662 Chapter XXVII
Revolution of the triennio was neither as passive nor as abstract as it seemed to the
disillusioned exile. The reader of the preceding chapters of this book can judge for
himself. It would seem that the Italians, far from being passive, often pushed the
French further than they wished to go. Passive the Italian republics were in the
sense of dependency on French power; it was the French defeat of 1799 that de-
stroyed them, and Napoleon’s victory at Marengo in 1801 by which, in north Italy,
republicanism was restored. But the Italian republicans were not so “passive,” or so
merely pro- French, as to be incapable of revolt against the French in 1799, as will
be seen. The anti- French movement in Italy, by 1799, was confused by the fact that
counterrevolutionaries and revolutionaries, while detesting each other, could agree
in opposing the French Directory. As for “abstraction,” it must be said that some-
thing of this quality must enter into any conception of law and justice, and that the
ideas of Italian republicans, given the real conditions of the Italian old regime, had
enough concrete relevancy to be very uncomfortable to partisans of the old order.
At least three causes for the failure of the Italian republics can be seen, more
important than their alleged passivity and abstraction. Most important was the
lack of common ground between town and country, arising from the old Italian
tradition of urbanism and the city- state. Lack of rapport between townsman and
peasant weakened republicanism in north Italy; positive hostility between them
made it impossible in the center and south. Secondly, there was the religious ques-
tion. Enough has been said to show that there was no simple conflict between the
Church and the Revolution. Many good Catholics were democrats and republi-
cans; but their efforts were discredited by the extremists of both sides, by a political
religiosity which denounced the Revolution as wicked (a view not unknown in
Protestant countries) and by the much publicized insults and onslaughts of those
who thought the whole Christian religion ridiculous. Thirdly, the French, still en-
gaged in a war for the preservation of their own republic, had more interest in ex-
ploiting the wealth of the Italians than in sharing republicanism with them. There
was nothing new in the exploitation of countries occupied in time of war, but the
French conducted it with thoroughness and persistency, through agents sometimes
lacking in personal honesty, in a turmoil enlivened by much talk of liberty and
democracy. If they created in Italy not friends but dependents, it was because they
themselves saw the Italian republicans in this light.
It is in the triennio that many Italians today see the first step in the Risorgi-
mento. To the old dream of a regenerated Italy, and to the writings and labors of
eighteenth- century reformers, there had now been added something new. Action
had followed upon words. Italians had sat in elected assemblies, adopted constitu-
tions, debated and enacted laws, engaged in politics and diplomacy in the name of
the people. New classes of men had come into public life. In a country noted for
secretiveness in matters of state, a sphere of public life and of political publicity
had been created. And there was in some circles a cult of the martyrs of 1799, like
Vincenzo Russo, who was said to have shouted from the scaffold, “I die for liberty.
Viva la Repubblica!”^36
36 Croce, III.