Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/507

 1606-1815.] ITALY 485 Two Sicilies. The Austrians kept Milan and Tuscany. The duchy of Modena was placed under the protection of the French. So was Genoa, which in 1755, after Paoli s insurrection against the misgovernment of the republic, ceded her old domain of Corsica to France. From the date of this settlement until 1792, Italy en joyed a period of repose and internal amelioration under her numerous paternal despots. It became the fashion during these forty-four years of peace to encourage the in dustrial population and to experimentalize in economical reforms. The emperor Francis I. ruled the grand-duchy of Tuscany by lieutenants until his death in 1765, when it was given, as an independent state, to his third son, Peter Leopold. The reign of this duke was long remembered as a period of internal prosperity, wise legislation, and im portant public enterprise. Leopold, among other useful works, drained the Val di Chiana, and restored those fertile upland plains to agriculture. In 1790 he succeeded to the empire, and left Tuscany to his son Ferdinand. The king dom of Sardinia was administered upon similar principles,, but with less of geniality. Carlo Emmanuele made his will law, and erased the remnants of free institutions from his state. At the same time he wisely followed his father s policy with regard to education and the church. This is perhaps the best that can be said of a king who incarnated the stolid absolutism of the period. From this date, how ever, we are able to trace the revival of independent thought among the Italians. The European ferment of ideas which preceded the French Kevolution expressed it self in men like Alfieri, the fierce denouncer of tyrants, Beccaria, the philosopher of criminal jurisprudence, Volta, the physicist, and numerous political economists of Tus cany. Moved partly by external influences and partly by a slow internal reawakening, the people was preparing for the efforts of the present century. The papacy, during this period, had to reconsider the question of the Jesuits, who made themselves universally odious, not only in Italy, but also in France and Spain. In the pontificate of Clement XIII. they ruled the Vatican, and almost suc ceeded in embroiling the pope with the concerted Bourbon potentates of Europe. His successor, Clement XIV., sup pressed the order altogether by a brief of 1773. For the VI. divisions of Italy at this time see Plate VI. Achievement of Independence. The malarious tranquillity of Italy beneath her Austrian and Bourbon despots was rudely shaken by the French Re- &quot;~ f volution. This is not the place to describe Napoleon s campaign of 1796. But the treaty of Campo Formio, which resettled Italy in 1797, has to be described. Nor- , them and Central Italy was redivided into four republics, the Cisalpine, with its capital in Milan ; the Ligurian, with Genoa for capital; the Cispadane, with Bologna; the Tiberine, with Rome. Venice (where the last doge, Luigi Manini, had dissolved the republic of St Mark amid the execrations of the populace in the month of May) was flung, together with her territory between the Adige and the Adriatic, as a compensation for other losses, to the Austrian empire. In the next year, 1798, Lower Italy became the Parthenopaean republic, with Naples for its capital. Carlo Emmanuele III., now king of Sardinia, re signed his dominions. Pius VI. fled from Rome, and died in France in 1799. The whole of the old order of the peninsula was thus destroyed at a blow. Yet the people, at first, gained little but an exchange of masters, increased taxes, and a participation in the doubtful glories of the French republic. While Bonaparte was absent in Egypt, his recent settlement of Italian affairs was upset, and the French were everywhere driven out of the peninsula by force of arms. He returned, and Marengo (1800) made him once more master of Italy. Four years later, having proclaimed himself emperor, he took the Lombard crown in St Ambrogio at Milan. Italy now ranked as his king dom, and a new settlement of her provinces had to be effected. The pope was left in Rome, and Ferdinand in Naples. Tuscany was rechristened the kingdom of Etruria, and given to the Bourbons. The Ligurian and Cisalpine republics were placed under the viceroy Eugene Beau- harnais. After Austerlitz, Venice was added to this North Italian kingdom ; and in 1806 Bonaparte made the Bour bons yield Naples to his brother Joseph. When Joseph went in 1808 to Madrid, Joachim Murat succeeded him as king in Naples. Sicily remained in the hands of Ferdi nand. In 1809 Pius VII. was deposed, and sent to France, and Rome was declared a part of the French em pire. The gingerbread kingdom of Etruria was abolished, and Bonaparte s sister, Eliza, wife of a Colonel Bacciocchi, was made duchess of Tuscany, with the titles of duchess of Lucca and princess of Piombino. Ephemeral as were Bonaparte s successive divisions and redivisions of Italy ! into provinces for his generals and relatives, they exercised I no little influence. From the period of the French rule we may date a new sense of nationality among Italians, generated by the military service of recruits drawn together from all districts in Napoleon s armies, by the temporary obliteration of most ancient boundaries, by the dethrone ment of alien and unloved princes, by the equal adminis tration of one code of laws, and by the spirit of the revolu tion which animated all French institutions. Italy began to feel herself a nation, and though it was long before Europe suffered her to win national rights, the demand for them, which in our own days became too imperious to be resisted, was created in her people at this epoch. The congress of Vienna in 1815 took down from the Restora- theatre of Italy all Bonaparte s decorations, and set up the tlon. f old scenery in very nearly the old places. Vittorio an 1 ^ n Emmanuele I. received back his kingdom of Sardinia, with Bourbon the addition of Genoa. Venice and Milan were formed princes, into the province of Lombardo-Venezia for Francis II., em peror of Austria. The old duchy of Parma was given for her lifetime to Maria Louisa, who, though the wife of Bonaparte, was still an Austrian princess. Upon her death it was to be restored to its former Bourbon princes, who received in the meanwhile Lucca as an equivalent. The Austrian Ferdinand III. was once again grand-duke of Tuscany, with the reversion of Lucca after Maria Louisa s decease. Francis, son of the Austrian archduke Ferdinand and Beatrice d Este, became duke of Modena, with the re version of Lunigiana on the same event. Pius VII. got back all the states of the church, and on his re-entry into Rome restored the Jesuits, who had provn their indispen- sability to tyrants. The Bourbon Ferdinand I. again joined Naples to his crown of Sicily. We have been careful to label these Ferdinands and Francises with their respective names of Austrian or Bourbon, in order that the partition of Italy between the two dynasties, and the large prepon derance of Austrian over Bourbon influence, might be - apparent. One significant detail has been omitted. The congress of Vienna recognized the independent republic of San Marino. On the top of a little mountain at the out skirts of the Apennines which overlook the sea by Rimini, sat Liberty, the queen of a few hundred citizens, surveying the muddy ocean of Franco-Spanish, Italo-Teutonic despo tism which drowned Italy through all her length and breadth. The Italian sovereigns, on returning to their respective states, proved that exile and the revolution had terrorized them into more determined tyranny. The civil and political reforms which had been instituted at the end of the last century were abandoned. The Jesuits were re-