Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, with the Annual Message of the President, December 6, 1875, Volume I

No. 23.
Mr. Jay to Mr. Fish.

Legation of the United States,
Vienna, March 18, 1875. (Received April 7.)

No. 882.]

Sir: The programme of the tour of the Emperor to Italy and Dalmatia was announced to-day. * * * * * *

To the visit of the Emperor to the King of Italy, who is to meet him at Venice, some political importance is attached. It is in general warmly approved by the Vienna press, and I annex two articles on the subject from the English and one from the French press.

I have, &c.,

JOHN JAY.

[Inclosure 1 in No. 882.]

the meeting of the emperors.

[From the London Standard.]

The Emperor of Austria and the King of Italy are to meet at Venice on the 5th of next month. There has never been a meeting between two sovereigns better adapted to warm the imagination of the historian, or less calculated to inspire the suspicious fears of the politician. Yet, striking and suggestive as the promised incident is, the peaceful interview is in the strictest sense natural, and the choice of the locality in which it is to take place is eminently appropriate. When the map of Europe required a fresh arrangement after the final overthrow of the first Napoleon, Austria was placed, by common consent, in the north of Italy, as the guardian of order in the Peninsula, the remainder of which was parceled out among the Emperor’s willing vassals, with more or less regard to their historical claims. The only claim that was not admitted, that was not even mentioned or thought of, was the claim of the people of Italy to own a common country, and to erect it into an indivisible state. Yet the Regno d’ltalia, selfishly fashioned by the great French Emperor, was one of those blind anticipations of reality which are so frequently met with in the records of individual genius; and it is not inconceivable that the Italian blood which runs in the veins of the Bonapartes may have impelled him, by a sort of unconscious instinct, to foreshadow the happy destiny of the country. Be this as it may, it is certain that no sooner had the “geographical expression “been allotted to the care of Austria and her dependents than the idea of a real kingdom or republic of Italy began to ferment in the minds of all the more patriotic and the more virtuous spirits of the land. He would be a shallow historian who blamed the statesmen of Austria for seeing in this notorious fact nothing more than an additional reason for vigilance and repression. Even had the government of Vienna, against all antecedent probability, been inspired with the wish to encourage the aspirations of young Italy, its allies would have loudly protested against such a betrayal of trust. The Holy Alliance was based on a clear and intelligible principle, which is no longer much in vogue, but which has been as useful and pertinent in its time as any principles of government which prevail at the present moment. That principle involved a profound suspicion of all popular movements, and a perfect confidence in the benevolence of painstaking rulers to provide for the welfare of their subjects. The Austrians labored hard to rule Lombardo-Venetia with justice, nor can it be denied that many elements of national well-being throve and prospered under their protection. But they were doomed to perceive that their best efforts failed to pacify the hearts either of the Lombards or the Venetians, and that the radical mis-government of the kingdom of the two Sicilies and of the territory of the Pope was charged to their account. For thirty-two years they struggled to disregard the hatred of the Italians; but it was no subject of surprise to them that when insurrection in Vienna accompanied insurrection in Paris and Berlin, and their troops had for a time to be drawn northward, the cities of Milan and Venice revolted on the same day,, at the same hour, and without time even for concert. The lame and impotent conclusion all over Europe of the ill-directed movement of 1848 left Austria no option but to follow up her ultimate military success against Charles Albert and his Italian allies by restoring affairs in Italy precisely to their pristine position. But though everything seemed outwardly to have resumed its former complexion, there was not a skilled observer on the Continent who did not know that a new era had commenced. Custozza—we refer, of course, to the first battle of that name—and Novara had not been fought in vain. Not in vain had Rome been defended gloriously by Garibaldi, Venice with even yet more luster by Manin. Italians from every province of the Peninsula had for the first time fought and bled on the same battle-field for the same cause; and the itle “King of Italy” had on the day of Goito been sounded in the ears of the discrowned exile of Oporto. To him had succeeded a young prince, who was, indeed, espoused to an Austrian archduchess, and who had imbibed his religious tenets from the Jesuits, but who, nevertheless, when Novara came to its bitter end, had shaken his sword fiercely toward the Austrian camp, and exclaimed, with a pious oath, “L’Italia sarà.” The whole world knew the change; and the statesmen of Vienna were more alive to it than all other observers. But Austria would not release its hold of Italy until it was forced to do so by the arbitrament of the sword. It was but natural that the Austrians should defend their Italian possessions; but it was still more natural that they should lose them. The element of Austrian domination once removed, the various particles which till then had constituted Italy rushed together; and every fresh incident in the European movement only served to complete the process of national amalgamation. It was with a sigh that the Austrians turned their backs for the last time upon the fair country they had only troubled, and which had paid them back with disaster and humiliation. They surrendered without regret what it had been most unprofitable to possess, and the Italians received without rancor what they knew had been withheld so long only from a mistaken policy and an ignorance which too many of themselves had shared. It was thus without any embarrassment that Victor Emmanuel two years ago visited the court of Francis Joseph; and thus with a feeling of pleasure may Francis Joseph return the visit. The spot is aptly chosen. For five months after the “spada d’Italia “was broken in the hands of Charles Albert, Venice held out under the noble direction of Daniele Manin. Those days are not yet forgotten on the lagoons. But the Emperor may safely trust himself among a people who have quite forgiven his share in the miseries they no longer suffer. We should think that some day a great historian will arise to write the annals of Italy from 1815 to 1870. No nobler or more enticing theme could absorb the labors of genius; and the happy climax with which the vicissitudes of the busy period was crowned should offer an additional inducement to some competent hand to undertake the task. It is certain that one so engaged would have to ask himself how it came about that other nations, far more fortunately circumstanced than Italy at the commencement of his investigation, were found at the date which closed them either sunk in a mixture of torpor and disorder, or strikingly declined from their original position. Why has Spain not thriven, while Italy has prospered? Why has France brought upon itself so many misfortunes, while Italy has contrived to journey from difficulty to difficulty, to find its dearest hopes consummated? Something, perhaps, must be ascribed to the instructive school of adversity, something to national temperament; but the result has been that the Italians, in raising their country from a state of depression to one of honor and dignity, have exhibited a remarkable absence of self-love and vaingloriousness. They have been modest, and even humble, and they were as far removed from the stupid sell-content of the Spaniards, who still fancy their peninsula the center of the world, as from the soaring presumption of the French, who still very recently imagined that it was their mission to overrun or to dictate to Europe. Patience and good sense have wrought that miracle, the unification of Italy. We do not forget how much depended upon there being a constitutional sovereign and a well-disciplined army at hand to assist in the achievement; but had the good sense of the Italians not deliberately chosen these necessary instruments, the great undertaking would infallibly have gone astray. The moment when Victor Emmanuel receives Francis Joseph at Venice should be, in no conventional language, one of the proudest of his life.

[Inclosure 2 in No. 882.]

the meeting of the emperors.

[From an English newspaper, not named.]

The approaching visit of the Emperor of Austria to Italy possesses an interest beyond that attaching to the progresses of royal personages. It is not, indeed, the first time that Francis Joseph II and Victor-Emmanuel have met in friendly intercourse since the close of their life-long rivalry. The mere circumstance of the King of Italy being the honored guest of an Empero of Austria is in itself strange enough; but about the visit of Victor Emmanuel to Vienna there was nothing of the peculiar r6mance attaching to the return visit of Francis Joseph to the Peninsula. A quarter of a century is a mere moment in the history of nations; and yet, only five and twenty years ago, the man who had foretold that in this year of grace His Most Catholic and Apostolic Majesty would be the guest of a King of Italy, and that King Victor Emmanuel, would have been set down as a crack-brained fanatic. Still, in the course of next month, if the present programme is adhered to, the Queen of the Adriatic—that home of so much departed glory, that abode of so many deposed princes—will witness the meeting of two sovereigns, one of whom was the last of the kings of Lombardy, and the other of whom is the first king of a united Italy. If the spirits of the departed are cognizant of mundane affairs, the dead patriot whose bust they have just placed in the capitol of Rome must have heard the tidings of this royal interview with mixed feelings of triumph and regret. Had Mazzini lived to see this gathering of sovereigns, we know not whether the pride that save for his labors this could not have been would have been extinguished by the reflection that it was not for this he labored. Be this as it may, the visit marks an epoch, and, as it were, closes the second of one of the most curious pages of contemporary history. And of the actors in the forthcoming pageant, the central figure, by the dignity of fate even more than the majesty of rank, must be the Emperor of Austria, who, as the guest of his former foeman, enters the country which he had invaded at the head of his army to fight for his crown with the sovereign whose courtly hospitality he is now about to enjoy.

Probably; like all the princes of the imperial family, Francis Joseph must, in his youth, have visited those fair transalpine provinces which formed one of the proudest possessions of the Hapsburgh monarchy. But of these visits history has preserved no remembrance; and, indeed, the boy Emperor succeeded so suddenly, and at so early an age, to his uncle’s throne, that his “years of wandering” were cut short before he had had time to sojourn in the southern land in which any other inmate of Schönbrunn and the Hof burg must have made his abode for a onger or shorter season. When Francis Joseph was raised to the throne, in 1848, Italy was in open insurrection. The armies of the then King of Sardinia invested the Quadrilateral and occupied Milan. Venice had proclaimed her independence under a new republic, and the only spot in the “Regno Lombardo-Veneto” which recognized his imperial authority was the fortress of Verona. There the stern old Radetsky had gathered his shattered forces. By the spring of the following year, the last hopes of Italian independence had been, as it then seemed, crushed out upon the battle-field of Novara. The rule of the Hapsburghs appeared to be re-established more strongly than ever, and the white-coated Austrian officers lorded it once more in Milan and Venice and all the historic cities of that Lombard land, so rich in memories. There was talk often of a solemn coronation of the Emperor with the iron crown at Monza, and of an imperial visit to the Italian provinces; but the project always fell through. During the decade which followed 1849 the hatred of the Lombards to the rule of the Tedeschi was so bitter and so intense that the Emperor’s visit could have been nothing but a military progress. To do the Austrians justice, they tried to conciliate their Italian subjects by fair and not illiberal government. But their mere presence was an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the people of the Peninsula. The Emperor, indeed, would gladly have made himself popular south of the Alps. He sent his brother, the ill-fated Maximilian, to live there as viceroy; but the antipathy of race was too strong for any courtesy of manner to subdue, and long before 1860 the government of Vienna had recognized the unwelcome truth that the Italian provinces could only be retained in subjugation by sheer force of arms. That this force would ever fail Austria was an idea which seemed incredible to those who had fought and conquered with Radetsky; and, indeed, if the Emperor Francis Joseph had been confronted only by the Italians themselves, the Mincio would, in all likelihood, have continued to this day to be the frontier of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. To say this is no disparagement of the part Italy played in the recovery of her independence. It is a simple assertion of the plain fact that the military strength of Austria was overwhelming as compared with that of Piedmont. Probably in all Europe there are no two living men who know so well as Victor Emmanuel and Francis Joseph that Italy, as at present constituted, owes her existence to the sometime emperor whose fitful life-story ended at Chiselhurst.

With the gallantry of his race, Francis Joseph, then a man under thirty, entered Italy and placed himself at the head of his army, hoping to drive back the French across the Alps. Military critics say that at one time fortune wavered in the balance, and that had it not been for the services of the Marshal-President of the French Republic, the battle-field to which he owes his title might have led to the total defeat of France. It is curious to speculate how, in this event, the fate not only of Italy, but of Europe, might have been changed. But of all unprofitable speculations, considerations of what might have been are about the idlest; and it remains written that on the field of Solferino the Austrian army, fighting under the command of the Emperor, knew only how to die with honor. Then, when all seemed lost, the peace at Villa-franca preserved to Austria the Quadrilateral and Venetia, and Francis Joseph quitted Italy never to return there again as sovereign of his ancestral kingdom. Throughout the years which passed between Solferino and Sadowa, Venetia was converted into a garrison, and hopes were cherished at Vienna, till the last, that at no distant day the armies of the empire would sally forth from the Quadrilateral and restore the ancient greatness of the monarchy. But Prussia completed the work that France had begun; and after Sadowa, the Emperor resolved to surrender a province which had almost cost him his crown. Some day or other the world will, doubtless, learn exactly what inducements prevailed with Francis Joseph when he gave up the fruits of the battle his troops had won at Custozza. But even if, as there is reason to believe, these promises were not fulfilled as expected, the Austrian monarchy has no cause to regret the sacrifice. If by the mere exercise of his will Francis Joseph could restore Lombardy and Venetia to the possession of his throne, we doubt if he would care to employ his power of volition. From the day when he ceded Venetia and the Quadrilateral to the kingdom of Italy, the Emperor has accepted accomplished facts with a frankness and thoroughness rare in the annals of royal abdications. His policy has been directed to winning the confidence and esteem of his transalpine neighbors; and this policy has proved so successful by reason of its transparent honesty, that the Italians have learned to believe they have no more trusty friend and ally than the empire which, in times not long gone by, was, in Italian parlance, a by-word for perfidy and oppression. Nine years have well-nigh passed since the Austrian colors floated for the last time in the Piazza of San Marco; and when the Emperor enters Venice he will find a cordial welcome in the city where, within ten years, to be seen speaking to an Austrian soldier was held an act of infamy. With the recovery of their freedom, the Venetians have learned to judge their former masters more fairly, and to recognize that the odiouisness of Austrian rule was due rather to the exigencies of a false position than to any wllful malignity on the part of the Tedeschi. Like all Italians, the inhabitants of the City of the Argosies are a kindly, easy-going people, and, as the guest of the King of Italy, they will bear no ill-will to the Emperor whose armies bombarded their palaces in the days when Manin fought the last fight of Italian freedom; and as Victor Emmanuel and Francis Joseph pass together through the Grand Canal, with all the wealth of pageantry which an Italian town can display, the old days will seem to have come back once more, when the silent City of the Doges was mistress of the Adriatic.

[Inclosure 3, in No. 882.]

the meeting of the emperors.

[From the Constitutional.]

The intended excursion of the Emperor Francis Joseph is the all-absorbing subject of the Austrian press at the present moment.

That sovereign has announced that he will shortly go to Venice to see King Victor Emanuel, and this significant event occupies the entire round of conversation and polemics. Some writers profess to regard this visit only as an act of courtesy and not of policy, asserting that the imperial traveler limits himself simply to returning that paid to him at Vienna by the King of Italy. Others pretend that the fact of stopping short at Venice, in lieu of continuing to Rome, is evidence of a determination not to recognize the legitimacy of the possession of that city. The more moderate consider that His Majesty has not been willing to go to the capital, so as not to create difficulties for the Italian government by paying his respects to the Pope at the Vatican. For our part we deem all these opinions to be speculative and devoid of truth. The Emperor’s excursion is a symptom of reconciliation, and the augury of concord in the policy of the two countries, between which the causes of discord and hatred have ceased to exist. Austria has renounced the Venetian States, and Francis Joseph, in entering Venice, will give no lingering thought to the means of once more planting a victorious foot among the lagoons, which for so long a period were a dependency of the Austrian Empire, Iatly, at present compact and united, offers nothing to conquest; and the sole ambition which any neighboring State can entertain is to conclude with her an alliance which may render peace assured.

A great change has supervened in the ruling spirits of Austria since 1866. It has come to be recognized that the time for arbitrary possessions has passed away, and that the balance of power in Europe was broken in favor of a monarchy against which it has become necessary to seek support. The war of 1870–71 struck a final blow against Austrian ambition, and now, far from thinking of treating Italy as a tributary, the empire is disposed to accept her as a useful ally.