Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (74 page)

More stable conditions in the eighteenth century raised the House of Savoy to its apogee. Apart from the strange attempt of Vittorio Amadeo II to reclaim his throne after abdicating and retiring to Chambéry with his mistress, there were no dynastic crises; there were no destructive wars, and there was plenty of room for improvement and steady enrichment. Carlo Emanuele III (r. 1730–73) proved himself an able administrator and diplomat, confining his involvement in the Wars of the Polish and Austrian Successions to limited and lucrative campaigns. His son, Vittorio Amadeo III (r. 1773–96) was religiously devout, politically conservative and temperamentally generous, being a great benefactor and a popular ‘Father of his People’. Their kingdom could not be counted among Europe’s greatest powers, but it was sturdily independent and frequently courted as an ally. A British strategist, surveying the state of the Continent in 1761, rated it highly:

The Dominions of His Sardinian Majesty, considered as Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont, have always been regarded as the Key of Italy… and in latter times this Prince has been justly looked upon as the natural Master of the Ballance in Italy… Because of its being His interest to affect Peace rather than War, Reason and Experience dictate that he will never want Allies… for the Preservation of His Territories.
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The resources at the king’s disposal impressed the foreign observer:

The island of Sardinia, next to Sicily, is the largest in the Mediterranean… The people are rough and unpolished, but live in a kind of barbarous Plenty, which, affording them much Meat and little Labour, they look on their Island as a Paradise from which they are drawn with Reluctancy… The Dutchy of Savoy is a large but far from fruitful Country; however, the Inhabitants are a hardy and laborious People, and by their Industry subsist tolerably well. The Principality of Piedmont is very large and the best part of it very fertile and well-cultivated, much less exposed than Savoy… very strong by Nature and well fortified by Art.
Turin,
which is the royal residence, is a very large and beautiful city standing by the River Po and admirably well fortified. The County of Nice is less fruitful but of great importance as it is the only [continental] Part… which lies upon the Sea… The districts acquired from the Dutchy of Milan have augmented both the Power and the Revenue of his Sardinian Majesty, so he is justly esteemed one of the most considerable Potentates…

The Commerce of these Countries was scarce worthy of Notice, but by degrees Things have been very much changed. The Staple Commodity of Piedmont is a kind of Silk indispensably necessary in many Manufactures… The Navigation of the Po enables the inhabitants of Turin to carry on considerable Trade to Venice… Besides all these, His Sardinian Majesty has gradually and silently possessed himself of all the Passages whereby the Inland Trade is carried on between France and Italy, and having it in his Power to lay what Duties he thinks proper, derives thence an additional Revenue, keeping the neighbouring States in a kind of Dependence…

Even as Things stand now, it is apparent that the Territories of this Monarch are very populous, and the People of
Savoy
and of the Vallies are naturally martial, so that under these last two reigns a very considerable Army of regular Troops has been kept up, and the King can never be at a loss to bring forty or fifty Thousand Men into the Field when Occasion require it… Besides this, the Fortresses of Piedmont are in so good order that his Sardinian Majesty can always make a Stand until supported by the Autrians… Upon these Principles, therefore, we may safely lay it down that… he is one of the great powers of Italy.”
²²

The rosy tone of this account may be explained in part by its author’s wish to encourage an alliance between Great Britain and the House of Savoy. But it was by no means eccentric in seeing that ‘Sardinia’, like its northern counterpart ‘Prussia’, was currently moving up the international league table. Progress continued for another generation until Vittorio Amadeo III put everything at risk by declaring war on revolutionary France.

Ever since France’s Italian wars of the late fifteenth century, French troops on their way down the Italian peninsula had repeatedly marched through Savoy and Piedmont, sometimes staying for decades at a time. But Napoleon’s ‘Army of Italy’, which crossed the Alps in 1796, brought a new dimension to the practice. The troops of the revolutionary French Republic were intent on sweeping away all the
anciens régimes
which they encountered, and they spared the Roman Catholic Church no mercy. The abbey of Hautecombe, for example, was sacked, and turned into a tile factory. Savoy was annexed to the French Republic as the Département du Mont-Blanc, without a fight; Piedmont was turned into a French military district; a Département des Alpes-Maritimes was formed round Nice; and the ‘king of Sardinia’ with his son and heir were driven out of their mainland dominions and forced to live in exile in the Sardinian rump of their kingdom. All these drastic arrangements proved temporary.

The general restoration of Europe’s monarchies that followed Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna (1815), and the exiled king of Sardinia was not forgotten. He recovered his lost lands, returned to Turin, and promptly attempted the restoration of the
status quo ante
. Yet post-Napoleonic Europe was very different from pre-revolutionary Europe. Many of the ideas spawned and exported by the French Revolution continued to circulate, posing a near-ubiquitous challenge to the natural conservatism of the restored monarchs. The ideas of ‘the nation’, endowed with a life of its own, and of the inborn right of its inhabitants to liberty, equality and social fraternity, were particularly strong, beginning to undermine the post-Napoleonic order as soon as it was established. Three parts of Europe where ‘the nation’ felt most excluded from politics were specially susceptible; and popular demands grew for the creation of nation-states on the French model. Poland, which had been carved up by three neighbouring empires (see pp.
285–90
), was to strive in vain throughout the nineteenth century to win back its independence; but Germany and Italy were to succeed where Poland failed. Germany was divided by the intense rivalry of Protestant Prussia and Catholic Austria; advocates of the German national movement, the
Vormärz
(‘pre-March’), could at first see no easy way to do so. Italy’s divisions were still more marked. The north was dominated by the Austrian Empire, which held onto both Venice and Milan; the centre was run by a gaggle of reactionary monarchs, including the Roman pontiff in his Papal States; and the south remained in the grip of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In face of the restored hereditary rulers, the advocates of the Italian national movement, the Risorgimento or ‘Resurgence’, did not possess a common strategy.

For Italian nationalism encompassed several competing interests. One wing placed the emphasis on cultural objectives, notably on education, the promotion of a single, standardized Italian language, and the promotion of national consciousness. The central figure in this was the Milanese writer, Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873), author of the first novel written in standard Italian,
I promessi sposi
(
The Betrothed
, 1827). Another wing was dedicated to political radicalism. Here the central role was played by the secret and revolutionary Society of the Coalburners, the
Carbonari
, whose activities were formally banned; one of its members, a Sicilian soldier called Guglielmo Pepe (1783–1855), launched the first of many abortive risings in Calabria in 1820. There was even a tradition of support for the Risorgimento by ruling monarchs; Napoleon’s stepson and viceroy in Italy, Eugène de Beauharnais, had set the example, which was followed by the emperor’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, when King of Naples (see p.
523
, below). It seemed to create the perceived need for a political patron of established authority, who could curb the hotheads while giving heart to the moderates and negotiating with the powers.

The things that all Italian nationalists shared were dismay at the failure of early constitutional projects, opposition to the political role of the papacy, and resentment against the ‘foreign presence’ of Austria in Lombardy, Venice and the Trentino. They operated in all parts of Italy, though less successfully in some states than in others, and from early on saw Piedmont as fertile ground. In March 1823 a nationalist insurrection was organized in the town of Alessandria by a professional officer of the Sardinian army, Count Santorre de Santarosa (1783–1825), who was hoping to unite Italy under the House of Savoy by waging war on the Austrians. He persuaded the regent of Piedmont to issue a short-lived Constitution before the absent king returned and ordered the insurrectionaries to be crushed. Despite its failure, Santarosa’s enterprise showed that Piedmont was already moving in a different political direction from Savoy.

The seeds of nationalism had been sown in Savoy during the years of occupation by armies of the revolutionary Republic and Empire. After 1815, voices were again raised for the removal of the ‘foreign kings’ and the reinstatement of a French administration, and steps were taken to forge a separate Franco-Savoyard identity. This was done in part by cultivating the idea that the modern, French-speaking inhabitants of Savoy were the direct descendants of a Celtic tribe, the Allobroges, who had lived in the region in Roman times. A key figure in this movement was Joseph Dessaix (1817–70), a writer, sometime political prisoner and admirer of the Risorgimento. He was the author both of a popular historical encyclopedia
²³
and of the definitive Savoyard song, ‘
Le Chant des Allobroges
’:

Je te salue, ô terre hospitalière,

Où le malheur trouva protection

D’un peuple libre arborant la bannière.

Je vins fêter la Constitution.

Allobroges vaillants! Dans vos vertes campagnes

Accordez-moi toujours asile et sûreté;

Car j’aime à respirer l’air pur de vos montagnes.

Je suis la Liberté! La Liberté!

(‘I greet you, hospitable land, / where misfortune found protection / from a free people displaying their banner. / I came to celebrate the constitution. // Valiant Allobroges! In your green countryside / grant me always refuge and security; / for I love to breathe the pure air of your mountains. / I am Liberty! Liberty!’)
²⁴
This song was not sung in Piedmont.

Yet nationalism, whether French or Italian, did not enjoy a monopoly on the political spectrum. Conservatism was also strong, and a long struggle between monarchists and republicans was only just beginning. Many people simply clung to the status quo, fearing a return to the turbulence of Napoleonic times. In both Piedmont and Savoy, a middle way appealed, combining the maintenance of the monarchy with a programme of gradual constitutional reform. In the peculiar arrangements of what officialdom now called
I Stati Sardi
, ‘the Sardinian States’, many Savoyards and Piemontesi felt that they could find common cause. Growing currency was given to the concept of ‘the Subalpine Kingdom’ –
il Regno Subalpino
,
le Royaume Subalpin
.

The ‘king of Sardinia’ who returned from exile in 1815 was the fifth of his line to bear the royal title, and the fifth of eight ‘Sardinian’ monarchs in all. Vittorio Emanuele I (r. 1802–21) was the second son of the late Vittorio Amadeo III and had briefly been preceded during their exile by his elder brother, Carlo Emanuele IV (r. 1796–1802). During his stay in Cagliari, he formed the Corps of Carabinieri, which remains a colourful feature of Italian life to this day. After the Congress of Vienna handed him the lands of the former Genoese Republic, he founded the Sardinian navy, which was henceforth based in the port of Genoa.

Carlo il Felice/Charles le Heureux/Félix (r. 1821–31) was the younger brother of his two predecessors. He was particularly proud of the Bourbon heritage of his mother, Maria Antonia, an infanta of Spain, and a zealous defender the royal prerogative. After the suppression of Santarosa’s rising, he was known to his subjects not as
Il Felice
, but as
Il Feroce
, ‘The Ferocious’.

His successor, Carlo Alberto (r. 1831–49), was less ferocious but not easily swayed by radical demands. He introduced a bureaucratic, paternalistic administration dubbed
Il Buon Governo
or ‘Good Rule’, and in 1834 ordered the suppression of the next attempted insurrection, in Turin, for which the young Giuseppe Mazzini (see below) was handed a death sentence. Carlo Alberto also took special pains to reassert the dynasty’s standing by restoring its monuments. He renovated the family mausoleum at Hautecombe and relaunched it as the prime symbol of the family’s continuity. The revolutionary wreckage at the abbey was removed, a grandiose Gothic church was erected on the ruins, and the ducal tombs were lovingly reconsecrated. A steamship service was introduced to take visitors back and forth to Aix-les-Bains, and in 1849 Carlo Alberto himself was buried there among his ancestors. The record of his self-proclaimed
Buon Governo
was not entirely negative. A memorial column erected in his honour still stands beside the Pont d’Arve at Bonneville.
²⁵