The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-04 00:00:00

FRENCH POLICY IN ITALY.

(Front the Journal des Debuts.)

The manifesto published by the Emperor on
opening the campaign of 1859, said, " Italy must
be free from the Alps to thr., Adriatic." This pro-
gramme could not be entirely carried out. The
Emperor himself, at St. Cloud, expressed his regret
on that account, and admitted that many generous
hopes had been disappointed. Yet it was not in
vain that the purest blood of France flowed on the
battlefields of Marignan, Magenta, and Solferino..
If the war did not free Italy from the Alps to the
Adriatic, it nevertheless effected a great result—
greater, perhaps, than was believed. France restored
to Italy self-eansciousness and freedom of move-
ment ; it burst the bonds that held her
captive, and bade her rise and walk.
Such is the way in which the programme of
1859 has been carried out further than is thought.
if the war has not liberated the whole of
Italy in a direct way, it has put her into a condi-
tion for liberating herself, and in the month of
March, 1860, the Emperor could say in his message,
"Italy is on the eve of freely constituting herself."
The programme of Villafranca was quite different.
It was a project of Italian confederation, of which
the Pope was to have the honorary presidency, and
into which 'Venetia was to enter. This project
at that period might appear specious enough.
In the opinion of many persons Italian unity was
a chimera; the Italians were still enjoying that
ancient reputation, according to which they are
only fit for devouring one another, and in virtue of
their history they were not deemed capable of any-
thing but forming a collection of petty nationali-
ties, each of which required a foreign protector.
Italy has preferred being one great nation; she has
triumphed over her reputation, her history, forgot-
ten her old divisions, sacrified even her dearest his-
torical traditions, and the particular nationalities
have preferred abdicating freely into the hands of
an Italian King than retaining a nominal indepen-
dence, which made them the prey of every foreign
intervention.
Since that time, it is the unity which has become
a reality, and it is the federation that has become
a chimera. This federation we believed an impos-
sibility when it was proposed ; it is sufficient to say
what we think of it now. Yesterday it had reason
against it ; to-day it has against it both reason and
events.

An Italian confederation would be at once con-'
trary to the interests of Italy and those of France.
A confederation to which Austria would have free
entrance through the means of Venetia under the
hybrid form of an Austro-Italian State, and in
which it would be sure through its alliances of
having the preponderance, would create for Italy a
state of things ten times worse than she was in
before the war.. For if, before the war, Austria was
paramount at nearly all the Italian courts, that was
not merely through family alliances or in virtue of
those treaties of 1815, which France was obliged to
submit to, but also through private treaties or
secret ones, to which Europe had given no legal
sanction. In a federation sanctioned by treaties, by
public European right, she would have been, she
would be, the fatally preponderant power of Italy.
She would enter it not only with her own strength
and fortresses, but also with the powers which the
princes, her allies, her vassals, her satellites, almost
her subjects, would hasten to place in her hands.
So that Piedmont, which before the war was alone
but free, would. be after the victory annexed to an
Austrian diet and swamped in a foreign majority.
The same reasons that are valid for Italy are
good for France. In the present state of things,
when Austria, a foreign power, wishes to meddle
with Italian affairs, France has the right of oppos-
ing it, or at all events of taking her own guaran-
tees against this intervention; but if Austria, an
Italian power, were to cause such or such policy to
prevail in an assembly recognised by Europe and
~ranee herself, where would be France's right?
Where would be her remedy ? And such would
be all that Piedmont and France would have gained
by the war—Piedmont to find herself with one
vote against four or five in a Germano-Italian diet,
and France to have confronting her a new Germanic
confederation, under the honorary presidency of
the Holy Father, and the virtual presidency of his
apostolic Majesty. It is only needful to put the
question to obtain its solution.
If, then, this project of confederation was thought
of elsewhere, it would not be France that would
have to be charged with its realisation, but Austria.
And in fact we quietly see plans set forth, the
of which would be nothing less than to make
Austria an instrument of general restoration in
Italy.
The plan is simple. It is still agreed upon that

the Italians will lie sure to ruin theinselvesby their
own faults. They have done nothing,' yet that way,
it is true, but the idea is deeply rooted in many
minds, from which it can never be extirpated. On
this hypothesis, Austria being provoked returns
with all her forces into Italy; she takes care not
to touch Lombardy, which she ceded to France,'
and which is preserved by the treaty of Zurich.
But she goes beyond; she re-establishes the Grand
Dukes at Florence, the authority of the Holy See
in the Roman States, and King Francis 11. at.
.7.,Taples ; then, at the close of this brilliant cam-
paign, there is brought up on the green table of a
a congress the project of confederation.
And during that time what is France doing P
France is collecting herself; as Russia said, France
mounts guard for Lombardy, which is a pledge for
the cession of Nice and Savoy, and quietly regards
Austria manipulating the rest of Italy. First of
all, there is in this hypothesis an error as to fact.
The cession of Nice and Savoy to France was not a
compensation for the cession of Lombardy to Pied-
mont. It was not by reason of the annexation of
Lombardy, but that of Central Italy to Piedmont,
that the Emperor demanded a re-establishment of
the equilibrium of the frontiers. The Emperor said
in his message last year on the Ist of March—" In
the presence of this transformation of Northern
Italy, which gives to a powerful state all the passes
of the Alps, it was my duty, for the safety of our
frontiers, to demand the French slopes of the
mountains;" and, in the explanations exchanged
on this head between the governments of France
and England, M. Thouvcnel said to Lord
Cowley, "It was possible that France and
Sardinia had contemplated before the war, as the
consequence of certain eventualities, the cession of
Savoy and Nice to France, but that those eventua-
lities had not occurred at the conclusion of the
peace." He added that enlarged alone by Lorn•
bardy, and a member of an Italian confederation,
Sardinia was not powerful enough to make France
uneasy, but that since then everything had changed
its aspect, and that as England herself encouraged
the annexation of Central Italy to Sardinia, this
annexation compelled France to rectify her fron-
tiers.
If, then, people wish to talk about pledge, gua-
rantee, indemnity, it is not as compensation for
Lombardy, but as a corollary to the annexation of
Tuscany and the Romagna, that Nice and Savoy
were ceded to France.
But this is reducing a grand question of general
policy to miserable proportions. To imagine that
France is going to let Austria do all she likes in Italy
on the simple condition of respecting Lombardy, is
the same thing as to say that France waged the
war of 1859 for the Platonic satisfaction of gratify-
ing Sardinia with anew province. What ! France
has carried on the war, that great war, caused the
death of thousands of men and shed her best blood,
has sport hundreds of millions, alarmed Europe,
and conjured up the spectre of coalitions, merely
for the sake of
1-ing the leaf of the artichoke
for the house of Savoy. '+s, other ideas, other
No—there were other resu.,. -var. We have
principles at the bottom of that •
• -n not only
already said it, that war was a revoluti...
• ect
in Italy's condition, but also in Europe's. Its -
was, and so ought to be its result, to withdraw
Italy from the exclusive domination of Austria. In
Tuscany, at Parma, Modena, Bologna, Rome,
Naples, everywhere except at Turin, Austria was
all-powerful, and reigned by her vassals, great and
small. The war of 1859 was made to liberate Italy;
it was for these reasons of general policy, and not
even for the secondary reasons of rectifying the
frontiers, that France made the Italian campaign.
The equilibrium of Europe, that equilibrium so
much talked of, was vitiated by the exclusive pre-
ponderance of Austria in Italy ; the late war re-
stored the balance, and in this sense it was a mea-
sure of order.
In delivering the Peninsula from foreign domi-
nation France did not wish to substitute another
in its place. She does not wish Italy to remain an
Austrian province, but she does not demand that
Italy should become a French province. Let Italy
be Italian, that is all that We require. But the
work which France has inaugurated and Italy is
accomplishing under her protection, this work
would be destroyed if Austria were permitted to
realise herself the programme of Villafranca. For
the confederation could not be now established un-
less by the intervention of Austria. It is not
France who will go and seek the Grand Dukes at
Vienna for replacing them on their thrones ; it is
not France who will send an army of occupation
into the Romagnas to re-establish there a form of
government and a legislation that have for ever
fallen; it is not France that will conduct back the
King Francis 11. to ,Naples. The confederation
would now be merely an Austrian restoration
effected against France, and which would make
Austria twice stronger in Italy than she was before
the battles that she lost. It was not for this that
France gained, them.