Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/786

708 LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY.

Italy at the Downfall of Napoleon.—The Italian people, as being the most dangerously infected with the ideas of the Revolution, were, by the reactionary Congress of Vienna, condemned to the most strict and ignominious slavery. The former commonwealths were forbidden to restore their ancient institutions, while the petty principalities were handed over in almost every case to the tyrants or the heirs of the tyrants who had ruled them before the Revolution. Austria appropriated Venetia and Lombardy, and from Northern Italy assumed to direct the affairs of the whole peninsula. Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Piacenza were given to princes of the House of Hapsburg. Naples was restored to its old Bourbon rulers. The Pope and Victor Emmanuel I., king of Sardinia, were the only native rulers.

"Italy was divided on the map, but she had made up her mind to be one." The Revolution had sown the seeds of Liberty, and time only was needed for their maturing. The Cisalpine, the Ligurian, the Parthenopæan, the Tiberine republics (see pp. 668, 670), short-lived though they were, had awakened in the people an aspiration for self-government; while Napoleon's kingdom of Italy (see p. 676, n.), though equally delusive, had nevertheless inspired thousands of Italian patriots with the sentiment of national unity. Thus the French Revolution, disappointing as seemed its issue, really imparted to Italy her first impulse in the direction of freedom and of national organization.

Arbitrary Rule of the Restored Princes.—The setting up of the overturned thrones meant, of course, the re-instating of the old tyrannies. The restored despots came back with an implacable hatred of everything French. They swept away all French