The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (73 page)

The arrival of the French in neighbouring Algeria could not, however, be ignored. Relations deteriorated sharply in 1844, after the rebel Abd el-Kader took refuge in Morocco, and the Sultan despatched an army to the border. The French responded by bombarding Tangier in early August, and Mogador ten days later; on the 14th they virtually destroyed Sultan Moulay Abd el-Rahman’s army at Isly, near Oujda. The Sultan was obliged,
inter alia
, to promise that he would intern or expel the rebel should he ever again enter Moroccan territory. He proved as good as his word: in 1847, when Abd el-Kader sought refuge for the second time, he was arrested by Moroccan troops and forced to surrender. It comes as a relief to report that the French were merciful towards him: he was to spend the rest of his life in honourable exile in Damascus.

On the Sultan’s death in 1859, the spotlight briefly switches to Spain, with which a bitter dispute took place over the boundaries of the Spanish enclave at Ceuta.
²³²
This ended in a declaration of war by Madrid and, in the following year, the Spanish capture of Tetouan, the Sultan being obliged to agree to a large indemnity and a considerable increase in the size of the Ceuta enclave. Meanwhile, the British and the Italians were also hoping somehow to win their slice of the Moroccan cake, but both were bought off by France: Britain agreed to give the French a free hand there in return for a French undertaking not to interfere with her own plans in Egypt, while Italy did much the same in relation to Libya. In 1880 the British, French, Spanish, Germans, Italians and Americans had concluded a convention at Madrid which–in theory at least–virtually guaranteed Moroccan independence, but this did not prevent France from concluding in 1904–with full British connivance–a secret treaty with Spain agreeing on respective ‘spheres of influence’ within the country. This was the situation when at the end of March 1905 Kaiser Wilhelm II arrived at Tangier on the liner
Hamburg
–and, as so often, put the cat among the pigeons. In his reply to the speech of welcome he declared first for the complete sovereignty and independence of the Sultan, second for the integrity of his realm, and third for ‘a Morocco open to the peaceful competition of all nations, without annexation or monopoly’.

It all sounded innocuous enough, but to the European powers it was clearly a deliberate attempt to put a spoke into the French–and to a lesser extent the Spanish–wheel. The previous year the Kaiser had proposed that Germany should lease Port Mahon in Minorca from Spain–an idea that had met a frigid reception from both France and Britain, the island being situated where it could command the approaches to Toulon and on a direct line between the two vital British bases of Malta and Gibraltar. The last thing either nation wanted was to have Wilhelm meddling once again in the affairs of the western Mediterranean. The whole issue was finally hammered out and–it seemed–satisfactorily resolved in 1906, when a conference of the signatories to the 1880 convention was called at Algeciras to discuss the whole Moroccan question. This reaffirmed the integrity of the country and the economic equality of the powers, but sanctioned French and Spanish policing of Moroccan ports and the collection of customs dues.

Even now the story was not quite over. In 1907 France–always eager to increase her influence in North Africa–occupied Casablanca; then Abd el-Hafid, the brother of the Sultan Abd el-Aziz, led a rebellion against him, claiming that he had betrayed Muslim traditions. Abd el-Aziz took refuge in Tangier, while in Fez Abd el-Hafid was proclaimed Sultan. He was duly recognised in the following year by the European powers, but never managed to impose order throughout the country and eventually, with disorder steadily increasing, was obliged to ask the French to rescue him. The result was the Treaty of Fez of 1912, by the terms of which Morocco became a French protectorate. Tangier, long the seat of the European diplomatic missions, was put under separate administration.

Finally, a word about Libya. Anyone who has ever visited the country will have been struck by its extraordinary geography. To the west–with its capital at Tripoli–is Tripolitania where, in sites like Leptis Magna or Sabratha, we can still feel the impact of ancient Rome; to the east is Cyrenaica–based on Benghazi–which, at Apollonia, Cyrene and elsewhere, immediately takes us back to the world of classical Greece. Between the two, however, are some six or seven hundred miles of virtually nothing, except the nondescript little town of Sirte at what is roughly the half-way mark. The country has probably been kept together by two things only: the Sanussi order that preached a puritanical form of Islam–though even this was largely concentrated in Cyrenaica–and, later, Italian colonialism.
²³³
Like its neighbours, it had been more or less autonomous, although under nominal Turkish rule, until in 1835 the Ottoman Empire took advantage of one of the endless disputes over the succession to reimpose a direct government. For the next seventy-seven years the country was administered by civil servants from Istanbul, until in 1911 Italy took over, gave it its present name and governed it until after the Second World War.

CHAPTER XXVII

The
Quarantotto

When, on Wednesday, 12 January 1848–the thirty-eighth birthday of King Ferdinand II
²³⁴
–the people of Palermo rose up against their Bourbon masters, they could have had no idea of what they were starting. Risings in the kingdom were nothing new: there had been unsuccessful ones in Naples in 1820 and in Piedmont in 1821; in Sicily itself there had been another as recently as 1837, sparked off by an epidemic of cholera–the first appearance of the disease in western Europe. But the consequent angry manifestations had been relatively easily dealt with. What happened in 1848–the
quarantotto
, as Italy remembers it–was something else. It was a revolution, and by the end of the year it had been followed by other revolutions: in Paris, Vienna, Naples, Rome, Venice, Florence, Lucca, Parma, Modena, Berlin, Milan, Parma, Cracow, Warsaw and Budapest.

Already, as the year opened, student riots had prompted the authorities to close the university; several eminent citizens known for their liberal views had been arrested, and an unsigned manifesto circulated calling upon the people to rise up on the King’s birthday. A large proportion of the insurgents were mountain brigands–the forerunners of the
mafiosi
of today–or simple peasants, few of whom probably had much idea of what they were fighting for, apart from a generally better life; but they fought no less fiercely for that. Many of the smaller villages and towns were devastated, as was much of the countryside.

The Bourbons had some 7,000 troops in the Palermo garrison, but they proved almost useless. Communications were bad, the roads execrable, and they could not be everywhere at once. In despair they decided to bombard the city–a decision which they soon had cause to regret.
²³⁵
The infuriated mob fell on the royal palace, sacked it–sparing, thank heaven, the Palatine Chapel–and set fire to the state records and archives. The garrison retreated, and soon returned to Naples. In the following days a committee of government was formed under the presidency of the seventy-year-old Sicilian patriot (and former Neapolitan Minister of Marine) Ruggero Settimo; meanwhile, the revolt spread to all the main cities–except Messina, which held back through jealousy of Palermo–and well over a hundred villages, where the support of the peasantry had by now been assured by lavish promises of land. It encountered no opposition worthy of the name.

By the end of the month the island was virtually free of royal troops, and on 5 February Settimo announced that ‘the evils of war had ceased, and that thenceforth an era of happiness had begun for Sicily’. He failed to mention that the citadel of Messina was still in Neapolitan hands; nonetheless, it was clear to King Ferdinand that he had his back to the wall. Owing to almost continuous demonstrations in Naples on the Sicilian model, on 29 January he offered a liberal constitution to both parts of his kingdom, providing for a bicameral legislature and a modest degree of franchise. ‘The game is up,’ wrote the horrified Austrian ambassador, Prince Schwarzenberg, to his chief, Metternich, ‘the King and his ministers have completely lost their heads.’ Metternich simply scribbled in the margin, ‘I defy the ministers to lose what they have never possessed.’

The news that reached him towards the end of February must have distressed him still more. In Paris, the ‘Citizen King’ Louis-Philippe had been toppled on 24 February and a republic proclaimed. Now the landslide began. Ferdinand, who had enjoyed a brief popularity after his grant of a constitution, was more than ever execrated; liberal constitutions were no longer enough. The Sicilians, meanwhile, had refused the offer. ‘Sicily,’ they coldly informed him, ‘does not demand new institutions, but the restoration of rights which have been hers for centuries.’ In Palermo he was declared deposed, the Bourbon flag being replaced by the revolutionary tricolour and that strange device of a sort of rimless wheel with three legs as its spokes.
²³⁶

Sicily was now truly independent, for the first time since the fourteenth century. The difficulty was that it lacked any machinery for its effective administration. Armed bands sprang up throughout the island; kidnappings and protection rackets were rife. But all this was symptomatic of a greater malaise. Trade plummeted, unemployment soared, the legal system virtually collapsed. To most Sicilians, the year 1848 was no longer the year of revolution; it was the year of destruction and chaos.

Towards the end of August, Ferdinand sent a combined military and naval force under Field Marshal Carlo Filangieri to restore order on the island. The rebels fought back, and the age-old hatred between Neapolitans and Sicilians gave rise to atrocities on both sides–to the point where the British and French admirals in Sicilian waters, shocked by the bloodshed and brutality, persuaded Ferdinand to grant a six-month armistice. Here, one might have thought, was an opportunity to end the stalemate, but every offer of settlement was refused out of hand. As a result, Filangieri captured Taormina on 2 April 1849 and Catania on the 7th; on 15 May he entered Palermo. By their inefficiency, their lack of unity and their refusal to compromise, the Sicilians had perfectly demonstrated how a revolution should not be run. Their neighbours the Greeks had shown similar defects, but they had the active support of the western powers. The Sicilians had not–and they paid the price.

The revolution in Venice, though it too was ultimately unsuccessful, was handled with far more assurance and skill. Already in June 1844 three young Venetian naval officers–the brothers Attilio and Emilio Bandiera and their friend Domenico Moro–had sailed from Corfu to Calabria, where they planned to join a minor insurrection that had broken out against Bourbon Naples. Their expedition was ridiculously quixotic: they had made virtually no preparations, had taken no precautions and were almost immediately arrested. A month later they were executed in the valley of Rovito, near Cosenza.
²³⁷
The news of their deaths had an immense impact on Italian public opinion. If three Venetians–to say nothing of several fellow martyrs from Perugia, Rimini and other cities–were prepared to die for Naples, then Italian unity must after all be something more than an empty dream. It seemed unthinkable that such heroes should have perished in vain. In Venice it was now generally agreed that the moment had come when the whole population of the city must speak out with a single voice–and the voice with which it spoke was that of Daniele Manin.

He was born in Venice on 13 May 1804. His Jewish father had converted to Christianity in his youth, and had adopted the name of his godfather, Pietro Manin–brother of the last Doge, Ludovico. Determined to be a lawyer like his father, Daniele had published his first work, a legal treatise on wills, when he was twelve. By the time he was awarded his doctorate at Padua University at the age of twenty-one, he had a good working knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and German, as well as Italian and his native Venetian. Brought up by his father to share his own republican and liberal ideas, he had already been politically active for some sixteen years when in 1847, with nationalist feeling growing throughout Italy, he launched what he called his
lotta legale
, or legal struggle, against Austrian despotism. He was not at this stage demanding full Venetian independence, merely home rule under the Habsburg Empire. Only when this had been refused–as he knew full well that it would be–would he call his fellow citizens to arms.

The first moment of open defiance came on 30 December 1847, when the distinguished academic Niccolò Tommaseo gave a lecture. Its ostensible subject was ‘The State of Italian Literature’; in fact, it proved to be a direct attack on the Austrian censorship. At the end he circulated a petition, which was signed by over 600 leading names in Venice and the Veneto. As a further indication of their anger, the Venetians followed the example set a few weeks before by the Milanese and gave up smoking.
²³⁸
They had always made a point of not applauding the concerts by the Austrian military band in the Piazza; henceforth, at the opening bars, they turned on their heels and left. A week later, Manin followed up with a sixteen-point charter, demanding,
inter alia
, vastly increased rights for all Italians under Austrian rule, a separate north Italian government answerable to the Emperor alone, and finally the complete abolition of censorship. This, for the imperial authorities, was the last straw. On 18 January 1848 Manin and Tommaseo were arrested and marched to the old prisons next to the Doge’s Palace. Once the Venetians had discovered where they were, crowds collected daily to stand in respect, bareheaded and silent, on the Riva below.

In early March, to everyone’s surprise, the two were acquitted, but the Austrian chief of police insisted that they should remain in prison. It was a disastrous mistake. The annual Carnival was cancelled, and Manin’s fellow lawyers took over all his work without pay. The Venetians, however, aware that the Austrian army in Venetia–Lombardy under the eighty-one-year-old Marshal Josef Radetzky
²³⁹
numbered no less than 75,000, still hesitated to take up arms. Then, on 17 March, the postal steamer from Trieste brought the news that Vienna itself was in revolt, that the rebels had triumphed and that, just four days before, the hated Prince Metternich had fled for his life. Overnight, the situation was transformed. As the word spread through the city, an immense crowd flocked to the governor’s residence on the south side of the Piazza shouting ‘
Fuori Manin e Tommaseo!
’
²⁴⁰
The people, it was clear, would no longer be gainsaid.

The Austrian governor, Count Pàlffy, eventually appeared at the window and protested that even if he had wished to release the prisoners, he had no power to do so. The crowd, led by Manin’s sixteen-year-old son Giorgio, then streamed across the Piazzetta to the prison and began hammering on the doors, which were finally opened. It was typical of Daniele Manin–always a lawyer–that he should have refused to leave the building until he had an official order to do so, an order which Pàlffy, at the urgings of his near-hysterical wife, hastily signed. Only then did he and Tommaseo emerge, to be carried shoulder-high to the governor’s residence. The crowds made as if to break down the doors, but Manin restrained them. ‘Do not forget,’ he told them, ‘that there can be no true liberty, and that liberty cannot last, where there is no order.’ Only when they had calmed down did he allow them to bear him off to his home.

Metternich’s resignation and flight on 13 March had inspired Italy to action, but had left Austria in chaos. The government was rudderless, the army bewildered and uncertain of its loyalties. Here, unmistakably, was the signal to insurgents and revolutionaries throughout Italy. In Milan, the great insurrection known to all Italians as the
cinque giornate
–the five days of 18–22 March–drove the Austrians from the city and instituted a republican government. On the last of those days, in Turin, a stirring front-page article appeared in the newspaper
Il Risorgimento,
written by its editor, Count Camillo Cavour. ‘The supreme hour has sounded,’ he wrote. ‘One way alone is open for the nation, for the government, for the King. War!’

Two days later, King Charles Albert of Savoy proclaimed from Piedmont his country’s readiness to give full support to Venetia– Lombardy in the forthcoming struggle, together with his own intention personally to lead his army into battle. Unfortunately, although able immediately to mobilise some 70,000 men, Piedmont was hopelessly unprepared for war; in her entire army, we are told, there was not a single map of Lombardy. Unfortunately, too, the King was to prove uninspired as a general–certainly no match for old Radetzky, who had been commanding armies since before Charles Albert was born.

On the other hand, although the eventual outcome of the hostilities between Austria and Piedmont might have been a foregone conclusion from the military point of view, the King must have been greatly encouraged by the reaction of the other Italian states. Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany at once despatched an army composed of both regular troops and volunteers. Rather more surprisingly, there was a similar response from King Ferdinand of Naples, who sent a force of 16,000 under a huge Calabrian general called Guglielmo Pepe. Strategically these contributions probably made little difference; they showed, however, beyond all possible doubt, that the cause was a national, Italian one. As they took their places beside the Piedmontese, Charles Albert’s fellow rulers saw themselves not as allies but as compatriots.

Daniele Manin alone made no pretence of fighting for Italy; his cause was Venice. A few months before, he might have welcomed the news that arrived on the evening of his release from prison, to the effect that the Emperor had agreed to the principle of constitutional government for Venetia–Lombardy; but such an offer was now too little and too late. He was resolved to settle for nothing less than the expulsion of all Austrians from Venetian territory. On the morning of March 22–a date now commemorated in the name of Venice’s principal shopping street–he and his men occupied the Arsenal without a struggle and commandeered all the arms and ammunition that were stored there. He then led a triumphal procession to the Piazza, where he formally proclaimed a republic, ending his speech with a ringing cry of ‘
Viva San Marco!
’ It was the first time that the words had been heard in public for over half a century. Pàlffy, meanwhile, had signed a formal act of capitulation, leaving effective power in the hands of ‘the provisional government which is to be formed’ and undertaking that all Austrian troops would be evacuated–without their arms–to Trieste.