The Press. — London, England, 1855-12-01 00:00:00

DECEMBER 1, 1855. yittraturt. ~' ti History of Piedmont. By Antonio Gallenga. London : Chapman and Hall. THE visit of the King of Sardinia to this country, and the interest which is universally felt in the affairs of his kingdom, make the publication of this book peculiarly well-timed. We are not su re that we rightly apprehend the point of view from which M. Gallenga would wish his history to be regarded. It is not exactly a popular, and it is not exactly a profound or exhaustive work: it is too long for the one, and too short for the other. Either the first volume should have been a good deal compressed, or the third a good deal expanded. But we cannot be well satisfied with a history so much of which is devoted to a period about which men scarcely care, and so little to that about which they care so much. It is no doubt indispensable to a complete work on this subject that it should tell us all that is to be known about " Humbert with the White Hand," and "Amadeus with the Long Tail," and other worthies to whom the Duchy of Savoy owes its origin ; but then it is equally, or even more, essential that we should have a corresponding copiousness of detail about those who made the duchy into a kingdom, and the kingdom respected throughout Europe. We cannot but half suspect that M. Gallenga must have set out with the intention of composing a very much more extensive work, but was compelled, for some reason or other, to hurry it to a conclusion. There is, however, he tells us in his preface, a work of this description in progress, by a member of the Sardinian Cabinet, which has as yet only reached the end of the fourteenth century. Whether it will ever be completed he thinks doubtful ; in the meantime he has, we suppose, resolved to do what he could himself. Passing over the early days of Ostrogoth, Lombard, and Frankish domination, we will endeavour briefly to set before our readers such informa tion relating to the present reigning family of Sardinia as we think may prove most accept able to them. The first Count of Maurienne and Savoy who can be considered an historical personage was the above-mentioned Humbert of the White Hand, who died in the year 1056. His son Oddo married Adelaide, daughter and heiress of the Count of Turin, and after the death of her husband governed for nearly thirty years as Countess of Savoy and Pied mont Her descendants had great difficulty in making good their ground in Italy, espe cially against the Marquisses of Montferrat; nevertheless, now advancing and now reced ing, they did manage to maintain some sort of footing there down to the accession c f Amadeus VIII., Count of Savoy, in the year 1391. He consolidated and strengthened his family in heritance, and reunited in his own person the titles of Savoy and Turin, which latter had for some years been held by a collateral branch of his house. In 1418 his dominions were raised by the Emperor to the rank of a duchy, and from this period begin to take that shape with which the ordinary reader is best acquainted. M. Gallenga has likened him to Henry VII. of England; and in many respects doubtless the comparison is a good one. Amadeus after wards abdicated in favour of his son, and in 1439 was elected Pope, with the title of Felix V. This dignity he in turn resigned ten years later, and died in privacy in 1451. His career is certainly one of the most remarkable in all history ; and we could wish our author had been able to procure more interesting informa tion than he has concerning his character and habits. Piedmont was now for more than a century the theatre of incessant war. The expedition of Charles VIII. of France, though so disastrous to himself, was renewed by his successors, who eventually succeeded in making good their claims to Piedmont. Turin capitulated to the French on the 2nd of April, 1536, and remained in their possession nearly forty years. This, too, is a period we should like to have had eluci dated. The nature of the French Parliament established in 1537—the character and mode of life of the French governors, of whom the gallant and unfortunate Du Laugney, the best INIIMMNIONNIMMINOMMI=IIMMIN THE PRESS. soldier and worst courtier of his time, was one—are points which should certainly, we think, not have been, as they are, entirely passed over. Some materials, we should think, must exist for their illustration. With the peace of Château Cambresis (1559) the modern career of the Dukes of Savoy commenced. Their Italian possessions were restored to them, though, on certain flimsy pretexts, not evacuated by the French till 1574; and the young Duke Emanuel Philibert was one eminently calculated to restore the pro sperity of the country. Five Dukes of Savoy carry on the lino down to Victor Amadeus 11., who succeeded to the title in 1675. The war of the Succession which made him a king broke out, as the reader is aware, in 1702, and was concluded by the peace of Utrecht in 1713. By this treaty Sicily was given to the Duke of Savoy, with the title of king, but he exchanged it in 1718 for the Island of Sardinia ; and from this agreement dates the origin of the present monarchy of Sardinia. Though the events of this great war are disposed of by M. Gallenga in only nine pages, he has com pensated for this by giving some really valuable and thoughtful remarks on the Pied montese character in those days, the causes which had conspired to produce it, their relation to their dukes and kings, and their capacity for soldiers. It is in passages of this sort that our author shines most ; and we are sorry that the one in question is of that description that it will not bear to be broken up by extracts. The reader will find it in the third chapter of the third volume, p• 121-141. In the same chapter will also be found a no less useful account of the position of the Romish Church in Piedmont at that time. And we are glad to find that the first check given to the Jesuits by any European prince was by an edict of a king of Sardinia. " Victor Amadeus, the " ablest, the most warlike, and the most ambi " tious prince of his age, the greatest, after " Emanuel Philibert, of his whole race, " died at Moncalieri on the 31st of October, " 1732." He was succeeded by his son, Charles Emanuel, then in the twenty-ninth year of his age—who had, however, assumed the royal power two years before, at the time of his father's abdication. The remainder of the eighteenth century is well entitled by M. Gallenga " The Stagnation of Piedmont," yet the chapter so headed is one of the most in teresting iu the whole work. The following passage on Piedmontese diplomatists is Curious : Although the Princes of Savoy, like all able and active rulers jealous of their absolute authority, hardly ever gave up the post of honour, either at the head of their army or of their Cabinet, and had therefore almost the exclusive credit of all that was achic ved, either in peace or war, in their name, so that scarcely in the history of any country so rare a mention occurs of great warriors or influential statesmen, uncrowned, yet it is well known that Savoy had at all times brave generals and able Ministers, however comparatively obscure ; and unquestionably not a small share of the success of Victor Amadeus IT. and Charles Emanuel HI. was due to the transcendent, though latent skill of their Prime Ministers, the Marquis d'Ormea and Count Bogino. Where the talents of the subalterns were less eclipsed by the presence of the monarch—as in diplo matic transactions abroad—the Piedmonteso agents ap peared to better advantage, and the wisdom of the Savoy princes was especially manifest in the choice of their plenipotentiaries. Such were, for instance, the Marquis Annibale Maffei, of Verona, who represented Savoy in London at the treaty of Utrecht, and the Chevalier D'Ossorio, a Sicilian, who resided at the same Court during the Spanish succession, The tact, address, and polished manners of these and other Piedmontese envoys elicited the most flattering encomiums from such men as Mon teaquieu and Chesterfield. " In all Courts and congresses," says the latter, " where there are various foreign Ministers, those of the King of Sardinia are generally the ablest, the politest, and lea plus Mies." A lustre was at this epoch thrown upon Piedmontese diplomacy, which has not utterly faded at the present day. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, the monarch who sat on the throne of Savoy, Victor Amadeus 111., was not equal in capacity to his ancestors. After much foolish hesita tion, and unreasonable dread of his subjects, he threw himself into the arms of the allies. Austria however, for certain purposes of her own, was but lukewarm : In pursuance of such schemes, Austria, during the whole period of these transactions, purposely allowed Savoy to stand her own ground as she best could, with her unaided forces ; nor was she very active in her support even after the attainment of her aim. The troops sent to co-operate with the Piedmontese were in small numbers and of an inferior description of raw recruits, and she Insisted upon her own generale over the united a war began clearl: generale, either treachery, abandoned sive anxiety to cover The above passage is remarkable. " From the abdication of Charles Emanuel " 1V.," says Mr. Gallenga, " in 1798, to the re " storation of his brother Victor Emanuel 1., " in 1814, the history of Piedmont is a mere " blank." The whole of Italy was annexed to the French empire, and a portion of Piedmont was incorporated in the Cisalpine republic. But in 1814 the monarchy of Sardinia was restored and Genoa added to its continental dominions. Now came an age of violent re action—kings who would in other days have been gentle and liberal, were now fiercely anti-popular, and the result was shown in a very few years by simultaneous risings in Spain and Italy. Victor Emanuel abdicated, and was succeeded by Charles Felix, a strict absolutist, but not a tyrannical ruler. He cared for nothing but his opera-box and his dinner, and died in 1831, without exciting either the joy or the regret of his subjects. But during these years great changes had been silently preparing. The new king, Charles Albert, applied to Louis Philippe, in the first year of his reign, to know if he would support him in case he gave his people a constitution. Here is his reply—" He was sufficiently plagued " and worried with his own charter at home, " without taking upon himself the champion " ship of similar institutions abroad." In less than twenty years, however, it mattered little 1 who was protected by Louis Philippe or not. The Revolution of '4B found in Charles a ready adherent, and six days after the Austrians had been driven from Milan he crossed the Ticino and proclaimed a national war. What followed, we need not repeat here —but we will conclude our notice with some extracts from M. Gallenga on the condition of things in Piedmont in this present year, 1855: Piedmont has seven archbishops, thirty-four bishops, seventeen abbeys and priories, 1,417 canonises. Its forty one prelates enjoy a revenue of 1,012,742 francs, nearly equal to the stipend of all the prelacy of France ; ten tunes as large as that of all the Belgian prelacy. There are Piedmonteae bishops whost revenue is above 100,000 francs ; that is, double the stipend allowed to the French or Belgian primate, and equal to that of all the Belgian prelates put together. The revenue of cathedral and col legiate chapters in Piedmont is 1,09:,155 francs; it ex ceeds nearly by one-half that of France, and is sixteen times larger than that of all the chapters of Belgium. Piedmont has, besides, 71 monastic orders, 604 religious houses, 8,563 monks and nuns, with an acknowledged revenue of 2,282,551 francs. • • • • • The seizure of Church property, and the appropria tion of the whole or part of it to even the most laudable secular purposes, was not to be thought of. The Sardinian Government nevertheless determined to have a hand in it, to regulate its administration, its equitable dis tribution. It was impossible to lose sight of the great fact that 2,540 Piedmontese pariah priests had an income of less than 500 francs : in order to provide them with share sub sistence, by means of supplementary pensions (rongrue), the State had to bear the burden of 925,412 franca yearly • and it was charged besides with other purely ecclesiastical expenses. Adding other burdens which fell on the pro vinces and Comuni for the support of the Church, it ap pears that the nation bore the charge of above five millions for mere ecclesiastical purposes. All this for the benefit of a Church whose revenue exceeded one-tenth of that of the whole landed property in the kingdom ; a Church whose bishops, canons, &c., revelled in a wealth vastly above that which is deemed a competency for similar dignitaries in other Catholic cum. munities It was resolved that the Church should at least main tain itself—that it should supply the wants of its poorer pastors : such was the main aim of the bill presented to the Chambers by the Cavour-Battazzi Ministry, on the 28th ofNovember, 1854. The object of the law was twofold. Directly, it was meant to tax the wealthier clergy for the support of the more needy. From archbishops, bishops, abbots, canons, and the best-endowed parish priests whose re%.:lue was above a certain specified itmottnt, one-third of the surplus was to be taken yearly ; but as the produce of this tax, or quota, was deemed insufficient for the exigencies of the Church, Government proposed—it was its indirect object, avowedly —the suppression of some of the convents, and the con fiscation of their goods. • • ••• Sothis in the main the measure which, under the name of " Convent Law," was finally adopted by the Sardinian Parliament on the 29th of May, 1655. • • • • Cavour, on the contrary, was at heart an aristocrat, a hater pr4fani trulgi, one of the wealthiest men in Piedmont 1147 Is always wielding the supreme command armies, so that, when the fortunes of the •ly to turn against the allies, the imperial r from their blindness or from wilful doued the defence of the Alps, in an exces• cover the Milanese. 1