The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-06 00:00:00

M. DE LAMARTINE UPON ITALY.

M. DE LAMARTINE in the present number of his
"Cours Familier" has stated at length his intended
policy towards Italy in '4B had the French Provi-
sional Government lasted. He defends the Pro-
visional Government of '4B from the charge of
having neglected Italy, and says that it formed " the
army of the Alps," in readiness for an intervention.
Previous to the battle of Novara, "sixty thousand
men placed en echellon from Lyons to the frontier
of the Var were intended,
in the first place, to be ready to enter Piedmont at the
first sign of danger to that power; in the second, to be
ready to repress the religious, civil, socialist, and dema-
gogic agitations which might break out at any moment in
the south of France, more impulsive than the north, at
Lyons, at Avignon, at Marseilles, at Toulon, throughout
the whole basin of the Saone and the Rhone.

Our army (he goes on to say), was meant to descend
from the Alps into Piedmont, to cover that kingdom, to
rally the fragments of the gallant Piedmontese army, to
make face to the Austrians, and to fight, if it was neces-
sary to fight, for the evacuation and independence of the
whole Peninsula.

At that time Austria, which had"no existence except
in her single army in Italy, had no notion of putting
all to the hazard of a single battle :
She thought only of the procuring for herself honour-
able conditions of retreat. She herself proposed to nego-
tiate for the retreat to the foot of the Tyrol; in return for
the evacuation of Lombard Italy, she asked only for the
payment by Italy of her Italian debt. In such extremities
there is little doubt but that 100,0110 French covering
60,000 Piedmontese in the plains of Piedmont would have
achieved, by their mere presence, or by the prestige of
their name, the freedom of Italy.
M. de Lamartine then indicates his views of Italian
independence :
We have not the secrets of fate, but we may assert that
we should have had what France would have advised, and
what is consistent with the old constitution of five or six
Italies—namely, a united patriotic confederation of all
these Italics under their various political character, and
under the protecting mediation of France. The national
and military union of the political diversities would have
been somewhat analogous to the Hellenic confederation of
the towns, kingdoms, republics of the Peloponnesus, and
the islands under the protection of the Macedonian pha-
lanxes. No doubt there would have been agitations, blind
restlessness, anomalies, inexperience, collisions, rivalries,
excess in attack, excess in resistance ; bat the active armed
mediation of France wculd have been a dictatorship of
common safety—accepted from necessity until the time
when this amplivetyony of allies could le replaced by the
amphyctyony of the Italians established and armed in
their own towns. Since the middle ages Italy is more
municipal than national ; a municipal confederation is the
necessary form of its constitution.

Such were my thoughts on Italy. I know that they will
seem offensive to those Italians who urged the impractic-
able scheme of a union without bond, and an emancipa-
tion without emancipators. My duty was not to flatter
Italy, but to save her. I did not flatter her. I did not
excite the unseasonable risings of 1848. I call to witness
her ambassador and her patriots of that day. Let them
say woether I did not use my sincere efforts to turn sante
Charles Albert from his scheme of aggression, its
which I foresaw his destruction ?

Hut, reply the Italians, embittered by exile ; but, say the
radicals of the revolutionary war in France, wherefore did
not the army of the Alps go down into Italy after the defeat
of Charles Albert, to assume that noble part of armed
mediator, or of a combatant for Italy, which you had de-
signed for it at its creation, and which you had put off until
the hour when Piedmont should be invaded by an Austrian
army ? Alas! it is not I who must answer this ;itis a
date full of sadness. The day on which the defeat of
Charles Albert was foreseen at Paris was the day when the
order of march for the army of the Alps was without a
moment's hesitation drawn up by the Government of the
republic.
The fatal communist or democratical insurrection of
June involved the resignation of the Government. Whilst
the Government fought in the streets of Paris for the
safety of the republic and of the Assembly; whilst it
triumphed through the army which it had prepared by
the general which it had appointed by its own hand.,
being itself both leader and soldier, exposing its life
to the tire in order to defend the national represet•
tation, that same national representation—the peopl,
conceived the odious suspicion of a secret complicity a ith
it; enemies, and hastily demanded back from it the ex, en•
tive power, in order to confer it upon a dictator as patriotic,
bat not mote devoted to France. The fatal coincidence of
the battle of Paris, with the defeat of Piedmont, entombed
in the same abyss all the plans and all the dreams. A
stranger since that day to the Government, I know not
what were the thoughts and the necessities of the IRMO.

SEPT. 6, 1856.

Lye Governments of the republic in regard to Italy. All
I can assert is, that the events of June, notwithstanding
their importance, would not have hindered me from send-
ing the army of the Alps down into Piedmont.