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was displeasing to the liberals of Lombardy. The vote for union accordingly contained a stipulation that a constituent assembly for the whole Sardinian kingdom, including the states adhering to it, should be convoked by universal suffrage, to establish a new constitution for the monarchy.

Except for a popular demonstration which occurred on May 27, to demand the safeguarding of the freedom of the press, the right of association, and a national guard, and a reiteration of the stipulation for universal suffrage in the elections for the constituent assembly, all of which demands were agreed to by the government, the signing of the lists appears to have proceeded without disturbance.1 The result was an overwhelming defeat of the party of delay, and a corresponding victory for the Sardinian union. Out of the 661,226 qualified voters,2 561,002 had voted for immediate union and only 681 for delay.3

The proportion of those voting to the number qualified is amazingly high. The overwhelming majority may be accounted for in part by the fact that the republicans were divided and irresolute, many of their leaders being away at the war and the mass hesitating to oppose any movement for unity. Then, too, the prestige of Savoy and the influence of the fusionists had increased enormously on the news of the victories of Goito and Peschiera.

Before the lists were closed the republicans had brought charges of unfair action. On May 21 there appeared in the official newspaper of Milan, Il 22 Marzo, a letter signed by Mazzini and some twenty others, representing societies and newspapers, charging that the government was using indecorous haste in the hope of causing the triumph of one side, and protesting that the citizens were unprepared to decide such a momentous question without more information as to the vital issues, information which had been purposely withheld by the government. It was also impossible, they said, to ascertain the mature convictions of the people while the war was on. As to the method of voting by signing registers, they asserted that it was not only illegal but also contrary to the liberal program of the government itself, because it

1In one account there is found the assertion that the republicans attempted to overturn the government on the day that the polls were closed. Raffaele Giovagnoli, "Le risorgimento italiano," in Storia politica d'Italia, vol. 9, p. 820.

2 These figures are from the report by the Minister of the Interior to the Subalpine Parliament on June 15, 1848. Le assemblee del risorgimento, vol. 1, p. 209. He gives the population in Lombardy in 1848 as 2,667,337.

3 In a dispatch of June 9, Abercromby, the British representative at Turin, gives the figures for the chief cities of Lombardy as follows (Parliamentary Papers [1108], p. 576) :

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prevented discussion, the inalienable right of the citizen, and substituted a mute bowing before power for the free expression of the real will of the people 1 which would have been secured by means of a constituent assembly. As to the petitions for holding the plebiscite, these, they said, were obtained by bribing the country people. The conservatives, on the other hand, objected to the conditions contained in the vote, being opposed both to universal suffrage and to a constituent assembly.

The fusionists were charged by the republicans with carrying on an unscrupulous agitation. In order to neutralize the republican opposition, they said, royalist agents had been at work spreading the idea that the choice was limited in reality to the dilemma: Carlo Alberto or Austria.2 The bishop had issued commands that the will of the government should be supported and there were complaints that the peasants voted under the guidance of the priests. It was further asserted that foreigners voted, that the soldiers' votes were influenced by the presence of their officers, and that the condemned voted before the gallows.3

From the dispatches of Abercromby, the British representative at Turin, we get another contemporary view of events which makes no such charge of corruption or pressure. La Farina, who was in Lombardy at the time of the vote, speaking of these accusations, says that anyone who, like him, saw Lombardy in those days, was persuaded that the majority of the people of Lombardy were for the cause which won.5 King, in his history of the period, admits the truth of the charges, but says that, making every allowance for the unworthy acts of the one party and the disorganization of the other, the vote showed an overwhelming preponderance in favor of fusion.

The suggestion that many republicans abstained is hardly supported by the percentage of the vote to the number qualified. Registration was not a voluntary act. The names were placed on the registers by the election officials and we do not hear that they failed to enter the proper number of qualified votes. But, certainly, the method of voting by signing a register under the eyes of the priest offered every opportunity for pressure and coercion

1 See Le assemblee del risorgimento, vol. 1, p. 200 for text.

2 Bolton King, History of Italian Unity, vol. 1, p. 243.

3 Le assemblee del risorgimento, vol. 1, p. 96, quoting from Carlo Cattaneo.

4 The result was no surprise to him. In a letter to Palmerston dated from Turin, May 14, enclosing a copy of the decree for the plebiscite, Abercromby says, "There can be little doubt that a large majority will be found to have voted for immediate annexation." Parliamentary Papers [1108], p. 457. It should be said, however, that this is the opinion of a representative of a government in favor of Italian unity and accredited to the Savoyard Court.

Le assemblee del risorgimento, vol. 1, p. 96.

6 King, loc. cit., adds that the dread of a socialist republic, sycophancy to a king and ambition to see Milan once more the seat of a brilliant court also entered in..

and to pretend that in the midst of agitation and war a vote can have the same regularity as at a time of public quiet, is to pretend the impossible. Yet though the charges of irregularity are numerous no one goes so far as to assert that the result was not satisfactory to the great majority of the people. The truth appears to be that the conservatives wished the fusion in order to avoid a socialist republic, and the mass of the republicans, impressed with the need of unity and reassured by the liberal institutions of Piedmont, were willing to sacrifice the republican form for the sake of union, provided it be under an absolutely democratic constitution.1

At a solemn meeting, in the presence of the archbishop and the civil and military officials, the provisional government announced the official figures. The result was hailed with joy by the populace. A few days later a solemn deputation presented the vote to Carlo Alberto, who received them, attended by the Duke of Genoa, the ministers of state and the officers of the army. He accepted the vote as a promise of unity and success in the struggle for Italian freedom. It was unfortunate that the reds still cherished a feeling of having been betrayed by the hastening of the vote. Patriots though they were, the resulting jealousy and political dissension prevented the full support which they might have given to the Sardinian campaign.

On the outbreak of the revolt in Venice, on March 22, the provisional government had immediately proclaimed a republic, with Manin as president, and had summoned delegates to draw up a constitution. Manin exerted every effort to carry out the republican plan of delay. The cities of the Venetian mainland, however, were unwilling to surrender their hope of a union of Venetia with Lombardy. They had joined in the commission to draw up a plan for an assembly; they now followed Lombardy's lead in opening registers for a popular vote. The cities of the Venetian mainland were incorporated in the Sardinian kingdom by the same decree which incorporated Lombardy. Alarmed at the threatened isolation and made conscious of the need of concerted action by the approach of the Austrian forces, Manin and the Venetian government on June 3 issued a decree convoking a representative assembly on the basis of universal suffrage. A later decree of the Consulta provided that the public should be given information as to the financial, military and commercial situation in order that their votes might be the more intelligent.3

The assembly met on July 3. On the following day, Manin in a noble and patriotic speech withdrew his opposition in face of the almost universal

1 The women too, though not included in the plebiscite, did not remain silent as to their wishes. See "Address to the Women of the Sardinian States." Documents, post, p. 393. Unfortunately the number of signatures is not stated.

2 For address of deputation and the answer of the king see Documents, post, pp. 391 and 392. 2 Documents, post, p. 406.

sentiment for immediate union with Sardinia.1 Union was promptly voted by 128 to 6 on the same conditions as those stipulated by Lombardy.

Plebiscites had already been held in the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, Modena, and Guastalla, with overwhelming majorities for union. All these votes were by manhood suffrage for all over twenty-one with no literacy test. In all of these plebiscites the lists were open over a considerable period of time, in one case for a period of three weeks. In each case the chief election official was the parish priest. In Parma the signing of the lists was to be in the presence of the mayor and the priest. In Reggio a special commission of eight and a subsidiary committee of twelve were appointed to collect the signatures, working in conjunction with the priest. In Modena a commission of four was appointed to assist the priest. In Parma and Piacenza each voter was allowed to cast his vote for the solution most pleasing to him, and to surround it with any conditions desired. In Parma some voted for the former ruler, some for union with Tuscany, some for the Pontifical States. In Piacenza there was a similar scattering. In both, however, the great majority voted for Sardinia. This vote was in each case accompanied by a series of conditions relating to the future status of the chief city, the disposal of the state funds, protection for the university, and similar provisions.

The percentage of the votes cast by those qualified was very high. In Reggio, out of 36,814 qualified voters, 29,851 voted for Sardinia alone.2 In Piacenza out of a population of 206,566, there were 37,089 votes for Piedmont, the scattering votes amounting to 496. The figures for Modena are not given in the official report. The Sardinian Parliament incorporated each province with the same formula.3 The union thus decreed was a short-lived one, however; the Austrian forces soon returned with the petty sovereigns in their train. The peace of 1849, based on the defeat of the Piedmontese forces at Novara and Custozza, returned Lombardy and Venetia to Austrian rule, and restored the dukes to the throne from which their subjects had so 1 The British Consul General at Venice in a dispatch of June 4 wrote to Viscount Palmers"There is no doubt that the majority of the inhabitants of Venice, comprising by far the greatest part of the upper and middle classes, and the whole of the marine, a very influential body, are in favor of a junction with Piedmont, rather than a continuation of a Republican Government, even supposing the Venetian Republic could exist, confined as it would be to Venice and the islands of the Lagunes by the separation from it of the provinces of the mainland. Indeed, of the members of the existing Provisional Government, it is understood that the President, Signor Manin, is the only one who is desirous that the Republic, reduced to the dimensions above mentioned, should be carried on." . . . Parliamentary Papers [1108], p. 567.

ton:

2 Other votes are not mentioned in the result.

3 The decrees proclaiming the plebiscites, the formal statements of the results, and the laws of the Sardinian Parliament incorporating the duchies in the kingdom, basing the union on the plebiscites, will be found in Documents, post, pp. 411 to 441.

* After the withdrawal of Piedmont, the republic had been again set up in Venice, but the city was forced to capitulate shortly.

formally banished them. Another decade was to pass before unity could

be achieved.

THE ITALIAN NATIONAL ASSEMBLIES OF 1859

However permanent the Powers may have considered the restoration of the petty princes to their Italian thrones in 1849, it was obvious that the inhabitants of the duchies regarded the arrangement as purely temporary. By 1859, there was but one party in Northern Italy, that for union with Sardinia. Republican prestige had greatly increased after the defeat of Sardinia in 1849, only to fall again through the subsequent ill-conceived revolutionary attempts in Genoa, Milan and Leghorn. It was, too, becoming increasingly evident that union could come only by the aid of France and the complacency of Europe and that neither France nor Europe looked with favor on the proposal of a republic in the Italian peninsula. Thinking union more important than form, many of the republican leaders, among them Manin, and thousands of their followers, had gone over to the Sardinian party. La Farina, Manin and Pallavicino, three former republicans, founded the Società nazionale with the motto "Unity, Independence and Victor Emanuel," which made great headway, especially in the provinces under Austria. The party for federation under the Pope, the plan so eloquently urged by Gioberti, had long since been abandoned by its leader and was of small importance in Italy, though, having found a lodgment in the brain of Napoleon, it was to cause endless difficulty. The Sardinian party had no rivals save in Tuscany, where there was a party for autonomy, of uncertain strength, and in Rome and Naples where the liberals still wished for constitutional government rather than for union.

Napoleon's aid against Austria had been promised to Cavour at Plombières in 1858. By the bargain made there, the Austrians were to be expelled, from the Alps to the Adriatic, Venetia and Lombardy were to be annexed to Sardinia, Central Italy was to form a separate kingdom under a Bonapartist prince, Naples was to be a third under Lucien Murat, and the whole was to form an Italian confederation under the presidency of the Pope. In return for this, Savoy and Nice, which had formed part of France after the plebiscites in 1792,1 and had been returned to Sardinia in 1815, were to be given back to France.

The war which had been planned at Plombières by Cavour and Napoleon broke out on April 29, 1859. The petty princes ruling over Tuscany, Parma, and Modena, and their dependencies, were completely under Austrian domination. When the invitation of Sardinia to join in the war of liberation was 1 Cf. ante, pp. 41, 43.

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