MAZZINI TRIUMVIR 97 away in indignation from the offers of the white-haired enemy of freedom. The news that Piedmont was once more laid low reached Rome at the end of March. Although it had been necessary to keep the Garibaldians on the Neapolitan border, a few Roman troops had been sent towards the seat of war, but had not arrived in time to share in the disaster. The first result of Novara was that the Roman Assembly proclaimed a dictatorship of Mazzini, Saffi, and Armellini, under the title of Triumvirs,' with full executive power. Mazzini, however, directed the policy of his two colleagues as absolutely as the First Consul Bonaparte had directed the policy of Siéyès and Ducos. But his was the domination, not of supreme efficiency and egoism, but of an almost superhuman virtue, of an other-worldliness which long years of suffering and self-surrender had suffused through his being, so that those who looked on him and heard his voice were compelled to reverence the divine in man. While Garibaldi was being fashioned into a hero on the breezy uplands of Brazil, the more painful making of a saint had for eleven years been in process amid the squalid and fog-obscured surroundings of a London lodging-house. And now at last the finished product of so much pain and virtue shone before Europe in Italian sunlight, on the great stage of Rome. The saintliness which Carlyle had so fully acknowledged, though he would never yield to its persuasion, now cast its spell over the Roman people. carried out Mazzini's behests in letter and in spirit, under the pure constraint of his nobility, laying aside sloth and cowardice, and abjuring at his appeal even the passion of revenge. 'Here in Rome,' he told the Assembly, 'we may not be moral mediocrities.' If Carlyle had had any eyes for the events of his own day, he would have seen in the friend whom he had so often made very sad' by vociferous scorn of schemes for the moral redemption of Italy the grandest illustration of H They his own theory that asserts the natural domination of Man over Men.1 In almost every town of the Peninsula, great or small, there was some group of young men who had been roused by Mazzini's appeal to devote their lives not to themselves, but to their country and their fellows. It was a process nothing short of conversion-for it was moral even more than intellectual. Garibaldi, before he went to America, had been one of the first thus awakened by the call of Mazzini; but he was not altogether one of the 'disciples.' The form of religion on which Mazzini based his moral appeal to live for others was pure Deism, tempered by a loving respect for the Catholic form of Christianity from which he had separated; he attached great importance to the bare belief in God. His watchword was Dio e Popolo, 'God and the People.' But Garibaldi, it is said, would sometimes call himself an Atheist, when On June 17, 1844, the Times had protested finely against the opening or Mazzini's letters by our Government (see p. 38 above), but had rather ostentatiously declared its ignorance of Mazzini himself, saying that he ought not to be so treated, even if he was the most contemptible of mankind. Two days later a letter appeared in its columns signed 'Thomas Carlyle,' containing the following passage: 'It may tend to throw light on this matter if I now certify to you .. that Mr. Mazzini is not unknown to various competent persons in this country; and that he is very far indeed from being contemptible,-none further, or very few living men. I have had the honour to know Mr. Mazzini for a series of years; and whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify to all men that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man of sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind, one of those rare men, numerable unfortu nately as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr-souls; who in silence piously, in their daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that.' On the other hand, Carlyle was most contemptuous of Mazzini's ideals and schemes. Margaret Fuller (iii. 100-101) records how, when the conversation one day turned on 'progress' and 'ideals,' Carlyle was fluent in invectives on all our rose-water imbecilities.' 'We all felt distant from him, and Mazzini, after some vain efforts to remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs. Carlyle said to me, "These are but opinions to Carlyle: but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped to bring his friends to the scaffold in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter of life and death."' Bolton King's Mazzini is a very noble delineation of the man. 'The Chief' in Mr. Meredith's Vittoria and the Dedication of Mr. Swinburne's Songs before Sunrise are the tribute of English literature. * 'One night at a crowded Fulham party (1864) Mazzini was contending, as NATURE OF GARIBALDI'S INFLUENCE 99 he was particularly incensed against the ordinary type of priest, who he declared 'taught the peasants to hate Italy.' But more usually he spoke of 'God, the Father of all nations; of the mighty power of a living God,' seen in nature; or pantheistically of the soul of the Universe,' and of the great Spirit of eternal Life in everything.' He disliked 'miserable materialism.' He 'venerated the doctrine of Christ, because Christ came into the world to liberate the world from slavery.' 1 Christ was to him the virtuous man,'' whom the priests had made God.' The general tone of his thought resembled that of Shelley, except that he was no philosopher, and had no consistent theories; he had, instead, strong, primitive feelings, both positive and negative, that linked him to the Italian people and to human life. It was not in Garibaldi's nature either to learn or to teach. Men, he declared, are reformed by example more than by doctrine.' And so his doctrine was of one word'Avanti!' But on his lips it had as much power to transform the minds and souls of men as the studied wisdom of the theorist or politician. The magical effect of his voice and presence was such that, although as yet he had won no great victories for Italy, the worship of Garibaldi already rivalled that of Mazzini. During the spring of 1849 his influence was potent to enlarge the moral tone of the Republic and to animate its defenders. From the end of January to the middle of April the Garibaldians were stationed at the border town of Rieti, in face of the Neapolitan enemy. It was here that the Legion rose in numbers from 500 to about 1,000 men, and at length obtained discipline, organisation, and equipment. It was the favourite regiment with the people, was his wont, that an Atheist could not have a sense of duty. Garibaldi, who was present, at once asked, "What do you say of me? I am an Atheist. Do I lack the sense of duty?" "Ah," said Mazzini, playfully, "you imbibed duty with your mother's milk "-which was not an answer, but a good-natured evasion. Garibaldi was not a philosophical Atheist, but he was a fierce senti mental one, from resentment at the cruelties and tyrannies of priests who pro fessed to represent God.'-Holyoake, i. 220, 221. 'Jack la Bolina, 238; Vecchi's Cap., 76, 88 ; Mem. 255, 291 ; Guerzoni, ii. 653. * Loev. i. 113-141, ii. passim. Roman MSS. Ruoli Gen. 81, F. 3, f. 7. for it represented in a concrete form the national and democratic idea. 'Italy,' said Ugo Bassi, who was sent by Mazzini to act as Garibaldi's chaplain-Italy is here in our camp; Italy is Garibaldi; and so are we.' 1 1 At Rieti a strong and beautiful friendship was formed between Ugo Bassi and Garibaldi, dating from their first sight of one another. Thenceforth, till the martyrdom of the friar, they were constantly together, on the battlefield, the march, and the bivouac. Garibaldi persuaded Bassi to change his clerical dress for the red shirt which distinguished the other officers of the staff, and in that costume he continued his apostolate, much to the satisfaction of the Legionaries. 2 The rank and file were not, till near the end of the siege of Rome, dressed in the red shirt, but they had now obtained a uniform consisting of a loose dark-blue tunic and green cape, and the tall Calabrian hat' of operatic fame, with its turn-down brim, often adorned with black ostrich feathers. In that romantic and magnificent headgear, greatly preferable to the ugly little képi, they performed their deeds of arms in 'forty-nine. It was clear that the military defenders of the new State would have no sinecure. Spain, Austria, and France were competing with Naples for the honour and advantage of restoring the Pope, although the Republic, whose destruction was regarded as the moral duty of the first Catholic power that could send enough troops to Rome, not only gave no diplomatic justification for interference, but set up within its own borders a standard of freedom and toleration entirely new in the history of Governments beset with foreign and domestic danger. Accusations of terrorism and confiscation were made against it by the reactionary parties, now recovering power all over Europe. Mazzini was 'L' Italia è qui nel nostro campo, l'Italia è Garibaldi; e siamo noi !' Martinengo Cesaresco, 229. It seems to have been a favourite cry of the time, as Vecchi, ii. 299, records that on July 2 the people in the Piazza of St. Peter's cried out at Garibaldi and his men, Voi siete l' Italia.' 2 See letter of Ugo Bassi printed in Bel. 11, 12. |