withdraw his troops during the succeeding two years, in which the pope was to raise an army large enough to defend his dominions. Florence was to replace Turin as the capital of Italy. This arrangement created such disturbances in Turin that the king was forced to leave that city hastily for his new capital. In December, 1866, the last of the French troops departed from Rome, in spite of the efforts of the pope to retain them. By their withdrawal Italy was freed from the presence of foreign soldiers for the first time probably in a thousand years.

In 1866 came an event which reacted favorably for Italy, though her part in it was the reverse of triumphant. This was the war between Prussia and Austria. Italy was in alliance with Prussia, and Victor Emmanuel hastened to lead an army across the Mincio to the invasion of Venetia, the last Austrian province in Italy.

Garibaldi at the same time was to invade the Tyrol with his volunteers. The enterprise ended in disaster. The Austrian troops, under the Archduke Albert, encountered the Italians at Custozza and gained a brilliant victory, despite the much greater numbers of the Italians.

Fortunately for Italy, the Austrians had been unsuccessful in the north, and the emperor, with the hope of gaining the alliance of France and breaking the compact between Italy and Prussia, decided to cede Venetia to Louis Napoleon. His purpose failed.

All Napoleon did in response was to act as a peacemaker, while the Italian king refused to recede from his alliance. Though the Austrians were retreating from a country which no longer belonged to them, the invasion of Venetia by the Italians continued, and several conflicts with the Austrian army took place.

BATTLE OF IRONCLADS

But the most memorable event of this brief war occurred on the sea - the greatest battle of ironclad s.h.i.+ps in the period between the American Civil War and the j.a.pan-China contest. Both countries concerned had fleets on the Adriatic. Italy was the strongest in navel vessels, possessing ten ironclads and a considerable number of wooden s.h.i.+ps. Austria's ironclad fleet was seven in number, plated with thin iron and with no very heavy guns. In addition there was a number of wooden vessels and gunboats. But in command of this fleet was an admiral in whose blood was the iron which was lacking on his s.h.i.+ps, Tegetthoff, the Nelson of the Adriatic. Inferior as his s.h.i.+ps were, his men were thoroughly drilled in the use of the guns and the evolutions of the s.h.i.+ps, and when he sailed it was with the one thought of victory.

Persano, the Italian admiral, as if despising his adversary, engaged in siege of the fortified island of Lissa, near the Dalmatian coast, leaving the Austrians to do what they pleased.

What they pleased was to attack him with a fury such as has been rarely seen. Early on July 20, 1866, when the Italians were preparing for a combined a.s.sault of the island by land and sea, their movement was checked by the signal displayed on a scouting frigate: "Suspicious-looking s.h.i.+ps are in sight." Soon afterwards the Austrian fleet appeared, the ironclads leading, the wooden s.h.i.+ps in the rear.

The battle that followed has had no parallel before or since. The whole Austrian fleet was converted into rams. Tegetthoff gave one final order to his captains: "Close with the enemy and ram everything grey." Grey was the color of the Italian s.h.i.+ps. The Austrian were painted black, so as to prevent any danger of error.

Fire was opened at two miles distance, the b.a.l.l.s being wasted in the waters between the fleets. "Full steam ahead," signaled Tegetthoff. On came the fleets, firing steadily, the b.a.l.l.s now beginning to tell. "Ironclads will ram and sink the enemy,"

signaled Tegetthoff. It was the last order he gave until the battle was won.

Soon the two lines of ironclads closed amid thick clouds of smoke. Tegetthoff, in his flags.h.i.+p, the Ferdinand Max, twice rammed a grey ironclad without effect. Then, out of the smoke, loomed up the tall masts of the Re d'Italia, Persano's flags.h.i.+p in the beginning of the fray. Against this vessel the Ferdinand Max rushed at full speed, and struck her fairly amids.h.i.+ps. Her sides of iron were crushed in by the powerful blow, her tall masts toppled over, and down beneath the waves sank the great s.h.i.+p with her crew of 600 men. The next minute another Italian s.h.i.+p came rus.h.i.+ng upon the Austrian, and was only avoided by a quick turn of the helm.

One other great disaster occurred to the Italians. The Palestro was set on fire, and the pumps were put actively to work to drown the magazine. The crew thought the work had been successfully performed, and that they were getting the fire under control, when there suddenly came a terrible burst of flame attended by a roar that drowned all the din of the battle. It was the death knell of 400 men, for the Palestro had blown up with all on board. The great ironclad turret s.h.i.+p and ram of the Italian fleet, the Affondatore, to which Admiral Persano had s.h.i.+fted his flag, far the most powerful vessel in the Adriatic, kept outside of the battle line, and was of little service in the fray. It was apparently afraid to encounter Tegetthoff's terrible rams. The battle ended with the Austrian fleet, wooden vessels and all, pa.s.sing practically unharmed through the Italian lines into the harbor of Lissa, leaving death and destruction in their rear.

Tegetthoff was the one Austrian who came out of that war with fame. Persano on his return home was put on trial for cowardice and incompetence. He was convicted of the latter and dismissed from the navy in disgrace.

FINAL ACT OF ITALIAN UNITY

But Italy, though defeated by land and sea, gained a valuable prize from the war, for Napoleon ceded Venetia to the Italian king, and soon afterwards Victor Emmanuel entered Venice in triumph. Thus was completed the second act in the unification of Italy.

The national party, with Garibaldi at its head, still aimed at the possession of Rome, as the historic capital of the peninsula.

In 1867 he made a second attempt to capture Rome, but the papal army, strengthened with a new French auxiliary force, defeated his badly armed volunteers, and he was taken prisoner and held captive for a time, after which he was sent back to Caprera. This led to the French army of occupation being returned to Civita Vecchia, where it was kept for several years.

The final act came as a consequence of the Franco-German war of 1870, which rendered necessary the withdrawal of the French troops from Italy. The pope was requested to make a peaceful abdication. As he refused this, the States of the Church were occupied up to the walls of the capital, and a three-hours'

cannonade of the city sufficed to bring the long strife to an end. Rome became the capital of Italy, and the whole peninsula, for the first time since the fall of the ancient Roman empire, was concentrated into a single nation, under one king.

Chapter X. THE EXPANSION OF GERMANY

Beginnings of Modern World Power

William I of Prussia - Bismarck's Early Career - The Schleswig-Holstein Question - Conquest of the Duchies - Bismarck's Wider Views - War Forced on Austria - The War in Italy - Austria's Signal Defeat at Sadowa - The Treaty of Prague - Germany after 1866

The effort made in 1848 to unify Germany had failed for two reasons - first, because its promoters had not sufficiently clear and precise ideas, and, secondly, because they lacked material strength. Until 1859 reaction against novelties and their advocates dominated in Germany and even Prussia as well as in Austria. The Italian war, as was readily foreseen, and as wary counselors had told Napoleon III, revived the agitation in favor of unity beyond the Rhine. After September 16, 1859, it had its center in the national circle of Frankfort and its manifesto in the proclamation which was issued on September 4, 1860, a proclamation whose terms, though in moderate form, clearly announced the design of excluding Austria from Germany. It was the object of those favoring unity, but with more decision than in 1848, to place the group of German states under Prussia's imperial direction. The accession of a new king, William I, who was already in advance called William the Conqueror, was likely to bring this project to a successful issue. The future German emperor's predecessor, Frederick William IV, with the same ambition as his brother, had too many prejudices and too much confusion in his mind to be capable of realizing it. Becoming insane towards the close of 1857, he had to leave the government to William, who, officially regent after October 7, 1858, became king on January 2, 1861.

WILLIAM I OF PRUSSIA

The new sovereign was almost sixty-four years old. The son of Frederick William III and Queen Louisa, while yet a child he had witnessed the disasters of his country and his home, and then as a young man had had his first experience of arms towards the close of the Napoleonic wars. Obliged to flee during the revolt of 1848, he had afterwards, by his pro-English att.i.tude at the time of the Crimean war, won the sympathies of the Liberals, who joyfully acclaimed his accession. To lower him to the rank of a party leader was to judge him erroneously. William I was above all a Prussian prince, serious, industrious, and penetrated with a sense of his duties to the state, the first of which, according to the men of his house, has ever been to aggrandize it; and he was also imbued with the idea that the state was essentially incarnate in him.

"I am the first king," he said at his coronation, "to a.s.sume power since the throne has been surrounded with modern inst.i.tutions, BUT I do not forget that the crown comes from G.o.d."

He had none of the higher talents that mark great men, but he possessed the two essential qualities of the head of a state - firmness and judgment. He showed this by the way in which he chose and supported those who built up his greatness, and this merit is rarer than is generally supposed. A soldier above all, he saw that Prussia's ambitions could be realized only with a powerful army.

Advised by Von Moltke, the army's chief of staff after 1858, and Von Roon, the great administrator, who filled the office of minister of war, he changed the organization of 1814, which had become insufficient. Instead of brigades formed in war time, half of men in active service and half of reserves, regiments were now recruited by a three (instead of a two) years' service and reinforced in case of need by the cla.s.ses of reserves. The Landwehr, divided into two cla.s.ses (twenty-five to thirty-two years and thirty-two to thirty-nine), was grouped separately.

This system gave seven hundred thousand trained soldiers, Prussia having then seventeen million inhabitants. This was more than either France or Austria had. The armament was also superior.

Frederick William I had already said that the first result to be obtained in this direction was celerity in firing. This was a.s.sured by the invention of the needle gun.

BISMARCK'S EARLY CAREER

Such a transformation entailed heavy expenses. The Prussian Chamber, made up for the most part of Liberals, did not appreciate its utility. Moreover, it was not in favor of increasing the number of officers, because they were recruited from the n.o.bility. After having yielded with bad grace in 1860, the deputies refused the grants in 1861 and 1862. It was at this time that Bismarck was called to the ministry (September 24, 1862). Otto von Bismarck-Schonhausen, born April 1, 1815, belonged by birth to that minor Prussian n.o.bility, rough and realistic, but faithful and disciplined, which has ever been one of the Prussian state's sources of strength. After irregular studies at the university of Gottingen, he had entered the administration, but had not been able to stay in it, and had lived on his rather moderate estates until 1847. The diet of that year, to which he had been elected, brought him into prominence.

There he distinguished himself in the Junker (poor country squires') party by his marked contempt for the Liberalism then in vogue and his insolence to the Liberals. Frederick William IV entrusted him with representing Prussia at Frankfort, where he a.s.sumed the same att.i.tude towards the Austrians (1851-59).

He was afterward amba.s.sador at St. Petersburg, and had just been sent to Paris in the same capacity when he became prime minister.

His character was a marked one. In it was evident a taste for sarcastic raillery and a sort of frankness, apparently brutal, but really more refined than cruel. His qualities were those of all great politicians, embracing energy, decision and realism; that is, talent for appreciating all things at their effective value and for not letting himself be duped either by appearances, by current theories, or by words. Very unfavorably received by the parliament, he paid little heed to the furious opposition of the deputies, causing to be promulgated by ordinance the budget which they refused him, suppressing hostile newspapers, treating his adversaries with studied insolence, and declaring to them that, if the Chamber had its rights, the king also had his, and that force must settle the matter in such a case. To get rid of these barren struggles, he took advantage of the first incident of foreign politics. The Schleswig-Holstein question furnished him with the desired opportunity.

THE SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN QUESTION

This was the first of the various important questions of international policy in which Bismarck became concerned. The united provinces of Schleswig-Holstein, lying on the northern border of Denmark had long been notable as a source of continual strife between Germany and Denmark. The majority of the inhabitants of Schleswig were Danes, but those of Holstein were very largely Germans, and the question of their true national affiliation lay open from the time of their original union in 1386. It became insistent after the middle of the nineteenth century.

The Treaty of London in 1852 had maintained the union of Holstein with Denmark, but did not put a definite end to the demands of the Germans, who held that it was a const.i.tuent part of Germany.

The quarrel was renewed in 1855 over a common const.i.tution given by King Frederick VII to all his states. This was abolished in 1858, and afterwards the Danes sought to grant complete autonomy to the duchies of Schleswig and Lauenburg, this movement being with the purpose of making more complete the union of Schleswig with their country. This step, taken in 1863, led to a protest from the German diet.

In all this there was food for an indefinite contest, for, on the one hand, Schleswig did not form a part of the Confederation, but, on the other, certain historical bonds attached it to Holstein, and its population was mixed. The death of Frederick VII (November 15, 1863), who was succeeded by a distant relative, Christian IX, further complicated the quarrel. The duke of Augustenburg claimed the three duchies, though he had previously renounced them. The German diet, on its part, wanted the Danish const.i.tution abolished in Schleswig.

The dream of the petty German states hostile to Prussia, and especially of the Saxon minister, Von Beust, was to strengthen their party by the creating of a new duchy. Bismarck admirably outplayed everybody. He knew that the great Powers were at odds with one another over Poland. He, on the contrary, could count on Russia's friends.h.i.+p and the personal aid of Queen Victoria, whom Prince Albert had completely won over to pro-German ideas. He used England to make Christian IX consent to the occupation of Holstein, which, he said, was in reality an acknowledgment of that king's rights. At this stage, had the Danes yielded to the necessities of the situation and withdrawn from Schleswig under protest, the European Powers would probably have intervened and a congress would have restored Schleswig to the Danish realm.

Bismarck prevented this by a cunning stratagem, making the Copenhagen government believe that Great Britain had taken a step hostile to that government. There was no truth in this, but it succeeded in inducing Denmark to remain defiant. As a consequence, on the 1st of February 1864, the combined forces of Prussia and Austria crossed the Eider and invaded the province.

It was a movement to regain to Germany a section held to be non-Danish in population and retained by Denmark against the traditions and will of its people. Austria, which did not wish to appear less German than Prussia, though the matter did not directly appeal to that country, joined in the movement, being drawn into it by Bismarck's shrewd policy.

It was not the original intention to go beyond the borders of the duchies and invade Denmark, but when Christian IX tried to resist the invasion this was done. The Danewerk and the Schlei were forced, and the Danish army was defeated at Flensburg and driven back into Dueppel, which was taken by a.s.sault. A conference of the great Powers, opened at London (April 25th to June 25th), brought about no result. Napoleon III did not refuse to act, but he wanted as a condition that England would promise him something more than its moral support, which it refused to do. Finally Jutland was invaded and conquered, and Van Moltke was already preparing for a landing in Fuenen when Christian IX gave up all the duchies by the Vienna preliminaries (August 1st), confirmed by treaty on October 30th following.

CONQUEST OF THE DUCHIES