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57. More Rain and Revolutionaries’ Conflicting Aims
- University of Georgia Press
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342 the rising tide of revolution concede that he was too bound by his belief that he must be the “Pope of Rome” rather than “a Reform Prince, and father to the fatherless,” to be man enough to alter history. Yet even if Pius IX lacks the perspicacity “to hear the signs of the times” about democracy being trumpeted at his palace door, still, says Fuller, again eerily foreshadowing her own tragic fate, “A wave has been set in motion, which cannot stop till it casts up its freight upon the shore.”25 57SMore Rain and Revolutionaries’ Conflicting Aims The wave of revolutions that hit Europe in the winter and spring of 1848 was tidal; sweeping over the countries of Europe, it lifted ordinary people like pebbles to great heights of excitement and fervor before it dropped them abruptly on reality’s shore a year later. Caught up in the wave was Fuller, who sent dispatches home with news of revolution. In Milan, where the Austrian occupation of Venetia and Lombardy was headquartered and where the people had been boycotting tobacco to diminish Austrian tax revenues, Field Marshall Joseph Radetzky, who had earlier seized the northern city of Ferrara, on 1 January 1848 ordered his troops and other paid agitators to taunt Italian men by blowing smoke in their faces. When the provoked Italians expressed their rage in outright rebellion, the troops charged into the crowd, wounding sixty-four people, some of whom died.1 There were similar outbreaks of violence all over Italy. In Venice, police feared that Mazzini was planning a national rebellion. Both Costanza Arconati Visconti and King Charles Albert attributed a 4 January attack on the Jesuits in Genoa to Mazzini’s influence. Meanwhile, in Tuscany rioters in Leghorn expressed their rage against the repressive policies of Grand Duke Leopold. With the death of Napoleon’s second empress, the Archduchess Marie-Louise von Habsburg, who had been given the duchy of Parma in 1830, the region fell to the duke of Modena. The latter replied to the people’s petition protesting their former ruler’s police state tactics by, in Fuller’s words, “crowding his dominions with Austrian troops.”2 In this incendiary situation, Sicily on 12 January erupted into full insurrection with the successful rising of the people in Palermo against Naples and Ferdinand II. However, as was true for most of the European revolutions that year, the people ’s motivations were diverse: some, inspired by Mazzini’s propaganda, fought for national unity; others, happy in victory, raised the yellow-and-red flag of Sicilian separatism, while a group of mafioso gang leaders plundered the city and paraded a policeman’s head on a stick.3 Mazzini was unable to focus the people on a vision of national unity, and their varied purposes helped undermine the drive for liberty. The immediate result of these rebellions was that the people of each region were granted a constitution. Thus Ferdinand’s example in January of granting his subjects a constitution and representative assembly was soon followed by Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany and, in March, by Pope Pius IX as well as by Charles Albert of Piedmont. Such constitutions, however, hardly gave to Mazzini and his followers the liberties they sought. Each limited the religion of the state to “Roman Catholic Apostolic” and declared that “the King shall be forever sacred, inviolable, and not subject to responsibility.” Even when granting what seemed to be freedom of the press, a restriction was invariably attached, such as article 2 of the constitution King Charles Albert presented: “The press shall be free, but subject to repressive laws.”4 Fuller could report only what news she heard. And from her perspective it seemed the wave of the future was with Mazzini and democracy and against despotic rulers and a church “encumbered with the remains of Pagan habits and customs .” There was “soul in the religion,” she wrote, “while the blood of its martyrs was yet fresh upon the ground,” a soul, now, “fled elsewhere.” When attending the Feast of the Bambino in late December, Fuller had been put off again by Roman Catholicism. Approaching the Church of S. Maria d’Aracoeli (the altar of heaven), she was astounded to see that its staircase was “flooded with people,” and that “the street below was a rapid river also, whose waves were men.” Inside she found the church packed “with contadini [peasants] and the poorer people.” Fuller’s failure to understand Italians’ love...