Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 1

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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 1 - "Italy" to "Jacobite Church"
Author: Various
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 1 - "Italy" to "Jacobite Church"" ***

Transcriber's notes:

(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
underscore, like C_n.

(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.

(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
paragraphs.

(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
inserted.

(5) [root] stands for the root symbol; [alpha], [beta], etc. for greek
letters.

(6) The following typographical errors have been corrected:

ARTICLE ITALY: "The secret societies, such as the Carbonari, the
Adelfi and the Bersaglieri d'America, which flourished in Romagna,
replied to these persecutions by assassinating the more brutal
officials and spies." 'and' amended from 'ans'.

ARTICLE ITALY: "... and on the 30th attempted to capture Rome by
surprise, but was completely defeated by Garibaldi, who might have
driven the French into the sea, had Mazzini allowed him to leave
the city." 'surprise' amended from 'suprise'.

ARTICLE IVORY, SIR JAMES: "... he abandoned all idea of the church,
and in 1786 he became an assistant-teacher of mathematics and
natural philosophy in a newly established academy at Dundee."
'philosophy' amended from 'philosoghy'.

ARTICLE IVORY: "Crucifixes were turned out in enormous numbers,
some of not inconsiderable merit, but, for the most part, they
represent anatomical exercises varying but slightly from a pattern
of which a celebrated one attributed to Faistenberger may be taken
as a type." 'attributed' amended from 'atributed'.

ARTICLE JACKSON, FREDERICK GEORGE: "On his return, he was given the
command of the Jackson-Harmsworth Arctic expedition (1894-1897),
which had for its objective the general exploration of Franz Josef
Land." 'expedition' amended from 'expediton'.

ARTICLE JACKSON, HELEN MARIA: "American poet and novelist, who
wrote under the initials of 'H. H.' (Helen Hunt), was born in
Amherst, Massachusetts, on the 18th of October 1831 ..." 'initials'
amended from 'intials'.

ARTICLE JACOBINS, THE: "The constituency to which the club was
henceforth responsible, and from which it derived its power, was in
fact the peuple bête of Paris; the sans-culottes--decayed lackeys,
cosmopolitan ne'er-do-wells, and starving workpeople--who crowded
its tribunes. " 'wells' amended from 'weels'.

ARTICLE JACOBITE CHURCH: "... and lived there fifteen years.
Justinian during those years imprisoned, deprived or exiled most of
the recalcitrant clergy of Syria, Mesopotamia, Cilicia, Cappadocia,
and the adjacent regions." 'lived' amended from 'livid'.

THE

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

ELEVENTH EDITION

FIRST edition, published in three volumes, 1768-1771.
SECOND " " ten " 1777-1784.
THIRD " " eighteen " 1788-1797.
FOURTH " " twenty " 1801-1810.
FIFTH " " twenty " 1815-1817.
SIXTH " " twenty " 1823-1824.
SEVENTH " " twenty-one " 1830-1842.
EIGHTH " " twenty-two " 1853-1860.
NINTH " " twenty-five " 1875-1889.
TENTH " ninth edition and eleven
supplementary volumes, 1902-1903.
ELEVENTH " published in twenty-nine volumes, 1910-1911.

in all countries subscribing to the Bern Convention

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS
of the
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

_All rights reserved_

THE

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF
ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XV
ITALY to KYSHTYM

New York

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
342 Madison Avenue

VOLUME XV, SLICE I

Italy to Jacobite Church

ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:

ITALY JABLONSKI, DANIEL ERNST
ITEM JABORANDI
ITHACA (Greece) JACA
ITHACA (New York, U.S.A.) JACAMAR
ITINERARIUM JAÇANÁ
ITIUS PORTUS JACINI, STEFANO
ITO, HIROBUMI JACK
ITRI JACKAL
ITURBIDE, AUGUSTIN DE JACKDAW
ITZA JACKSON, ANDREW
ITZEHOE JACKSON, CYRIL
IUKA JACKSON, FREDERICK GEORGE
IULUS JACKSON, HELEN MARIA
IVAN JACKSON, MASON
IVANGOROD JACKSON, THOMAS
IVANOVO-VOZNESENSK JACKSON, THOMAS JONATHAN
IVARR, BEINLAUSI JACKSON, WILLIAM
IVIZA JACKSON (Michigan, U.S.A.)
IVORY, SIR JAMES JACKSON (Mississippi, U.S.A.)
IVORY JACKSON (Tennessee, U.S.A.)
IVORY COAST JACKSONVILLE (Florida, U.S.A.)
IVREA JACKSONVILLE (Illinois, U.S.A.)
IVRY-SUR-SEINE JACOB
IVY JACOB, JOHN
IWAKURA, TOMOMI JACOB BEN ASHER
IXION JACOB OF EDESSA
IXTACCIHUATL JACOB OF JÜTERBOGK
IYRCAE JACOB OF SERUGH
IZBARTA JACOBA
IZHEVSK JACOBABAD
IZMAIL JACOBEAN STYLE
IZU-NO-SHICHI-TO JACOBI, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH
J JACOBI, JOHANN GEORG
JA'ALIN JACOBI, KARL GUSTAV JACOB
JABIRU JACOBINS, THE
JABLOCHKOV, PAUL JACOBITE CHURCH

INITIALS USED IN VOLUME XI. TO IDENTIFY INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS,[1] WITH
THE HEADINGS OF THE ARTICLES IN THIS VOLUME SO SIGNED.

A. A. M.
Arthur Anthony Macdonell, M.A., Ph.D.

Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford. Keeper of
the Indian Institute. Fellow of Balliol College; Fellow of the
British Academy. Author of _A Vedic Grammar_; _A History of
Sanskrit Literature_; _Vedic Mythology_; &c.

Kalidasa.

A. B. D.
Rev. Andrew B. Davidson, D.D.

See the biographical article: DAVIDSON, A. B.

Job (_in part_).

A. C. S.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.

See the biographical article: SWINBURNE, A. C.

Keats (_in part_).

A. D.
Henry Austin Dobson, LL.D.

See the biographical article: DOBSON, H. AUSTIN.

Kauffmann, Angelica.

A. E. S.
Arthur Everett Shipley, M.A., F.R.S., D.Sc.

Master of Christ's College, Cambridge. Reader in Zoology,
Cambridge University. Joint-editor of the _Cambridge Natural
History_.

Kinorhyncha.

A. F. P.
Albert Frederick Polìard, M.A., F.R.Hist.Soc.

Professor of English History in the University of London. Fellow
of All Souls' College, Oxford. Assistant Editor of the _Dictionary
of National Biography_, 1893-1901. Lothian Prizeman (Oxford),
1892; Arnold prizeman, 1898. Author of _England under the
Protector Somerset_; _Henry VIII._; _Life of Thomas Cranmer_; &c.

Jewel, John.

A. G.
Major Arthur George Frederick Griffiths (d. 1908).

H.M. Inspector of Prisons, 1878-1896. Author of _The Chronicles of
Newgate_; _Secrets of the Prison House_; &c.

Juvenile Offenders (_in part_).

A. Go.*
Rev. Alexander Gordon, M.A.

Lecturer on Church History in the University of Manchester.

Joris;
Knipperdollinck.

A. G. D.
Arthur George Doughty, C.M.G., M.A., Litt.D., F.R.S.(Canada),
F.R.Hist.S.

Dominion Archivist of Canada. Member of the Geographical Board of
Canada. Author of _The Cradle of New France_; &c. Joint-editor of
_Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada_.

Joly de Lotbinière.

A. H. S.
Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce, Litt.D., LL.D.

See the biographical article: SAYCE, A. H.

Kassites.

A. H.-S.
Sir A. Houtum-Schindler. C.I.E.

General in the Persian Army. Author of _Eastern Persian Irak_.

Karun;
Kerman;
Khorasan;
Kishm.

A. H. Sm.
Arthur Hamilton Smith, M.A., F.S.A.

Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the
British Museum. Member of the Imperial German Archaeological
Institute. Author of _Catalogue of Greek Sculpture in the British
Museum_; &c.

Jewelry.

A. M. C.
Agnes Mary Clerke.

See the biographical article: CLERKE, A. M.

Kepler.

A. Ml.
Alfred Ogle Maskell, F.S.A.

Superintendent of the Picture Galleries, Indian and Colonial
Exhibition, 1887. Cantor Lecturer, 1906. Founder and first editor
of the _Downside Review_. Author of _Ivories_; &c.

Ivory.

A. N.
Alfred Newton, F.R.S.

See the biographical article: NEWTON, ALFRED.

Jabiru;
Jacamar;
Jaçana;
Jackdaw;
Jay;
Kakapo;
Kestrel;
Killdeer;
King-Bird;
Kingfisher;
Kinglet;
Kite;
Kiwi;
Knot.

A. T. I.
Alexander Taylor Innés, M.A., LL.D.

Scotch advocate. Author of _John Knox_; _Law of Creeds in
Scotland_; _Studies in Scottish History_; &c.

Knox, John.

A. W. H.*
Arthur William Holland.

Formerly Scholar of St John's College, Oxford. Bacon Scholar of
Gray's Inn, 1900.

Jacobites.

A. W. W.
Adolphus William Ward, LL.D., D.Litt.

See the biographical article: WARD, A. W.

Jonson, Ben.

B. F. S. B.-P.
Major Baden F. S. Baden-Powell, F.R.A.S., F.R.Met.S.

Inventor of man-lifting kites. Formerly President of Aeronautical
Society. Author of _Ballooning as a Sport_; _War in Practice_; &c.

Kite-flying (_in part_).

B. W. B.
Rev. Benjamin Wisner Bacon, A.M., D.D., Litt.D., LL.D.

Professor of New Testament Criticism and Exegesis in Yale
University. Formerly Director of American School of Archaeology,
Jerusalem. Author of _The Fourth Gospel in Research and Debate_;
_The Founding of the Church_; &c.

James, Epistle of;
Jude, The General Epistle of.

C. D. G.
Rev. Christian David Ginsburg, LL.D.

See the biographical article: GINSBURG, C. D.

Kabbalah (_in part_).

C. El.
Sir Charles Norton Edgcumbe Eliot, K.C.M.G., C.B., M.A., LL.D.,
D.C.L.

Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. Formerly Fellow of
Trinity College, Oxford. H.M.'s Commissioner and
Commander-in-Chief for the British East Africa Protectorate; Agent
and Consul-General at Zanzibar; Consul-General for German East
Africa, 1900-1904.

Kashgar (_in part_);
Khazars (_in part_);
Khiva (_in part_).

C. E. D. B.
C. E. D. Black.

Formerly Clerk for Geographical Records, India Office, London.

Kashgar (_in part_).

C. H. Ha.
Carlton Huntley Hayes, A.M., Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of History in Columbia University, New York
City. Member of the American Historical Association.

John XXI.;
Julius II.

C. H. T.*
Crawford Howell Toy.

See the biographical article: TOY, CRAWFORD HOWELL.

Job (_in part_).

C. J. J.
Charles Jasper Joly, F.R.S., F.R.A.S. (1864-1906).

Royal Astronomer of Ireland, and Andrews Professor of Astronomy in
the University of Dublin, 1897-1906. Fellow of Trinity College,
Dublin. Secretary of the Royal Irish Academy.

Kaleidoscope.

C. J. L.
Sir Charles James Lyall, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., LL.D. (Edin.).

Secretary, Judicial and Public Department, India Office. Fellow of
King's College, London. Secretary to Government of India in Home
Department, 1889-1894. Chief Commissioner, Central Provinces,
India, 1895-1898. Author of _Translations of Ancient Arabic
Poetry_; &c.

Kabir.

C. L. K.
Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, M.A., F.R.Hist.Soc., F.S.A.

Assistant Secretary to the Board of Education. Author of _Life of
Henry V._ Editor of _Chronicles of London_, and Stow's _Survev of
London_.

Kempe.

C. Mi.
Chedomille Mijatovich.

Senator of the Kingdom of Servia. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary of the King of Servia to the Court of St James's,
1895-1900, and 1902-1903.

Karageorge;
Karajich.

C. M. W.
Sir Charles Moore Watson, K.C.M.G., C.B.

Colonel, Royal Engineers. Deputy-Inspector-General of
Fortifications, 1896-1902. Served under General Gordon in the
Sudan, 1874-1875.

Jerusalem (_in part_).

C. R. B.
Charles Raymond Beazley, M.A., D.Litt., F.R.G.S., F.R.Hist.S.

Professor of Modern History in the University of Birmingham.
Formerly Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and University Lecturer
in the History of Geography. Lothian Prizeman, Oxford, 1889.
Lowell Lecturer, Boston, 1908. Author of _Henry the Navigator_;
_The Dawn of Modern Geography_, &c.

Jordanus.

C. S. C.
Caspar Stanley Clark.

Assistant in Indian Section, Victoria and Albert Museum, South
Kensington.

Kashi (_in part_).

C. We.
Cecil Weatherly.

Formerly Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford. Barrister-at-Law,
Inner Temple.

Knighthood: _Orders of_.

C. W. W.
Sir Charles William Wilson, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., F.R.S. (1836-1907).

Major-General, Royal Engineers. Secretary to the North American
Boundary Commission, 1858-1862. British Commissioner on the
Servian Boundary Commission. Director-General of the Ordnance
Survey, 1886-1894. Director-General of Military Education,
1895-1898. Author of _From Korti to Khartoum_; _Life of Lord
Clive_; &c.

Jerusalem (_in part_);
Jordan (_in part_);
Kurdistan (_in part_).

D. G. H.
David George Hogarth, M.A.

Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Fellow of Magdalen
College, Oxford. Fellow of the British Academy. Excavated at
Paphos, 1888; Naucratis, 1899 and 1903; Ephesus, 1904-1905;
Assiut, 1906-1907. Director, British School at Athens, 1897-1900.
Director, Cretan Exploration Fund, 1899.

Jebell;
Jordan (_in part_);
Karamania;
Kharput;
Konia.

D. H.
David Hannay.

Formerly British Vice-Consul at Barcelona. Author of _Short
History of the Royal Navy, 1217-1688_; _Life of Emilio Castelar_;
&c.

Junius;
Kanaris;
Keith, Viscount;
Keppel, Viscount.

E. B.
Edward Breck, M.A., Ph.D.

Formerly Foreign Correspondent of the _New York Herald_ and the
_New York Times_. Author of _Fencing_; _Wilderness Pets_;
_Sporting in Nova Scotia_; &c.

Kite-flying (_in part_).

E. Br.
Ernest Barker, M.A.

Fellow and Lecturer in Modern History, St John's College, Oxford.
Formerly Fellow and Tutor of Merton College. Craven Scholar, 1895.

Jordanes (_in part_).

E. F. S.
Edward Fairbrother Strange.

Assistant Keeper, Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.
Member of Council, Japan Society. Author of numerous works on art
subjects; Joint-editor of Bell's "Cathedral" Series.

Japan: _Art_ (_in part_);
Korin, Ogata;
Kyosai, Sho-Fu.

E. G.
Edmund Gosse, LL.D.

See the biographical article: GOSSE, EDMUND.

Jacobsen, Jens Peter;
Kalewala;
Kyd, Thomas.

E. Gr.
Ernest Arthur Gardner, M.A.

See the biographical article: _Gardner, Percy_.

Ithaca.

E. He.
Edward Heawood, M.A.

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Librarian of the Royal
Geographical Society, London.

Kenya;
Kilimanjaro.

E. H. B.
Sir Edward Herbert Bunbury, Bart., M.A., F.R.G.S. (d. 1895).

M.P. for Bury St Edmunds, 1847-1852. Author of _A History of
Ancient Geography_; &c.

Italy: _Geography_ (_in part_).

E. H. M.
Ellis Hovell Minns, M.A.

University Lecturer in Palaeography, Cambridge. Lecturer and
Assistant Librarian at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Formerly
Fellow of Pembroke College.

Iyrcae;
Kashubes.

Ed. M.
Eduard Meyer, Ph.D., D.Litt. (Oxon.), LL.D.

Professor of Ancient History in the University of Berlin. Author
of _Geschichte des Alterthums_; _Geschichte des alten Aegyptens_;
_Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme_.

Kavadh.

E. O.*
Edmund Owen, M.B., F.R.C.S., LL.D., D.Sc.

Consulting Surgeon to St Mary's Hospital, London, and to the
Children's Hospital, Great Ormond Street; late Examiner in Surgery
in the Universities of Cambridge, Durham and London. Author of _A
Manual of Anatomy for Senior Students_.

Joints: _Diseases and Injuries_;
Kidney Diseases (_in part_).

E. Tn.
Rev. Ethelred Luke Taunton (d. 1907).

Author of _The English Black Monks of St Benedict_; _History of
the Jesuits in England_.

Jesuits (_in part_).

F. By.
Captain Frank Brinkley, R.N.

Foreign Adviser to Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Tokyo. Correspondent of
_The Times_ in Japan. Editor of the Japan Mail. Formerly Professor
of Mathematics at Imperial Engineering College, Tokyo. Author of
_Japan_; &c.

Japan.

F. C. C.
Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare, M.A., D.Th. (Giessen).

Fellow of the British Academy. Formerly Fellow of University
College, Oxford. Author of The _Ancient Armenian Texts of
Aristotle_; _Myth, Magic and Morals_; &c.

Jacobite Church.

F. G. M. B.
Frederick George Meeson Beck, M.A.

Fellow and Lecturer in Classics, Clare College, Cambridge.

Kent, Kingdom of.

F. G. P.
Frederick Gymer Parsons, F.R.C.S., F.Z.S., F.R.Anthrop.Inst.

Vice-President, Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
Lecturer on Anatomy at St Thomas's Hospital and the London School
of Medicine for Women. Formerly Hunterian Professor at the Royal
College of Surgeons.

Joints: _Anatomy_.

F. L. L.
Lady Lugard.

See the biographical article: LUGARD, SIR F. J. D.

Kano;
Katagum.

F. LI. G.
Francis Llewellyn Griffith, M.A., Ph.D. (Leipzig), F.S.A.

Reader in Egyptology, Oxford University. Editor of the
Archaeological Survey and Archaeological Reports of the Egypt
Exploration Fund. Fellow of Imperial German Archaeological
Institute.

Karnak.

F. R. C.
Frank R. Cana.

Author of _South Africa from the Great Trek to the Union_.

Kharga.

Fr. Sy.
Friedrich Sciiwally.

Professor of Semitic Philology in the University of Giessen.

Koran (_in part_).

F. S. P,
Francis Samuel Philbrick, A.M., Ph.D.

Formerly Teaching Fellow of Nebraska State University, and Scholar
and Fellow of Harvard University. Member of American Historical
Association.

Jefferson, Thomas.

F. v. H.
Baron Friedrich von Hügel.

Member of Cambridge Philological Society; Member of Hellenic
Society. Author of _The Mystical Element of Religion_; &c.

John: _The Apostle_;
John, Gospel of St.

F. W. R.*
Frederick William Rudler, I.S.O., F.G.S.

Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practical Geology, London,
1879-1902. President of the Geologists' Association, 1887-1889.

Jade;
Jargoon;
Jasper;
Kaolin.

G. A. Gr.
George Abraham Grierson, C.I.E., Ph.D., D.Litt.

Member of the Indian Civil Service, 1873-1903. In charge of the
Linguistic Survey of India, 1898-1902. Gold Medallist, Royal
Asiatic Society, 1909. Vice-President of the Royal Asiatic
Society. Formerly Fellow of Calcutta University. Author of _The
Languages of India_; &c.

Kashmiri.

G. E.
Rev. George Edmundson, M.A., F.R.Hist.S.

Formerly Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford. Ford's
Lecturer, 1909. Hon. Member, Dutch Historical Society, and Foreign
Member, Netherlands Association of Literature.

Jacoba.

G. F. Mo.
Rev. George Foot Moore.

See the biographical article: MOORE, GEORGE FOOT.

Jehovah.

G. G. Co.
George Gordon Coulton, M.A.

Birkbeck Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History, Trinity College,
Cambridge. Author of _Medieval Studies_; _Chaucer and his
England_; _From St Francis to Dante_; &c.

Knighthood and Chivalry.

G. H. Bo.
Rev. George Herbert Box, M.A.

Rector of Sutton Sandy, Beds. Formerly Hebrew Master, Merchant
Taylors' School, London. Lecturer in Faculty of Theology,
University of Oxford, 1908-1909. Author of _Translation of Book of
Isaiah_; &c.

John the Baptist;
Joseph (_New Testament_);
Jubilee, Year of (_in part_).

G. K.
Gustav Krüger.

Professor of Church History in the University of Giessen. Author
of _Das Papsttum_; &c.

Justin Martyr.

G. Mi.
Rev. George Milligan, D.D.

Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism in the University of
Glasgow. Author of _The Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews_;
_Lectures from the Greek Papyri_; &c.

James (_New Testament_);
Judas Iscariot.

G. Sa.
George Saintsbury, LL.D., D.C.L.

See the biographical article: SAINTSBURY, G. E. B.

Joinville.

G. S. L.
George Somes Layard.

Barrister-at-Law, Inner Temple. Author of _Charles Keene_;
_Shirley Brooks_; &c.

Keene, Charles S.

G. S. R.
Sir George Scott Robertson, K.C.S.I., D.C.L., M.P.

Formerly British Agent in Gilgit. Author of _The Kafirs of the
Hindu Kush_; _Chitral: the Story of a Minor Siege_. M.P. Central
Division, Bradford.

Kafiristan.

G. W. T.
Rev. Griffithes Wheeler Thatcher, M.A., B.D.

Warden of Camden College, Sydney, N.S.W. Formerly Tutor in Hebrew
and Old Testament History at Mansfield College, Oxford.

Jahiz;
Jarir Ibn 'Atiyya ul-Khatfl;
Jauhari;
Jawaliqì;
Jurjani;
Khalil Ibn Ahmad;
Khansa;
Kindi;
Kumait Ibn Zaid.

H. A. W.
Hugh Alexander Webster.

Formerly Librarian of University of Edinburgh. Editor of the
_Scottish Geographical Magazine_.

Java (_in part_).

H. Ch.
Hugh Chisholm, M.A.

Formerly Scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Editor of the
11th edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_; Co-editor of the
10th edition.

Joan of Arc (_in part_).

H. Cl.
Sir Hugh Charles Clifford, K.C.M.G.

Colonial Secretary, Ceylon. Fellow of the Royal Colonial
Institute. Formerly Resident, Pahang. Colonial Secretary, Trinidad
and Tobago, 1903-1907. Author of _Studies in Brown Humanity_;
_Further India_; &c. Joint-author of _A Dictionary of the Malay
Language_.

Johor.

H. C. H.
Horace Carter Hovey, A.M., D.D.

Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Geological Society of America, National Geographic Society and
Société de Spéléologie (France). Author of _Celebrated American
Caverns_; _Handbook of Mammoth Cave of Kentucky_, &c.

Jacobs Cavern.

H. C. R.
Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Bart.

See the biographical article: RAWLINSON, SIR H. C.

Kurdistan (_in part_).

H. De.
Hippolyte Delehaye, S.J.

Assistant in the compilation of the Bollandist publications:
_Analecta Bollandiana_ and _Acta sanctorum_.

Januarius, St;
Kilian, St.

H. M. C.
Hector Munro Chadwick, M.A.

Librarian and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. Reader in
Scandinavian, Cambridge University. Author of _Studies on
Anglo-Saxon Institutions_.

Jutes.

H. M. R.
Hugh Munro Ross.

Formerly Exhibitioner of Lincoln College, Oxford. Editor of _The
Times Engineering Supplement_. Author of _British Railways_.

Kelvin, Lord (_in part_).

H. M. V.
Herbert M. Vaughan, F.S.A.

Keble College, Oxford. Author of _The Last of the Royal Stuarts_;
_The Medici Popes_; _The Last Stuart Queen_.

James: _the Pretender_;
King's Evil.

H. W. C. D.
Henry William Carless Davis, M.A.

Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. Fellow of All Souls'
College, Oxford, 1895-1902. Author of _England under the Normans
and Angevins_; _Charlemagne_.

John, King of England;
John of Hexham.

H. W. S.
H. Wickham Steed.

Correspondent of _The Times_ at Vienna. Correspondent of _The
Times_ at Rome, 1897-1902.

Italy: _History_ (_F._).

H. Y.
Sir Henry Yule, K.C.S.I., C.B.

See the biographical article: YULE, SIR HENRY.

Kublai Khan.

I. A.
Israel Abrahams, M.A.

Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature in the University of
Cambridge Formerly President, Jewish Historical Society of
England. Author of _A Short History of Jewish Literature_; _Jewish
Life in the Middle Ages_; _Judaism_; &c.

Jacob ben Asher;
Jellinek;
Jews: _Dispersion to Modern Times_;
Joel;
Johanan Ben Zaceia;
Josippon;
Kalisch, Marcus;
Krochmal.

I. L. B.
Isabella L. Bishop.

See the biographical article: BISHOP, ISABELLA.

Korea (_in part_).

J. A. H
John Allen Howe.

Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practical Geology, London.
Author of _The Geology of Building Stones_.

Joints (_Geology_);
Jurassic;
Keuper;
Kimeridgian.

J. A. R.
Very Rev. Joseph Armitage Robinson, D.D.

Dean of Westminster. Fellow of the British Academy. Hon. Fellow of
Christ's College, Cambridge, and Norrisian Professor of Divinity
in the University. Author of _Some Thoughts on the Incarnation_;
&c.

Jesus Christ.

J. A. S.
John Addington Symonds, LL.D.

See the biographical article, SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON.

Italy: _History_ (C.).

J. Br.
Right Hon. James Bryce, D.C.L., D.Litt.

See the biographical article: BRYCE, JAMES.

Justinian I.

J. Bt.
James Bartlett.

Lecturer on Construction, Architecture, Sanitation, Quantities,
&c., at King's College, London. Member of Society of Architects.
Member of Institute of Junior Engineers.

Joinery.

J. B. A.
Joseph Beavington Atkinson.

Formerly art-critic of the _Saturday Review_. Author of _An Art
Tour in the Northern Capitals of Europe_; _Schools of Modern Art
in Germany_.

Kaulbach.

J. F.-K.
James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Litt.D., F.R.Hist.S.

Gilmour Professor of Spanish Language and Literature, Liverpool
University. Norman McColl Lecturer, Cambridge University. Fellow
of the British Academy. Member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
Knight Commander of the Order of Alphonso XII. Author of _A
History of Spanish Literature_; &c.

Juan Manuel, Don.

J. G. C. A.
John George Clark Anderson, M.A.

Censor and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford. Formerly Fellow of
Lincoln College; Craven Fellow, Oxford, 1896. Conington Prizeman,
1893.

Kastamuni.

J. G. Sc.
Sir James George Scott, K.C.I.E.

Superintendent and Political Officer, Southern Shan States. Author
of _Burma_; _The Upper Burma Gazetteer_.

Karen;
Karen-Ni;
Keng Tung.

J. Hn.
Justus Hashagen, Ph.D.

Privatdozent in Medieval and Modern History, University of Bonn.
Author of _Das Rheinland unter die französische Herrschaft_.

John, King of Saxony.

J. H. A. H.
John Henry Arthur Hart, M.A.

Fellow, Theological Lecturer and Librarian, St John's College,
Cambridge.

Jews: _Greek Domination_;
Josephus.

J. H. F.
John Henry Freese, M.A.

Formerly Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.

Janus;
Julian (_in part_).

J. H. R.
John Horace Round, M.A., LL.D. (Edin.).

Author of _Feudal England_; _Studies in Peerage and Family
History_, _Peerage and Pedigree_.

Knight-Service.

J. Hl. R.
John Holland Rose, M.A., Litt.D.

Lecturer on Modern History to the Cambridge University Local
Lectures Syndicate. Author of _Life of Napoleon I._; _Napoleonic
Studies_; _The Development of the European Nations_; _The Life of
Pitt_; &c.

Italy: _History_ (D.);
Josephine;
Junot.

J. Ja.
Joseph Jacobs, Litt.D.

Professor of English Literature in the Jewish Theological
Seminary, New York. Formerly President of the Jewish Historical
Society of England. Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of
History, Madrid. Author of _Jews of Angevin England_; _Studies in
Biblical Archaeology_, &c.

Jew, The Wandering.

J. J. L,*
Rev. John James Lias, M.A.

Chancellor of Llandaff Cathedral. Formerly Hulsean Lecturer in
Divinity and Lady Margaret Preacher, University of Cambridge.

Ketteler, Baron von.

J. Mt.
James Moffatt, M.A., D.D.

Jowett Lecturer, London, 1907. Author of _Historical New
Testament_; &c.

John, Epistles of.

J. N. K.
John Neville Keynes, M.A., D.Sc.

Registrary of the University of Cambridge. University Lecturer in
Moral Science. Secretary to the Local Examinations and Lectures
Syndicate. Formerly Fellow of Pembroke College. Author of _Studies
and Exercises in Formal Logic_; &c.

Jevons, William Stanley.

J. P. P.
John Percival Postgate, M.A., Litt.D.

Professor of Latin in the University of Liverpool. Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge. Fellow of the British Academy. Editor
of the _Classical Quarterly_. Editor-in-Chief of the _Corpus
Poetarum Latinorum_; &c.

Juvenal (_in part_).

J. P. Pe.
Rev. John Punnett Peters, Ph.D., D.D.

Canon Residentiary, P.E. Cathedral of New York. Formerly Professor
of Hebrew in the University of Pennsylvania. Director of the
University Expedition to Babylonia, 1888-1895. Author of _Nippur,
or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates_.

Kerbela;
Kerkuk;
Khorsabad.

J. R. B.
John Rose Bradford, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.P., F.R.S.

Physician to University College Hospital. Professor of Materia
Medica and Therapeutics, University College, London. Secretary of
the Royal Society. Formerly Member of Senate, University of
London.

Kidney Diseases (_in part_)

J. T. Be.
John Thomas Bealby.

Joint-author of Stanford's Europe. Formerly Editor of the
_Scottish Geographical Magazine_. Translator of Sven Hedin's
_Through Asia, Central Asia and Tibet_; &c.

Kalmuck;
Kaluga;
Kamchatka;
Kara-Kum;
Kars;
Kazañ;
Kerch;
Khingan;
Khiva;
Khokand;
Khotan;
Kiev;
Kronstadt;
Kubañ;
Kuen-Lun;
Kursk;
Kutais.

J. T. S.*
James Thomson Shotwell, Ph.D.

Professor of History in Columbia University, New York City.

Joan of Arc (_in part_).

J. V.*
Jules Viard.

Archivist at the National Archives, Paris. Officer of Public
Instruction. Author of _La France sous Philippe VI. de Valois_;
&c.

Jacquerie, The.

J. W. He.
James Wycliffe Headlam, M.A.

Staff Inspector of Secondary Schools under the Board of Education.
Formerly Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Professor of Greek
and Ancient History at Queen's College, London. Author of
_Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire_; &c.

Kossuth.

K.
Baron Dairoku Kikuchi, M.A., D.Sc., LL.D.

President of the Imperial University of Kyoto. President of
Imperial Academy of Japan. Emeritus Professor, Imperial
University, Tokio. Author of _Japanese Education_; &c.

Japan: _The Claim of Japan_.

K. S.
Kathleen Schlesinger.

Editor of the _Portfolio of Musical Archaeology_. Author of _The
Instruments of the Orchestra_; &c.

Jew's Harp;
Kettledrum;
Keyboard.

L.
Count Lützow, Litt.D. (Oxon.), D.Ph. (Prague), F.R.G.S.

Chamberlain of H.M. the Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia. Hon.
Member of the Royal Society of Literature. Member of the Bohemian
Academy, &c. Author of _Bohemia, a Historical Sketch_; _The
Historians of Bohemia_ (Ilchester Lecture, Oxford, 1904); _The
Life and Times of John Hus_; &c.

Jerome of Prague.

L. F. V.-H.
Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt, M.A., M.Inst.C.E. (1839-1907).

Formerly Professor of Civil Engineering at University College,
London. Author of _Rivers and Canals_; _Harbours and Docks_;
_Civil Engineering as applied in Construction_; &c.

Jetty.

L. J. S.
Leonard James Spencer, M.A.

Assistant in the Department of Mineralogy, British Museum.
Formerly Scholar of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Harkness
Scholar. Editor of the _Mineralogical Magazine_.

Jarosite.

L. C.
Rev. Lewis Campbell, D.C.L., LL.D.

See the biographical article: CAMPBELL, LEWIS.

Jowett.

L. D.*
Louis Duchesne.

See the biographical article: DUCHESNE, L. M. O.

John XIX.;
Julius I.

L. V.*
Luigi Villari.

Italian Foreign Office (Emigration Department). Formerly Newspaper
Correspondent in east of Europe. Italian Vice-Consul in New
Orleans, 1906; Philadelphia, 1907; Boston, U.S.A., 1907-1910.
Author of _Italian Life in Town and Country_; _Fire and Sword in
the Caucasus_; &c.

Italy: _History_ (E. _and_ G.).

M.
Lord Macaulay.

See the biographical article: MACAULAY, BARON.

Johnson, Samuel.

M. Br.
Margaret Bryant.

Keats (_in part_).

M. F.
Sir Michael Foster, K.C.B., D.C.L., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.

See the biographical article: FOSTER, SIR M.

Kölliker.

M. M. Bh.
Sir Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree.

Fellow of Bombay University. M.P. for N.E. Bethnal Green,
1895-1906. Author of _History of the Constitution of the East
India Company_; &c.

Jeejeebhoy.

M. O. B. C.
Maximilian Otto Bismarck Caspari, M.A.

Reader in Ancient History at London University. Lecturer in Greek
at Birmingham University, 1905-1908.

Justin II.

M. P.*
Leon Jacques Maxime Prinet.

Formerly Archivist to the French National Archives. Auxiliary of
the Institute of France (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences).

Joinville (_Family_);
Joyeuse;
Juge, Boffille de.

N. M.
Norman McLean, M.A.

Lecturer in Aramaic, Cambridge University. Fellow and Hebrew
Lecturer, Christ's College, Cambridge. Joint-editor of the larger
_Cambridge Septuagint_.

Jacob of Edessa;
Jacob of Serugh;
Joshua the Stylite.

N. V.
Joseph Marie Noel Valois.

Member of Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris.
Honorary Archivist at the Archives Nationales. Formerly President
of the Société de l'Histoire de France and the Société de l'École
de Chartes. Author of _La France et le grand schisme d'Occident_;
&c.

John XXIII.

O. H.*
Otto Hehner, F.I.C., F.C.S.

Public Analyst. Formerly President of Society of Public Analysts.
Vice-President of Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and
Ireland. Author of works on butter analysis; _Alcohol Tables_; &c.

Jams and Jellies.

O. J. R. H.
Osbert John Radcliffe Howarth, M.A.

Christ Church, Oxford. Geographical Scholar, 1901. Assistant
Secretary of the British Association.

Java (_in part_);
Korea (_in part_).

P. A.
Paul Daniel Alphandéry.

Professor of the History of Dogma, École pratique des Hautes
Études, Sorbonne, Paris. Author of _Les Idées morales chez les
hétérodoxes latines au début du XIII^e siècle_.

Joachim of Floris;
John XXII.

P. A. A.
Philip A. Ashworth, M.A., Doc.Juris.

New College, Oxford. Barrister-at-Law. Translator of H. R. von
Gneist's _History of the English Constitution_.

Jhering.

P. A. K.
Prince Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin.

See the biographical article: KROPOTKIN, P. A.

Kalmuck;
Kaluga;
Kamchatka;
Kara-Kum;
Kazañ;
Kerch;
Khingan;
Khokand;
Kiev;
Kronstadt;
Kubañ;
Kuen-Lun;
Kursk;
Kutais.

P. Gi.
Peter Giles, M.A., LL.D., Litt.D.

Fellow and Classical Lecturer of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and
University Reader in Comparative Philology. Formerly Secretary of
the Cambridge Philological Society. Author of _Manual of
Comparative Philology_.

J.
K.

P. G. T.
Peter Guthrie Tait.

See the biographical article: TAIT, PETER GUTHRIE.

Knot.

P. La.
Philip Lake, M.A., F.G.S.

Lecturer on Physical and Regional Geography in Cambridge
University. Formerly of the Geological Survey of India. Author of
_Monograph of British Cambrian Trilobites_. Translator and Editor
of Kayser's _Comparative Geology_.

Japan: _Geology_.

P. L. G.
Philip Lyttelton Gell, M.A.

Sometime Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford. Secretary to the
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1884-1897. Fellow of King's College,
London.

Khazars (_in part_).

P. Vi.
Paul Vinogradoff, D.C.L., LL.D.

See the biographical article: VLNOGRADOFF, PAUL.

Jurisprudence, Comparative.

R. A.*
Robert Anchel.

Archivist to the Département de l'Eure.

Kersaint.

R. Ad.
Robert Adamson, LL.D.

See the biographical article: ADAMSON, ROBERT.

Kant (_in part_).

R. A. S. M.
Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister, M.A., F.S.A.

St John's College, Cambridge. Director of Excavations for the
Palestine Exploration Fund.

Joppa;
Kerak.

R. A. W.
Robert Alexander Wahab, C.B., C.M.G., C.I.E.

Colonel, Royal Engineers. Formerly H.M. Commissioner, Aden
Boundary Delimitation, and Superintendent, Survey of India. Served
with Tirah Expeditionary Force, 1897-1898; Anglo-Russian Boundary
Commission, Pamirs, 1895; &c.

Kuwet.

R. F. L.
Rev. Richard Frederick Littledale, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L.
(1833-1890).

Author of _Religious Communities of Women in the Early Church_;
_Catholic Ritual in the Church of England_; _Why Ritualists do not
become Roman Catholics_.

Jesuits (_in part_).

R. G.
Richard Garnett, LL.D.

See the biographical article: GARNETT, RICHARD.

Krazewski.

R. H. C.
Rev. Robert Henry Charles, M.A., D.D., D.Litt. (Oxon.).

Grinfield Lecturer and Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Oxford and
Fellow of Merton College. Fellow of the British Academy. Formerly
Senior Moderator of Trinity College, Dublin. Author and Editor of
_Book of Enoch_; _Book of Jubilees_; _Assumption of Moses_;
_Ascension of Isaiah_; _Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs_; &c.

Jeremy, Epistle of;
Jubilees, Book of;
Judith, The Book of.

R. I. P.
Reginald Innes Pocock, F.Z.S.

Superintendent of the Zoological Gardens, London.

King-Crab.

R. J. M.
Ronald John McNeill, M.A.

Christ Church, Oxford. Barrister-at-Law. Formerly Editor of the
_St James's Gazette_, London.

Jeffreys, 1st Baron;
Keith: _Family_.

R. K. D.
Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas.

Formerly Keeper of Oriental Printed Books and MSS. at the British
Museum, and Professor of Chinese, King's College, London. Author
of _The Language and Literature of China_; &c.

Jenghiz Khan;
Julien.

R. L.*
Richard Lydekker, F.R.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S.

Member of the Staff of the Geological Survey of India, 1874-1882.
Author of _Catalogue of Fossil Mammals, Reptiles and Birds in the
British Museum_; _The Deer of all Lands_; _The Game Animals of
Africa_; &c.

Jerboa;
Kangaroo (_in part_).

R. N. B.
Robert Nisbet Bain (d. 1909).

Assistant Librarian, British Museum, 1883-1909. Author of
_Scandinavia, the Political History of Denmark, Norway and Sweden,
1513-1900_; _The First Romanovs, 1613-1725_; _Slavonic Europe, the
Political History of Poland and Russia from 1469 to 1796_; &c.

Ivan I.-VI.;
Jellaehieh;
John III.: _Sobieski_;
Juel, Jens;
Juel, Neils;
Kármán;
Kemeny, Baron;
Kisfaludy;
Kollontaj;
Koniecpolski;
Kosciuszko;
Kurakin, Prince.

R. Po.
René Poupardin, D. Ès L.

Secretary of the École des Chartes. Honorary Librarian at the
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Author of _Le Royaume de Provence
sous les Carolingiens_; _Recueil des chartes de Saint-Germain_;
&c.

John, Duke of Burgundy.

R. P. S.
R. Phené Spiers, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A.

Formerly Master of the Architectural School, Royal Academy,
London. Past President of Architectural Association. Associate and
Fellow of King's College, London. Corresponding Member of the
Institute of France. Editor of Fergusson's _History of
Architecture_. Author of _Architecture: East and West_; &c.

Jacobean Style.

R. S. C.
Robert Seymour Conway, M.A., D.Litt. (Cantab.).

Professor of Latin and Indo-European Philology in the University
of Manchester. Formerly Professor of Latin in University College,
Cardiff; and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Author of _The Italic Dialects_.

Italy: _History_ (A.).

S. A. C.
Stanley Arthur Cook, M.A.

Lecturer in Hebrew and Syriac, and formerly Fellow, Gonville and
Caius College, Cambridge. Editor for Palestine Exploration Fund.
Examiner in Hebrew and Aramaic, London University, 1904-1908.
Author of _Glossary of Aramaic Inscriptions_; _The Laws of Moses
and the Code of Hammurabi_; _Critical Notes on Old Testament
History_; _Religion of Ancient Palestine_; &c.

Jacob;
Jehoiakim;
Jehoram;
Jehoshaphat;
Jehu;
Jephthah;
Jerahmeel;
Jeroboam;
Jews: _Old Testament History_;
Jezebel;
Joab;
Joash;
Joseph: _Old Testament_;
Joshua;
Josiah;
Judah;
Judges, Book of;
Kabbalah (_in part_);
Kenites;
Kings, Books of.

St. C.
Viscount St Cyres.

See the biographical article: IDDESLEIGH, 1ST EARL OF.

Jansen;
Jansenism.

S. N.
Simon Newcomb, D.Sc., D.C.L.

See the biographical article: NEWCOMB, SIMON.

Jupiter: _Satellites_.

T. As.
Thomas Ashby, M.A., D.Litt. (Oxon.).

Director of British School of Archaeology at Rome. Formerly
Scholar of Christ Church, Oxford. Craven Fellow, 1897. Conington
Prizeman, 1906. Member of the Imperial German Archaeological
Institute.

Italy: _Geography and Statistics_; _History_ (B.);
Ivrea.

T. A. I.
Thomas Allan Ingram, M.A., LL.D.

Trinity College, Dublin.

Juvenile Offenders (_in part_).

T. A. J.
Thomas Athol Joyce, M.A.

Assistant in Department of Ethnography, British Museum. Hon. Sec.,
Royal Anthropological Institute.

Kavirondo.

T. F. C.
Theodore Freylinghuysen Collier, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of History, Williams College, Williamstown,
Mass., U.S.A.

Julius III.

T. H.
Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., LL.D.

See the biographical article: HODGKIN, T.

Jordanes (_in part_).

T. H. H.*
Sir Thomas Hungerford Holdich, K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., D.Sc., F.R.G.S.

Colonel in the Royal Engineers. Superintendent Frontier Surveys,
India, 1892-1898. Gold Medallist, R.G.S. (London), 1887. H.M.
Commissioner for the Perso-Beluc Boundary, 1896. Author of _The
Indian Borderland_; _The Gates of India_; &c.

Kabul;
Kalat;
Kandahar;
Kashmir;
Khyber Pass;
Kunar;
Kushk.

T. K.
Thomas Kirkup, M.A., LL.D.

Author of _An Inquiry into Socialism_; _Primer of Socialism_; &c.

Julian (_in part_).

T. K. C.
Rev. Thomas Kelly Cheyne, D.D.

See the biographical article: CHEYNE, T. K.

Jeremiah;
Joel (_in part_);
Jonah.

Th. N.
Theodor Nöldeke, Ph.D.

See the biographical article: NÖLDEKE, THEODOR.

Koran (_in part_).

T. Se.
Thomas Seccombe, M.A.

Balliol College, Oxford. Lecturer in History, East London and
Birkbeck Colleges, University of London. Stanhope Prizeman,
Oxford, 1887. Assistant Editor of _Dictionary of National
Biography_, 1891-1901. Author of _The Age of Johnson_.
Joint-author of _Bookman History of English Literature_; &c.

Johnson, Samuel.

T. Wo.
Thomas Woodhouse.

Head of the Weaving and Textile Designing Department, Technical
College, Dundee.

Jute.

T. W. R. D.
Thomas William Rhys Davids, LL.D., Ph.D.

Professor of Comparative Religion, Manchester. Professor of Pali
and Buddhist Literature, University College, London, 1882-1904.
President of the Pali Text Society. Fellow of the British Academy.
Secretary and Librarian of Royal Asiatic Society, 1885-1902.
Author of _Buddhism_; _Sacred Books of the Buddhists_; _Early
Buddhism_; _Buddhist India_; _Dialogues of the Buddha_; &c.

Jains;
Jataka;
Kanishka.

W. An.
William Anderson, F.R.C.S

Formerly Chairman of Council of the Japan Society. Author of _The
Pictorial Arts of Japan_; _Japanese Wood Engravings_; _Catalogue
of Chinese and Japanese Pictures in the British Museum_; &c.

Japan: _Art_ (_in part_).

W. A. B. C.
Rev. William Augustus Brevoort Coolidge, M.A., F.R.G.S., Ph.D.
(Bern).

Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Professor of English History,
St David's. College, Lampeter, 1880-1881. Author of _Guide to
Switzerland_; _The Alps in Nature and in History_, &c. Editor of
_The Alpine Journal_, 1880-1889.

Jenatsch, Georg;
Jungfrau;
Jura.

W. A. P.
Walter Alison Phillips, M.A.

Formerly Exhibitioner of Merton College and Senior Scholar of St
John's College, Oxford. Author of _Modern Europe_; &c.

Jacobins;
King;
Kriemhild;
Krüdener, Baroness von.

W. B.*
William Burton, M.A., F.C.S.

Chairman, Joint Committee of Pottery Manufacturers of Great
Britain. Author of _English Stoneware and Earthenware_; &c.

Kashi (_in part_).

W. Ba.
William Bacher, Ph.D.

Professor of Biblical Studies at the Rabbinical Seminary,
Buda-Pest.

Jonah, Rabbi;
Kimhi.

W. Be.
Sir Walter Besant.

See the biographical article: BESANT, SIR WALTER.

Jefferies.

W. F. C.
William Feilden Craies, M.A.

Barrister-at-Law, Inner Temple. Lecturer on Criminal Law at King's
College, London. Editor of Archbold's _Criminal Pleading_, 23rd
ed.

Jury.

W. F. D.
William Frederick Denning, F.R.A.S.

Gold Medal, R.A.S. President, Liverpool Astronomical Society,
1877-1878. Corresponding Fellow of Royal Astronomical Society of
Canada; &c. Author of _Telescopic Work for Starlight Evenings_;
_The Great Meteoric Shower_; &c.

Jupiter.

W. G.
William Garnett, M.A., D.C.L.

Educational Adviser to the London County Council. Formerly Fellow
and Lecturer of St John's College, Cambridge. Principal and
Professor of Mathematics, Durham College of Science,
Newcastle-on-Tyne. Author of _Elementary Dynamics_; &c.

Kelvin, Lord.

W. G. S.
William Graham Sumner.

See the biographical article: SUMNER, WILLIAM GRAHAM.

Jackson, Andrew.

W. H. Be.
William Henry Bennett, M.A., D.D., D.Litt.(Cantab.).

Professor of Old Testament Exegesis in New and Hackney Colleges,
London. Formerly Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Lecturer
in Hebrew at Firth College, Sheffield. Author of _Religion of the
Post-Exilic Prophets_; &c.

Japheth.

W. H. Di.
William Henry Dines, F.R.S.

Director of Upper Air Investigation for the English Meteorological
Office.

Kite-flying (_in part_).

W. H. F.
Sir William H. Flower, LL.D.

See the biographical article: FLOWER, SIR W. H.

Kangaroo (_in part_).

W. L. F.
Walter Lynwood Fleming, A.M., Ph.D.

Professor of History in Louisiana State University. Author of
_Documentary History of Reconstruction_; &c.

Knights of the Golden Circle;
Ku Klux Klan.

W. L.-W.
Sir William Lee-Warner, M.A., K.C.S.I.

Member of Council of India. Formerly Secretary in the Political
and Secret Department of the India Office. Author of _Life of the
Marquis of Dalhousie_; _Memoirs of Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wylie
Norman_; &c.

Jung Bahadur, Sir.

W. M. R.
William Michael Rossetti.

See the biographical article: ROSSETTI, DANTE G.

Kneller.

W. M. Ra.
Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, LL.D., D.C.L.

See the biographical article, RAMSAY, SIR W. M.

Jupiter (_in part_).

W. P. J.
William Price James.

Barrister-at-Law, Inner Temple. High Bailiff, Cardiff County
Court. Author of _Romantic Professions_; &c.

Kipling, Rudyard.

W. R. S.
William Robertson Smith, LL.D.

See the biographical article: SMITH, WILLIAM ROBERTSON.

Joel (_in part_);
Jubilee, Year of (_in part_).

W. W. F.*
William Warde Fowler, M.A.

Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Sub-rector, 1881-1904. Gifford
Lecturer, Edinburgh University, 1908. Author of _The City-State of
the Greeks and Romans_; _The Roman Festivals of the Republican
Period_; &c.

Juno;
Jupiter (_in part_).

W. W. R.*
William Walker Rockwell, Lic.Theol.

Assistant Professor of Church History, Union Theological Seminary,
New York.

Jerusalem, Synod of.

W. Y. S.
William Young Sellar, LL.D.

See the biographical article: SELLAR, W. Y.

Juvenal (_in part_).

PRINCIPAL UNSIGNED ARTICLES

Ivy. Jumping. Kansas. Ketones.
Jamaica. Juniper. Kent. Kildare.
Janissaries. Jurisprudence. Kentucky. Kilkenny.
Jaundice. Kaffirs. Kerry. Know Nothing Party.
Ju-Jutsu.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A complete list, showing all individual contributors, appears in
the final volume.

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XV

ITALY (_Italia_), the name[1] applied both in ancient and in modern
times to the great peninsula that projects from the mass of central
Europe far to the south into the Mediterranean Sea, where the island of
Sicily may be considered as a continuation of the continental
promontory. The portion of the Mediterranean commonly termed the
Tyrrhenian Sea forms its limit on the W. and S., and the Adriatic on the
E.; while to the N., where it joins the main continent of Europe, it is
separated from the adjacent regions by the mighty barrier of the Alps,
which sweeps round in a vast semicircle from the head of the Adriatic to
the shores of Nice and Monaco.

Boundaries.

_Topography._--The land thus circumscribed extends between the parallels
of 46° 40´ and 36° 38´ N., and between 6° 30´ and 18° 30´ E. Its
greatest length in a straight line along the mainland is from N.W. to
S.E., in which direction it measures 708 m. in a direct line from the
frontier near Courmayeur to Cape Sta Maria di Leuca, south of Otranto,
but the great mountain peninsula of Calabria extends about two degrees
farther south to Cape Spartivento in lat. 37° 55´. Its breadth is, owing
to its configuration, very irregular. The northern portion, measured
from the Alps at the Monte Viso to the mouth of the Po, has a breadth of
about 270 m., while the maximum breadth, from the Rocca Chiardonnet near
Susa to a peak in the valley of the Isonzo, is 354 m. But the peninsula
of Italy, which forms the largest portion of the country, nowhere
exceeds 150 m. in breadth, while it does not generally measure more than
100 m. across. Its southern extremity, Calabria, forms a complete
peninsula, being united to the mass of Lucania or the Basilicata by an
isthmus only 35 m. in width, while that between the gulfs of Sta Eufemia
and Squillace, which connects the two portions of the province, does not
exceed 20 m. The area of the kingdom of Italy, exclusive of the large
islands, is computed at 91,277 sq. m. Though the Alps form throughout
the northern boundary of Italy, the exact limits at the extremities of
the Alpine chain are not clearly marked. Ancient geographers appear to
have generally regarded the remarkable headland which descends from the
Maritime Alps to the sea between Nice and Monaco as the limit of Italy
in that direction, and in a purely geographical point of view it is
probably the best point that could be selected. But Augustus, who was
the first to give to Italy a definite political organization, carried
the frontier to the river Varus or Var, a few miles west of Nice, and
this river continued in modern times to be generally recognized as the
boundary between France and Italy. But in 1860 the annexation of Nice
and the adjoining territory to France brought the political frontier
farther east, to a point between Mentone and Ventimiglia which
constitutes no natural limit.

Towards the north-east, the point where the Julian Alps approach close
to the seashore (just at the sources of the little stream known in
ancient times as the Timavus) would seem to constitute the best natural
limit. But by Augustus the frontier was carried farther east so as to
include Tergeste (Trieste), and the little river Formio (Risano) was in
the first instance chosen as the limit, but this was subsequently
transferred to the river Arsia (the Arsa), which flows into the Gulf of
Quarnero, so as to include almost all Istria; and the circumstance that
the coast of Istria was throughout the middle ages held by the republic
of Venice tended to perpetuate this arrangement, so that Istria was
generally regarded as belonging to Italy, though certainly not forming
any natural portion of that country. Present Italian aspirations are
similarly directed.

The only other part of the northern frontier of Italy where the boundary
is not clearly marked by nature is Tirol or the valley of the Adige.
Here the main chain of the Alps (as marked by the watershed) recedes so
far to the north that it has never constituted the frontier. In ancient
times the upper valleys of the Adige and its tributaries were inhabited
by Raetian tribes and included in the province of Raetia; and the line
of demarcation between that province and Italy was purely arbitrary, as
it remains to this day. Tridentum or Trent was in the time of Pliny
included in the tenth region of Italy or Venetia, but he tells us that
the inhabitants were a Raetian tribe. At the present day the frontier
between Austria and the kingdom of Italy crosses the Adige about 30 m.
below Trent--that city and its territory, which previous to the treaty
of Lunéville in 1801 was governed by sovereign archbishops, subject only
to the German emperors, being now included in the Austrian empire.

While the Alps thus constitute the northern boundary of Italy, its
configuration and internal geography are determined almost entirely by
the great chain of the Apennines, which branches off from the Maritime
Alps between Nice and Genoa, and, after stretching in an unbroken line
from the Gulf of Genoa to the Adriatic, turns more to the south, and is
continued throughout Central and Southern Italy, of which it forms as
it were the backbone, until it ends in the southernmost extremity of
Calabria at Cape Spartivento. The great spur or promontory projecting
towards the east to Brindisi and Otranto has no direct connexion with
the central chain.

One chief result of the manner in which the Apennines traverse Italy
from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic is the marked division between
Northern Italy, including the region north of the Apennines and
extending thence to the foot of the Alps, and the central and more
southerly portions of the peninsula. No such line of separation exists
farther south, and the terms Central and Southern Italy, though in
general use among geographers and convenient for descriptive purposes,
do not correspond to any natural divisions.

1. _Northern Italy._--By far the larger portion of Northern Italy is
occupied by the basin of the Po, which comprises the whole of the
broad plain extending from the foot of the Apennines to that of the
Alps, together with the valleys and slopes on both sides of it. From
its source in Monte Viso to its outflow into the Adriatic--a distance
of more than 220 m. in a direct line--the Po receives all the waters
that flow from the Apennines northwards, and all those that descend
from the Alps towards the south, Mincio (the outlet of the Lake of
Garda) inclusive. The next river to the E. is the Adige, which, after
pursuing a parallel course with the Po for a considerable distance,
enters the Adriatic by a separate mouth. Farther to the N. and N.E.
the various rivers of Venetia fall directly into the Gulf of Venice.

There is no other instance in Europe of a basin of similar extent
equally clearly characterized--the perfectly level character of the
plain being as striking as the boldness with which the lower slopes of
the mountain ranges begin to rise on each side of it. This is most
clearly marked on the side of the Apennines, where the great Aemilian
Way, which has been the high road from the time of the Romans to our
own, preserves an unbroken straight line from Rimini to Piacenza, a
distance of more than 150 m., during which the underfalls of the
mountains continually approach it on the left, without once crossing
the line of road.

The geography of Northern Italy will be best described by following
the course of the Po. That river has its origin as a mountain torrent
descending from two little dark lakes on the north flank of Monte
Viso, at a height of more than 6000 ft. above the sea; and after a
course of less than 20 m. it enters the plain at Saluzzo, between
which and Turin, a distance of only 30 m., it receives three
considerable tributaries--the Chisone on its left bank, bringing down
the waters from the valley of Fenestrelle, and the Varaita and Maira
on the south, contributing those of two valleys of the Alps
immediately south of that of the Po itself. A few miles below Valenza
it is joined by the Tanaro, a large stream, which brings with it the
united waters of the Stura, the Bormida and several minor rivers.

More important are the rivers that descend from the main chain of the
Graian and Pennine Alps and join the Po on its left bank. Of these the
Dora (called for distinction's sake Dora Riparia), which unites with
the greater river just below Turin, has its source in the Mont
Genèvre, and flows past Susa at the foot of the Mont Cenis. Next comes
the Stura, which rises in the glaciers of the Roche Melon; then the
Orca, flowing through the Val di Locana; and then the Dora Baltea, one
of the greatest of all the Alpine tributaries of the Po, which has its
source in the glaciers of Mont Blanc, above Courmayeur, and thence
descends through the Val d'Aosta for about 70 m. till it enters the
plain at Ivrea, and, after flowing about 20 m. more, joins the Po a
few miles below Chivasso. This great valley--one of the most
considerable on the southern side of the Alps--has attracted special
attention, in ancient as well as modern times, from its leading to two
of the most frequented passes across the great mountain chain--the
Great and the Little St Bernard--the former diverging at Aosta, and
crossing the main ridges to the north into the valley of the Rhone,
the other following a more westerly direction into Savoy. Below Aosta
also the Dora Baltea receives several considerable tributaries, which
descend from the glaciers between Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.

About 25 m. below its confluence with the Dora, the Po receives the
Sesia, also a large river, which has its source above Alagna at the
southern foot of Monte Rosa, and after flowing by Varallo and Vercelli
falls into the Po about 14 m. below the latter city. About 30 m. east
of this confluence--in the course of which the Po makes a great bend
south to Valenza, and then returns again to the northward--it is
joined by the Ticino, a large and rapid river, which brings with it
the outflow of Lago Maggiore and all the waters that flow into it. Of
these the Ticino itself has its source about 10 m. above Airolo at the
foot of the St Gotthard, and after flowing above 36 m. through the Val
Leventina to Bellinzona (where it is joined by the Moësa bringing down
the waters of the Val Misocco) enters the lake through a marshy plain
at Magadino, about 10 m. distant. On the west side of the lake the
Toccia or Tosa descends from the pass of the Gries nearly due south to
Domodossola, where it receives the waters of the Doveria from the
Simplon, and a few miles lower down those of the Val d'Anzasca from
the foot of Monte Rosa, and 12 m. farther has its outlet into the
lake between Baveno and Pallanza. The Lago Maggiore is also the
receptacle of the waters of the Lago di Lugano on the east and the
Lago d'Orta on the west.

The next great affluent of the Po, the Adda, forms the outflow of the
Lake of Como, and has also its sources in the Alps, above Bormio,
whence it flows through the broad and fertile valley of the Valtellina
for more than 65 m. till it enters the lake near Colico. The Adda in
this part of its course has a direction almost due east to west; but
at the point where it reaches the lake, the Liro descends the valley
of S. Giacomo, which runs nearly north and south from the pass of the
Splügen, thus affording one of the most direct lines of communication
across the Alps. The Adda flows out of the lake at its south-eastern
extremity at Lecco, and has thence a course through the plain of above
70 m. till it enters the Po between Piacenza and Cremona. It flows by
Lodi and Pizzighettone, and receives the waters of the Brembo,
descending from the Val Brembana, and the Serio from the Val Seriana
above Bergamo. The Oglio, a more considerable stream than either of
the last two, rises in the Monte Tonale above Edolo, and descends
through the Val Camonica to Lovere, where it expands into a large
lake, called Iseo from the town of that name on its southern shore.
Issuing thence at its south-west extremity, the Oglio has a long and
winding course through the plain before it finally reaches the Po a
few miles above Borgoforte. In this lower part it receives the smaller
streams of the Mella, which flows by Brescia, and the Chiese, which
proceeds from the small Lago d'Idro, between the Lago d'Iseo and that
of Garda.

The last of the great tributaries of the Po is the Mincio, which flows
from the Lago di Garda, and has a course of about 40 m. from
Peschiera, where it issues from the lake at its south-eastern angle,
till it joins the Po. About 12 m. above the confluence it passes under
the walls of Mantua, and expands into a broad lake-like reach so as
entirely to encircle that city. Notwithstanding its extent, the Lago
di Garda is not fed by the snows of the high Alps, nor is the stream
which enters it at its northern extremity (at Riva) commonly known as
the Mincio, though forming the main source of that river, but is
termed the Sarca; it rises at the foot of Monte Tonale.

The Adige, formed by the junction of two streams--the Etsch or Adige
proper and the Eisak, both of which belong to Tirol rather than to
Italy--descends as far as Verona, where it enters the great plain,
with a course from north to south nearly parallel to the rivers last
described, and would seem likely to discharge its waters into those of
the Po, but below Legnago it turns eastward and runs parallel to the
Po for about 40 m., entering the Adriatic by an independent mouth
about 8 m. from the northern outlet of the greater stream. The waters
of the two rivers have, however, been made to communicate by
artificial cuts and canals in more than one place.

The Po itself, which is here a very large stream, with an average
width of 400 to 600 yds., continues to flow with an undivided mass of
waters as far as Sta Maria di Ariano, where it parts into two arms,
known as the Po di Maestra and Po di Goro, and these again are
subdivided into several other branches, forming a delta above 20 m. in
width from north to south. The point of bifurcation, at present about
25 m. from the sea, was formerly much farther inland, more than 10 m.
west of Ferrara, where a small arm of the river, still called the Po
di Ferrara, branches from the main stream. Previous to the year 1154
this channel was the main stream, and the two small branches into
which it subdivides, called the Po di Volano and Po di Primaro, were
in early times the two main outlets of the river. The southernmost of
these, the Po di Primaro, enters the Adriatic about 12 m. north of
Ravenna, so that if these two arms be included, the delta of the Po
extends about 36 m. from south to north. The whole course of the
river, including its windings, is estimated at about 450 m.

Besides the delta of the Po and the large marshy tracts which it
forms, there exist on both sides of it extensive lagoons of salt
water, generally separated from the Adriatic by narrow strips of sand
or embankments, partly natural and partly artificial, but having
openings which admit the influx and efflux of the sea-water, and serve
as ports for communication with the mainland. The best known and the
most extensive of these lagoons is that in which Venice is situated,
which extends from Torcello in the north to Chioggia and Brondolo in
the south, a distance of above 40 m.; but they were formerly much more
extensive, and afforded a continuous means of internal navigation, by
what were called "the Seven Seas" (Septem Maria), from Ravenna to
Altinum, a few miles north of Torcello. That city, like Ravenna,
originally stood in the midst of a lagoon; and the coast east of it to
near Monfalcone, where it meets the mountains, is occupied by similar
expanses of water, which are, however, becoming gradually converted
into dry land.

The tract adjoining this long line of lagoons is, like the basin of
the Po, a broad expanse of perfectly level alluvial plain, extending
from the Adige eastwards to the Carnic Alps, where they approach close
to the Adriatic between Aquileia and Trieste, and northwards to the
foot of the great chain, which here sweeps round in a semicircle from
the neighbourhood of Vicenza to that of Aquileia. The space thus
included was known in ancient times as Venetia, a name applied in the
middle ages to the well-known city; the eastern portion of it became
known in the middle ages as the Frioul or Friuli.

Returning to the south of the Po, the tributaries of that river on its
right bank below the Tanaro are very inferior in volume and importance
to those from the north. Flowing from the Ligurian Apennines, which
never attain the limit of perpetual snow, they generally dwindle in
summer into insignificant streams. Beginning from the Tanaro, the
principal of them are--(1) the Scrivia, a small but rapid stream
flowing from the Apennines at the back of Genoa; (2) the Trebbia, a
much larger river, though of the same torrent-like character, which
rises near Torriglia within 20 m. of Genoa, flows by Bobbio, and joins
the Po a few miles above Piacenza; (3) the Nure, a few miles east of
the preceding; (4) the Taro, a more considerable stream; (5) the
Parma, flowing by the city of the same name; (6) the Enza; (7) the
Secchia, which flows by Modena; (8) the Panaro, a few miles to the
east of that city; (9) the Reno, which flows by Bologna, but instead
of holding its course till it discharges its waters into the Po, as it
did in Roman times, is turned aside by an artificial channel into the
Po di Primaro. The other small streams east of this--of which the most
considerable are the Solaro, the Santerno, flowing by Imola, the
Lamone by Faenza, the Montone by Forlì, all in Roman times tributaries
of the Po--have their outlet in like manner into the Po di Primaro, or
by artificial mouths into the Adriatic between Ravenna and Rimini. The
river Marecchia, which enters the sea immediately north of Rimini, may
be considered as the natural limit of Northern Italy. It was adopted
by Augustus as the boundary of Gallia Cispadana; the far-famed Rubicon
was a trifling stream a few miles farther north, now called Fiumicino.
The Savio is the only other stream of any importance which has always
flowed directly into the Adriatic from this side of the Tuscan
Apennines.

The narrow strip of coast-land between the Maritime Alps, the
Apennines and the sea--called in ancient times Liguria, and now known
as the Riviera of Genoa--is throughout its extent, from Nice to Genoa
on the one side, and from Genoa to Spezia on the other, almost wholly
mountainous. It is occupied by the branches and offshoots of the
mountain ranges which separate it from the great plain to the north,
and send down their lateral ridges close to the water's edge, leaving
only in places a few square miles of level plains at the mouths of the
rivers and openings of the valleys. The district is by no means devoid
of fertility, the steep slopes facing the south enjoying so fine a
climate as to render them very favourable for the | growth of fruit
trees, especially the olive, which is cultivated in terraces to a
considerable height up the face of the mountains, while the openings
of the valleys are generally occupied by towns or villages, some of
which have become favourite winter resorts.

From the proximity of the mountains to the sea none of the rivers in
this part of Italy has a long course, and they are generally mere
mountain torrents, rapid and swollen in winter and spring, and almost
dry in summer. The largest and most important are those which descend
from the Maritime Alps between Nice and Albenga. The most considerable
of them are--the Roja, which rises in the Col di Tenda and descends to
Ventimiglia; the Taggia, between San Remo and Oneglia; and the Centa,
which enters the sea at Albenga. The Lavagna, which enters the sea at
Chiavari, is the only stream of any importance between Genoa and the
Gulf of Spezia. But immediately east of that inlet (a remarkable
instance of a deep landlocked gulf with no river flowing into it) the
Magra, which descends from Pontremoli down the valley known as the
Lunigiana, is a large stream, and brings with it the waters of another
considerable stream, the Vara. The Magra (Macra), in ancient times the
boundary between Liguria and Etruria, may be considered as
constituting on this side the limit of Northern Italy.

The Apennines (q.v.), as has been already mentioned, here traverse the
whole breadth of Italy, cutting off the peninsula properly so termed
from the broader mass of Northern Italy by a continuous barrier of
considerable breadth, though of far inferior elevation to that of the
Alps. The Ligurian Apennines may be considered as taking their rise in
the neighbourhood of Savona, where a pass of very moderate elevation
connects them with the Maritime Alps, of which they are in fact only a
continuation. From the neighbourhood of Savona to that of Genoa they
do not rise to more than 3000 to 4000 ft., and are traversed by passes
of less than 2000 ft. As they extend towards the east they increase in
elevation; the Monte Bue rises to 5915 ft., while the Monte Cimone, a
little farther east, attains 7103 ft. This is the highest point in the
northern Apennines, and belongs to a group of summits of nearly equal
altitude; the range which is continued thence between Tuscany and what
are now known as the Emilian provinces presents a continuous ridge
from the mountains at the head of the Val di Mugello (due north of
Florence) to the point where they are traversed by the celebrated
Furlo Pass. The highest point in this part of the range is the Monte
Falterona, above the sources of the Arno, which attains 5410 ft.
Throughout this tract the Apennines are generally covered with
extensive forests of chestnut, oak and beech; while their upper slopes
afford admirable pasturage. Few towns of any importance are found
either on their northern or southern declivity, and the former region
especially, though occupying a tract of from 30 to 40 m. in width,
between the crest of the Apennines and the plain of the Po, is one of
the least known and at the same time least interesting portions of
Italy.

2. _Central Italy._--The geography of Central Italy is almost wholly
determined by the Apennines, which traverse it in a direction from
about north-north-east to south-south-west, almost precisely parallel
to that of the coast of the Adriatic from Rimini to Pescara. The line
of the highest summits and of the watershed ranges is about 30 to 40
m. from the Adriatic, while about double that distance separates it
from the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west. In this part of the range almost
all the highest points of the Apennines are found. Beginning from the
group called the Alpi della Luna near the sources of the Tiber, which
attain 4435 ft., they are continued by the Monte Nerone (5010 ft.),
Monte Catria (5590), and Monte Maggio to the Monte Pennino near Nocera
(5169 ft.), and thence to the Monte della Sibilla, at the source of
the Nar or Nera, which attains 7663 ft. Proceeding thence southwards,
we find in succession the Monte Vettore (8128 ft.), the Pizzo di Sevo
(7945 ft.), and the two great mountain masses of the Monte Corno,
commonly called the Gran Sasso d'Italia, the most lofty of all the
Apennines, attaining to a height of 9560 ft., and the Monte della
Maiella, its highest summit measuring 9170 ft. Farther south no very
lofty summits are found till we come to the group of Monti del Matese,
in Samnium (6660 ft.), which according to the division here adopted
belongs to Southern Italy. Besides the lofty central masses enumerated
there are two other lofty peaks, outliers from the main range, and
separated from it by valleys of considerable extent. These are the
Monte Terminillo, near Leonessa (7278 ft.), and the Monte Velino near
the Lake Fucino, rising to 8192 ft., both of which are covered with
snow from November till May. But the Apennines of Central Italy,
instead of presenting, like the Alps and the northern Apennines, a
definite central ridge, with transverse valleys leading down from it
on both sides, in reality constitute a mountain mass of very
considerable breadth, composed of a number of minor ranges and groups
of mountains, which preserve a generally parallel direction, and are
separated by upland valleys, some of them of considerable extent as
well as considerable elevation above the sea. Such is the basin of
Lake Fucino, situated in the centre of the mass, almost exactly midway
between the two seas, at an elevation of 2180 ft. above them; while
the upper valley of the Aterno, in which Aquila is situated, is 2380
ft. above the sea. Still more elevated is the valley of the Gizio (a
tributary of the Aterno), of which Sulmona is the chief town. This
communicates with the upper valley of the Sangro by a level plain
called the Piano di Cinque Miglia, at an elevation of 4298 ft.,
regarded as the most wintry spot in Italy. Nor do the highest summits
form a continuous ridge of great altitude for any considerable
distance; they are rather a series of groups separated by tracts of
very inferior elevation forming natural passes across the range, and
broken in some places (as is the case in almost all limestone
countries) by the waters from the upland valleys turning suddenly at
right angles, and breaking through the mountain ranges which bound
them. Thus the Gran Sasso and the Maiella are separated by the deep
valley of the Aterno, while the Tronto breaks through the range
between Monte Vettore and the Pizzo di Sevo. This constitution of the
great mass of the central Apennines has in all ages exercised an
important influence upon the character of this portion of Italy, which
may be considered as divided by nature into two great regions, a cold
and barren upland country, bordered on both sides by rich and fertile
tracts, enjoying a warm but temperate climate.

The district west of the Apennines, a region of great beauty and
fertility, though inferior in productiveness to Northern Italy,
coincides in a general way with the countries familiar to all students
of ancient history as Etruria and Latium. Until the union of Italy
they were comprised in Tuscany and the southern Papal States. The
northern part of Tuscany is indeed occupied to a considerable extent
by the underfalls and offshoots of the Apennines, which, besides the
slopes and spurs of the main range that constitutes its northern
frontier towards the plain of the Po, throw off several outlying
ranges or groups. Of these the most remarkable is the group between
the valleys of the Serchio and the Magra, commonly known as the
mountains of Carrara, from the celebrated marble quarries in the
vicinity of that city. Two of the summits of this group, the Pizzo
d'Uccello and the Pania della Croce, attain 6155 and 6100 ft. Another
lateral range, the Prato Magno, which branches off from the central
chain at the Monte Falterona, and separates the upper valley of the
Arno from its second basin, rises to 5188 ft.; while a similar branch,
called the Alpe di Catenaja, of inferior elevation, divides the upper
course of the Arno from that of the Tiber.

The rest of this tract is for the most part a hilly, broken country,
of moderate elevation, but Monte Amiata, near Radicofani, an isolated
mass of volcanic origin, attains a height of 5650 ft. South of this
the country between the frontier of Tuscany and the Tiber is in great
part of volcanic origin, forming hills with distinct crater-shaped
basins, in several instances occupied by small lakes (the Lake of
Bolsena, Lake of Vico and Lake of Bracciano). This volcanic tract
extends across the Campagna of Rome, till it rises again in the lofty
group of the Alban hills, the highest summit of which, the Monte Cavo,
is 3160 ft. above the sea. In this part the Apennines are separated
from the sea, distant about 30 m. by the undulating volcanic plain of
the Roman Campagna, from which the mountains rise in a wall-like
barrier, of which the highest point, the Monte Gennaro, attains 4165
ft. South of Palestrina again, the main mass of the Apennines throws
off another lateral mass, known in ancient times as the Volscian
mountains (now called the Monti Lepini), separated from the central
ranges by the broad valley of the Sacco, a tributary of the Liri
(Liris) or Garigliano, and forming a large and rugged mountain mass,
nearly 5000 ft. in height, which descends to the sea at Terracina, and
between that point and the mouth of the Liri throws out several
rugged mountain headlands, which may be considered as constituting the
natural boundary between Latium and Campania, and consequently the
natural limit of Central Italy. Besides these offshoots of the
Apennines there are in this part of Central Italy several detached
mountains, rising almost like islands on the seashore, of which the
two most remarkable are the Monte Argentaro on the coast of Tuscany
near Orbetello (2087 ft.) and the Monte Circello (1771 ft.) at the
angle of the Pontine Marshes, by the whole breadth of which it is
separated from the Volscian Apennines.

The two valleys of the Arno and the Tiber (Ital. _Tevere_) may be
considered as furnishing the key to the geography of all this portion
of Italy west of the Apennines. The Arno, which has its source in the
Monte Falterona, one of the most elevated summits of the main chain of
the Tuscan Apennines, flows nearly south till in the neighbourhood of
Arezzo it turns abruptly north-west, and pursues that course as far as
Pontassieve, where it again makes a sudden bend to the west, and
pursues a westerly course thence to the sea, passing through Florence
and Pisa. Its principal tributary is the Sieve, which joins it at
Pontassieve, bringing down the waters of the Val di Mugello. The Elsa
and the Era, which join it on its left bank, descending from the hills
near Siena and Volterra, are inconsiderable streams; and the Serchio,
which flows from the territory of Lucca and the Alpi Apuani, and
formerly joined the Arno a few miles from its mouth, now enters the
sea by a separate channel. The most considerable rivers of Tuscany
south of the Arno are the Cecina, which flows through the plain below
Volterra, and the Ombrone, which rises in the hills near Siena, and
enters the sea about 12 m. below Grosseto.

The Tiber, a much more important river than the Arno, and the largest
in Italy with the exception of the Po, rises in the Apennines, about
20 m. east of the source of the Arno, and flows nearly south by Borgo
S. Sepolcro and Città di Castello, then between Perugia and Todi to
Orte, just below which it receives the Nera. The Nera, which rises in
the lofty group of the Monte della Sibilla, is a considerable stream,
and brings with it the waters of the Velino (with its tributaries the
Turano and the Salto), which joins it a few miles below its celebrated
waterfall at Terni. The Teverone or Anio, which enters the Tiber a few
miles above Rome, is an inferior stream to the Nera, but brings down a
considerable body of water from the mountains above Subiaco. It is a
singular fact in the geography of Central Italy that the valleys of
the Tiber and Arno are in some measure connected by that of the
Chiana, a level and marshy tract, the waters from which flow partly
into the Arno and partly into the Tiber.

The eastern declivity of the central Apennines towards the Adriatic is
far less interesting and varied than the western. The central range
here approaches much nearer to the sea, and hence, with few
exceptions, the rivers that flow from it have short courses and are of
comparatively little importance. They may be enumerated, proceeding
from Rimini southwards: (1) the Foglia; (2) the Metauro, of historical
celebrity, and affording access to one of the most frequented passes
of the Apennines; (3) the Esino; (4) the Potenza; (5) the Chienti; (6)
the Aso; (7) the Tronto; (8) the Vomano; (9) the Aterno; (10) the
Sangro; (11) the Trigno, which forms the boundary of the southernmost
province of the Abruzzi, and may therefore be taken as the limit of
Central Italy.

The whole of this portion of Central Italy is a hilly country, much
broken and cut up by the torrents from the mountains, but fertile,
especially in fruit-trees, olives and vines; and it has been, both in
ancient and modern times, a populous district, containing many small
towns though no great cities. Its chief disadvantage is the absence of
ports, the coast preserving an almost unbroken straight line, with the
single exception of Ancona, the only port worthy of the name on the
eastern coast of Central Italy.

3. _Southern Italy._--The great central mass of the Apennines, which
has held its course throughout Central Italy, with a general direction
from north-west to south-east, may be considered as continued in the
same direction for about 100 m. farther, from the basin-shaped group
of the Monti del Matese (which rises to 6660 ft.) to the neighbourhood
of Potenza, in the heart of the province of Basilicata, corresponding
nearly to the ancient Lucania. The whole of the district known in
ancient times as Samnium (a part of which retains the name of Sannio,
though officially designated the province of Campobasso) is occupied
by an irregular mass of mountains, of much inferior height to those of
Central Italy, and broken up into a number of groups, intersected by
rivers, which have for the most part a very tortuous course. This
mountainous tract, which has an average breadth of from 50 to 60 m.,
is bounded west by the plain of Campania, now called the Terra di
Lavoro, and east by the much broader and more extensive tract of
Apulia or Puglia, composed partly of level plains, but for the most
part of undulating downs, contrasting strongly with the mountain
ranges of the Apennines, which rise abruptly above them. The central
mass of the mountains, however, throws out two outlying ranges, the
one to the west, which separates the Bay of Naples from that of
Salerno, and culminates in the Monte S. Angelo above Castellammare
(4720 ft.), while the detached volcanic cone of Vesuvius (nearly 4000
ft.) is isolated from the neighbouring mountains by an intervening
strip of plain. On the east side in like manner the Monte Gargano
(3465 ft.), a detached limestone mass which projects in a bold
spur-like promontory into the Adriatic, forming the only break in the
otherwise uniform coast-line of Italy on that sea, though separated
from the great body of the Apennines by a considerable interval of low
country, may be considered as merely an outlier from the central mass.

From the neighbourhood of Potenza, the main ridge of the Apennines is
continued by the Monti della Maddalena in a direction nearly due
south, so that it approaches within a short distance of the Gulf of
Policastro, whence it is carried on as far as the Monte Pollino, the
last of the lofty summits of the Apennine chain, which exceeds 7000
ft. in height. The range is, however, continued through the province
now called Calabria, to the southern extremity or "toe" of Italy, but
presents in this part a very much altered character, the broken
limestone range which is the true continuation of the chain as far as
the neighbourhood of Nicastro and Catanzaro, and keeps close to the
west coast, being flanked on the east by a great mass of granitic
mountains, rising to about 6000 ft., and covered with vast forests,
from which it derives the name of La Sila. A similar mass, separated
from the preceding by a low neck of Tertiary hills, fills up the whole
of the peninsular extremity of Italy from Squillace to Reggio. Its
highest point is called Aspromonte (6420 ft.).

While the rugged and mountainous district of Calabria, extending
nearly due south for a distance of more than 150 m., thus derives its
character and configuration almost wholly from the range of the
Apennines, the long spur-like promontory which projects towards the
east to Brindisi and Otranto is merely a continuation of the low tract
of Apulia, with a dry calcareous soil of Tertiary origin. The Monte
Volture, which rises in the neighbourhood of Melfi and Venosa to 4357
ft., is of volcanic origin, and in great measure detached from the
adjoining mass of the Apennines. Eastward from this the ranges of low
bare hills called the Murgie of Gravina and Altamura gradually sink
into the still more moderate level of those which constitute the
peninsular tract between Brindisi and Taranto as far as the Cape of
Sta Maria di Leuca, the south-east extremity of Italy. This projecting
tract, which may be termed the "heel" or "spur" of Southern Italy, in
conjunction with the great promontory of Calabria, forms the deep Gulf
of Taranto, about 70 m. in width, and somewhat greater depth, which
receives a number of streams from the central mass of the Apennines.

None of the rivers of Southern Italy is of any great importance. The
Liri (Liris) or Garigliano, which has its source in the central
Apennines above Sora, not far from Lake Fucino, and enters the Gulf of
Gaeta about 10 m. east of the city of that name, brings down a
considerable body of water; as does also the Volturno, which rises in
the mountains between Castel di Sangro and Agnone, flows past Isernia,
Venafro and Capua, and enters the sea about 15 m. from the mouth of
the Garigliano. About 16 m. above Capua it receives the Calore, which
flows by Benevento. The Silarus or Sele enters the Gulf of Salerno a
few miles below the ruins of Paestum. Below this the watershed of the
Apennines is too near to the sea on that side to allow the formation
of any large streams. Hence the rivers that flow in the opposite
direction into the Adriatic and the Gulf of Taranto have much longer
courses, though all partake of the character of mountain torrents,
rushing down with great violence in winter and after storms, but
dwindling in the summer into scanty streams, which hold a winding and
sluggish course through the great plains of Apulia. Proceeding south
from the Trigno, already mentioned as constituting the limit of
Central Italy, there are (1) the Biferno and (2) the Fortore, both
rising in the mountains of Samnium, and flowing into the Adriatic west
of Monte Gargano; (3) the Cervaro, south of the great promontory; and
(4) the Ofanto, the Aufidus of Horace, whose description of it is
characteristic of almost all the rivers of Southern Italy, of which it
may be taken as the typical representative. It rises about 15 m. west
of Conza, and only about 25 m. from the Gulf of Salerno, so that it is
frequently (though erroneously) described as traversing the whole
range of the Apennines. In its lower course it flows near Canosa and
traverses the celebrated battlefield of Cannae. (5) The Bradano, which
rises near Venosa, almost at the foot of Monte Volture, flows towards
the south-east into the Gulf of Taranto, as do the Basento, the Agri
and the Sinni, all of which descend from the central chain of the
Apennines south of Potenza. The Crati, which flows from Cosenza
northwards, and then turns abruptly eastward to enter the same gulf,
is the only stream worthy of notice in the rugged peninsula of
Calabria; while the arid limestone hills projecting eastwards to Capo
di Leuca do not give rise to anything more than a mere streamlet, from
the mouth of the Ofanto to the south-eastern extremity of Italy.

Lakes.

The only important lakes are those on or near the north frontier,
formed by the expansion of the tributaries of the Po. They have been
already noticed in connexion with the rivers by which they are formed,
but may be again enumerated in order of succession. They are,
proceeding from west to east, (1) the Lago d'Orta, (2) the Lago
Maggiore, (3) the Lago di Lugano, (4) the Lago di Como, (5) the Lago
d'Iseo, (6) the Lago d'Idro, and (7) the Lago di Garda. Of these the
last named is considerably the largest, covering an area of 143 sq. m.
It is 32¼ m. long by 10 broad; while the Lago Maggiore,
notwithstanding its name, though considerably exceeding it in length
(37 m.), falls materially below it in superficial extent. They are all
of great depth--the Lago Maggiore having an extreme depth of 1198
ft., while that of Como attains to 1365 ft. Of a wholly different
character is the Lago di Varese, between the Lago Maggiore and that of
Lugano, which is a mere shallow expanse of water, surrounded by hills
of very moderate elevation. Two other small lakes in the same
neighbourhood, as well as those of Erba and Pusiano, between Como and
Lecco, are of a similar character.

[Illustration: Map of Italy (Modern).]

The lakes of Central Italy, which are comparatively of trifling
dimensions, belong to a wholly different class. The most important of
these, the Lacus Fucinus of the ancients, now called the Lago di
Celano, situated almost exactly in the centre of the peninsula,
occupies a basin of considerable extent, surrounded by mountains and
without any natural outlet, at an elevation of more than 2000 ft. Its
waters have been in great part carried off by an artificial channel,
and more than half its surface laid bare. Next in size is the Lago
Trasimeno, a broad expanse of shallow waters, about 30 m. in
circumference, surrounded by low hills. The neighbouring lake of
Chiusi is of similar character, but much smaller dimensions. All the
other lakes of Central Italy, which are scattered through the volcanic
districts west of the Apennines, are of an entirely different
formation, and occupy deep cup-shaped hollows, which have undoubtedly
at one time formed the craters of extinct volcanoes. Such is the Lago
di Bolsena, near the city of the same name, which is an extensive
sheet of water, as well as the much smaller Lago di Vico (the Ciminian
lake of ancient writers) and the Lago di Bracciano, nearer Rome, while
to the south of Rome the well known lakes of Albano and Nemi have a
similar origin.

The only lake properly so called in southern Italy is the Lago del
Matese, in the heart of the mountain group of the same name, of small
extent. The so-called lakes on the coast of the Adriatic north and
south of the promontory of Gargano are brackish lagoons communicating
with the sea.

Islands.

The three great islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica are closely
connected with Italy, both by geographical position and community of
language, but they are considered at length in separate articles. Of
the smaller islands that lie near the coasts of Italy, the most
considerable is that of Elba, off the west coast of central Italy,
about 50 m. S. of Leghorn, and separated from the mainland at Piombino
by a strait of only about 6 m. in width. North of this, and about
midway between Corsica and Tuscany, is the small island of Capraia,
steep and rocky, and only 4½ m. long, but with a secure port; Gorgona,
about 25 m. farther north, is still smaller, and is a mere rock,
inhabited by a few fishermen. South of Elba are the equally
insignificant islets of Pianosa and Montecristo, while the more
considerable island of Giglio lies much nearer the mainland,
immediately opposite the mountain promontory of Monte Argentano,
itself almost an island. The islands farther south in the Tyrrhenian
Sea are of an entirely different character. Of these Ischia and
Procida, close to the northern headland of the Bay of Naples, are of
volcanic origin, as is the case also with the more distant group of
the Ponza Islands. These are three in number--Ponza, Palmarola and
Zannone; while Ventotene (also of volcanic formation) is about midway
between Ponza and Ischia. The island of Capri, on the other hand,
opposite the southern promontory of the Bay of Naples, is a
precipitous limestone rock. The Aeolian or Lipari Islands, a
remarkable volcanic group, belong rather to Sicily than to Italy,
though Stromboli, the most easterly of them, is about equidistant from
Sicily and from the mainland.

The Italian coast of the Adriatic presents a great contrast to its
opposite shores, for while the coast of Dalmatia is bordered by a
succession of islands, great and small, the long and uniform
coast-line of Italy from Otranto to Rimini presents not a single
adjacent island; and the small outlying group of the Tremiti Islands
(north of the Monte Gargano and about 15 m. from the mainland) alone
breaks the monotony of this part of the Adriatic.

_Geology._--The geology of Italy is mainly dependent upon that of the
Apennines (q.v.). On each side of that great chain are found extensive
Tertiary deposits, sometimes, as in Tuscany, the district of
Monferrat, &c., forming a broken, hilly country, at others spreading
into broad plains or undulating downs, such as the Tavoliere of
Puglia, and the tract that forms the spur of Italy from Bari to
Otranto.

Besides these, and leaving out of account the islands, the Italian
peninsula presents four distinct volcanic districts. In three of them
the volcanoes are entirely extinct, while the fourth is still in great
activity.

1. The Euganean hills form a small group extending for about 10 m.
from the neighbourhood of Padua to Este, and separated from the lower
offshoots of the Alps by a portion of the wide plain of Padua. Monte
Venda, their highest peak, is 1890 ft. high.

2. The Roman district, the largest of the four, extends from the hills
of Albano to the frontier of Tuscany, and from the lower slopes of the
Apennines to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It may be divided into three groups:
the Monti Albani, the second highest[2] of which, Monte Cavo (3115
ft.), is the ancient Mons Albanus, on the summit of which stood the
temple of Jupiter Latialis, where the assemblies of the cities forming
the Latin confederation were held; the Monti Cimini, which extend from
the valley of the Tiber to the neighbourhood of Civita Vecchia, and
attain at their culminating point an elevation of 3454 ft.; and the
mountains of Radicofani and Monte Amiata, the latter of which is 5688
ft. high. The lakes of Bolsena (Vulsiniensis), of Bracciano
(Sabatinus), of Vico (Ciminus), of Albano (Albanus), of Nemi
(Nemorensis), and other smaller lakes belong to this district; while
between its south-west extremity and Monte Circello the Pontine
Marshes form a broad strip of alluvial soil infested by malaria.

3. The volcanic region of the Terra di Lavoro is separated by the
Volscian mountains from the Roman district. It may be also divided
into three groups. Of Roccamonfina, at the N.N.W. end of the Campanian
Plain, the highest cone, called Montagna di Santa Croce, is 3291 ft.
The Phlegraean Fields embrace all the country round Baiae and Pozzuoli
and the adjoining islands. Monte Barbaro (Gaurus), north-east of the
site of Cumae, Monte San Nicola (Epomeus), 2589 ft. in Ischia, and
Camaldoli, 1488 ft., west of Naples, are the highest cones. The lakes
Averno (Avernus), Lucrino (Lucrinus), Fusaro (Palus Acherusia), and
Agnano are within this group, which has shown activity in historical
times. A stream of lava issued in 1198 from the crater of the
Solfatara, which still continues to exhale steam and noxious gases;
the Lava dell' Arso came out of the N.E. flank of Monte Epomeo in
1302; and Monte Nuovo, north-west of Pozzuoli (455 ft.), was thrown up
in three days in September 1538. Since its first historical eruption
in A.D. 79, Vesuvius or Somma, which forms the third group, has been
in constant activity. The Punta del Nasone, the highest point of
Somma, is 3714 ft. high, while the Punta del Palo, the highest point
of the brim of the crater of Vesuvius, varies materially with
successive eruptions from 3856 to 4275 ft.

4. The Apulian volcanic formation consists of the great mass of Monte
Volture, which rises at the west end of the plains of Apulia, on the
frontier of Basilicata, and is surrounded by the Apennines on its
south-west and north-west sides. Its highest peak, the Pizzuto di
Melfi, attains an elevation of 4365 ft. Within the widest crater there
are the two small lakes of Monticchio and San Michele. In connexion
with the volcanic districts we may mention _Le Mofete_, the pools of
Ampsanctus, in a wooded valley S.E. of Frigento, in the province of
Avellino, Campania (Virgil, _Aeneid_, vii. 563-571), The largest is
not more than 160 ft. in circumference, and 7 ft. deep.

The whole of the great plain of Lombardy is covered by Pleistocene and
recent deposits. It is a great depression--the continuation of the
Adriatic Sea--filled up by deposits brought down by the rivers from
the mountains. The depression was probably formed during the later
stages of the growth of the Alps.

_Climate and Vegetation._--The geographical position of Italy,
extending from about 46° to 38° N., renders it one of the hottest
countries in Europe. But the effect of its southern latitude is
tempered by its peninsular character, bounded as it is on both sides
by seas of considerable extent, as well as by the great range of the
Alps with its snows and glaciers to the north. There are thus
irregular variations of climate. Great differences also exist with
regard to climate between northern and southern Italy, due in great
part to other circumstances as well as to differences of latitude.
Thus the great plain of northern Italy is chilled by the cold winds
from the Alps, while the damp warm winds from the Mediterranean are to
a great extent intercepted by the Ligurian Apennines. Hence this part
of the country has a cold winter climate, so that while the mean
summer temperature of Milan is higher than that of Sassari, and equal
to that of Naples, and the extremes reached at Milan and Bologna are a
good deal higher than those of Naples, the mean winter temperature of
Turin is actually lower than that of Copenhagen. The lowest recorded
winter temperature at Turin is 5° Fahr. Throughout the region north of
the Apennines no plants will thrive which cannot stand occasional
severe frosts in winter, so that not only oranges and lemons but even
the olive tree cannot be grown, except in specially favoured
situations. But the strip of coast between the Apennines and the sea,
known as the Riviera of Genoa, is not only extremely favourable to the
growth of olives, but produces oranges and lemons in abundance, while
even the aloe, the cactus and the palm flourish in many places.

Central Italy also presents striking differences of climate and
temperature according to the greater or less proximity to the
mountains. Thus the greater part of Tuscany, and the provinces thence
to Rome, enjoy a mild winter climate, and are well adapted to the
growth of mulberries and olives as well as vines, but it is not till
after passing Terracina, in proceeding along the western coast towards
the south, that the vegetation of southern Italy develops in its full
luxuriance. Even in the central parts of Tuscany, however, the climate
is very much affected by the neighbouring mountains, and the
increasing elevation of the Apennines as they proceed south produces a
corresponding effect upon the temperature. But it is when we reach the
central range of the Apennines that we find the coldest districts of
Italy. In all the upland valleys of the Abruzzi snow begins to fall
early in November, and heavy storms occur often as late as May; whole
communities are shut out for months from any intercourse with their
neighbours, and some villages are so long buried in snow that regular
passages are made between the different houses for the sake of
communication among the inhabitants. The district from the south-east
of Lake Fucino to the Piano di Cinque Miglia, enclosing the upper
basin of the Sangro and the small lake of Scanno, is the coldest and
most bleak part of Italy south of the Alps. Heavy falls of snow in
June are not uncommon, and only for a short time towards the end of
July are the nights totally exempt from light frosts. Yet less than 40
m. E. of this district, and even more to the north, the olive, the
fig-tree and the orange thrive luxuriantly on the shores of the
Adriatic from Ortona to Vasto. In the same way, whilst in the plains
and hills round Naples snow is rarely seen, and never remains long,
and the thermometer seldom descends to the freezing-point, 20 m. E.
from it in the fertile valley of Avellino, of no great elevation, but
encircled by high mountains, light frosts are not uncommon as late as
June; and 18 m. farther east, in the elevated region of San Angelo dei
Lombardi and Bisaccia, the inhabitants are always warmly clad, and
vines grow with difficulty and only in sheltered places. Still farther
south-east, Potenza has almost the coldest climate in Italy, and
certainly the lowest summer temperatures. But nowhere are these
contrasts so striking as in Calabria. The shores, especially on the
Tyrrhenian Sea, present almost a continued grove of olive, orange,
lemon and citron trees, which attain a size unknown in the north of
Italy. The sugar-cane flourishes, the cotton-plant ripens to
perfection, date-trees are seen in the gardens, the rocks are clothed
with the prickly-pear or Indian fig, the enclosures of the fields are
formed by aloes and sometimes pomegranates, the liquorice-root grows
wild, and the mastic, the myrtle and many varieties of oleander and
cistus form the underwood of the natural forests of arbutus and
evergreen oak. If we turn inland but 5 or 6 m. from the shore, and
often even less, the scene changes. High districts covered with oaks
and chestnuts succeed to this almost tropical vegetation; a little
higher up and we reach the elevated regions of the Pollino and the
Sila, covered with firs and pines, and affording rich pastures even in
the midst of summer, when heavy dews and light frosts succeed each
other in July and August, and snow begins to appear at the end of
September or early in October. Along the shores of the Adriatic, which
are exposed to the north-east winds, blowing coldly from over the
Albanian mountains, delicate plants do not thrive so well in general
as under the same latitude along the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Southern Italy indeed has in general a very different climate from the
northern portion of the kingdom; and, though large tracts are still
occupied by rugged mountains of sufficient elevation to retain the
snow for a considerable part of the year, the districts adjoining the
sea enjoy a climate similar to that of Greece and the southern
provinces of Spain. Unfortunately several of these fertile tracts
suffer severely from malaria (q.v.), and especially the great plain
adjoining the Gulf of Tarentum, which in the early ages of history was
surrounded by a girdle of Greek cities--some of which attained to
almost unexampled prosperity--has for centuries past been given up to
almost complete desolation.[3]

It is remarkable that, of the vegetable productions of Italy, many
which are at the present day among the first to attract the attention
of the visitor are of comparatively late introduction, and were
unknown in ancient times. The olive indeed in all ages clothed the
hills of a large part of the country; but the orange and lemon, are a
late importation from the East, while the cactus or Indian fig and the
aloe, both of them so conspicuous on the shores of southern Italy, as
well as of the Riviera of Genoa, are of Mexican origin, and
consequently could not have been introduced earlier than the 16th
century. The same remark applies to the maize or Indian corn. Many
botanists are even of opinion that the sweet chestnut, which now
constitutes so large a part of the forests that clothe the sides both
of the Alps and the Apennines, and in some districts supplies the
chief food of the inhabitants, is not originally of Italian growth; it
is certain that it had not attained in ancient times to anything like
the extension and importance which it now possesses. The eucalyptus is
of quite modern introduction; it has been extensively planted in
malarious districts. The characteristic cypress, ilex and stone-pine,
however, are native trees, the last-named flourishing especially near
the coast. The proportion of evergreens is large, and has a marked
effect on the landscape in winter.

_Fauna._--The chamois, bouquetin and marmot are found only in the
Alps, not at all in the Apennines. In the latter the bear was found in
Roman times, and there are said to be still a few remaining. Wolves
are more numerous, though only in the mountainous districts; the
flocks are protected against them by large white sheepdogs, who have
some wolf blood in them. Wild boars are also found in mountainous and
forest districts. Foxes are common in the neighbourhood of Rome. The
sea mammals include the common dolphin (_Delphinus delphis_). The
birds are similar to those of central Europe; in the mountains
vultures, eagles, buzzards, kites, falcons and hawks are found.
Partridges, woodcock, snipe, &c., are among the game birds; but all
kinds of small birds are also shot for food, and their number is thus
kept down, while many members of the migratory species are caught by
traps in the foothills on the south side of the Alps, especially near
the Lake of Como, on their passage. Large numbers of quails are shot
in the spring. Among reptiles, the various kinds of lizard are
noticeable. There are several varieties of snakes, of which three
species (all vipers) are poisonous. Of sea-fish there are many
varieties, the tunny, the sardine and the anchovy being commercially
the most important. Some of the other edible fish, such as the
palombo, are not found in northern waters. Small cuttlefish are in
common use as an article of diet. Tortoiseshell, an important article
of commerce, is derived from the _Thalassochelys caretta_, a sea
turtle. Of freshwater fish the trout of the mountain streams and the
eels of the coast lagoons may be mentioned. The tarantula spider and
the scorpion are found in the south of Italy. The aquarium of the
zoological station at Naples contains the finest collection in the
world of marine animals, showing the wonderful variety of the
different species of fish, molluscs, crustacea, &c., found in the
Mediterranean. (E. H. B.; T. As.)

_Population._--The following table indicates the areas of the several
provinces (sixty-nine in number), and the population of each according
to the censuses of the 31st of December 1881 and the 9th of February
1901. (The larger divisions or compartments in which the provinces are
grouped are not officially recognized.)

+----------------------------------+---------+-------------------------+
| | | Population. |
| Provinces and Compartments. | Area in +------------+------------+
| | sq. m. | 1881. | 1901. |
+----------------------------------+---------+------------+------------+
| Alessandria | 1950 | 729,710 | 825,745 |
| Cuneo | 2882 | 635,400 | 670,504 |
| Novara | 2553 | 675,926 | 763,830 |
| Turin | 3955 | 1,029,214 | 1,147,414 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Piedmont | 11,340 | 3,070,250 | 3,407,493 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Genoa | 1582 | 760,122 | 931,156 |
| Porto Maurizio | 455 | 132,251 | 144,604 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Liguria | 2037 | 892,373 | 1,075,760 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Bergamo | 1098 | 390,775 | 467,549 |
| Brescia | 1845 | 471,568 | 541,765 |
| Como | 1091 | 515,050 | 594,304 |
| Cremona | 695 | 302,097 | 329,471 |
| Mantua | 912 | 295,728 | 315,448 |
| Milan | 1223 | 1,114,991 | 1,450,214 |
| Pavia | 1290 | 469,831 | 504,382 |
| Sondrio | 1232 | 120,534 | 130,966 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Lombardy | 9386 | 3,680,574 | 4,334,099 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Belluno | 1293 | 174,140 | 214,803 |
| Padua | 823 | 397,762 | 444,360 |
| Rovigo | 685 | 217,700 | 222,057 |
| Treviso | 960 | 375,704 | 416,945 |
| Udine | 2541 | 501,745 | 614,720 |
| Venice | 934 | 356,708 | 399,823 |
| Verona | 1188 | 394,065 | 427,018 |
| Vicenza | 1052 | 396,349 | 453,621 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Venetia | 9476 | 2,814,173 | 3,193,347 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Bologna | 1448 | 464,879 | 529,619 |
| Ferrara | 1012 | 230,807 | 270,558 |
| Forlì | 725 | 251,110 | 283,996 |
| Modena | 987 | 279,254 | 323,598 |
| Parma | 1250 | 267,306 | 303,694 |
| Piacenza | 954 | 226,758 | 250,491 |
| Ravenna | 715 | 218,359 | 234,656 |
| Reggio (Emilia) | 876 | 244,959 | 281,085 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Emilia | 7967 | 2,183,432 | 2,477,697 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Arezzo | 1273 | 238,744 | 275,588 |
| Florence | 2265 | 790,776 | 945,324 |
| Grosseto | 1738 | 114,295 | 137,795 |
| Leghorn | 133 | 121,612 | 121,137 |
| Lucca | 558 | 284,484 | 329,986 |
| Massa and Carrara | 687 | 169,469 | 202,749 |
| Pisa | 1179 | 283,563 | 319,854 |
| Siena | 1471 | 205,926 | 233,874 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Tuscany | 9304 | 2,208,869 | 2,566,307 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Ancona | 762 | 267,338 | 308,346 |
| Ascoli Piceno | 796 | 209,185 | 251,829 |
| Macerata | 1087 | 239,713 | 269,505 |
| Pesaro and Urbino | 1118 | 223,043 | 259,083 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Marches | 3763 | 939,279 | 1,088,763 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Perugia--Umbria | 3748 | 572,060 | 675,352 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Rome--Lazio | 4663 | 903,472 | 1,142,526 |
| Aquila degli Abruzzi (Abruzzo | | | |
| Ulteriore II.) | 2484 | 353,027 | 436,367 |
| Campobasso (Molise) | 1691 | 365,434 | 389,967 |
| Chieti (Abruzzo Citeriore) | 1138 | 343,948 | 387,604 |
| Teramo (Abruzzo Ulteriore I.) | 1067 | 254,806 | 312,188 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Abruzzi and Molise | 6380 | 1,317,215 | 1,526,135 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Avellino (Principato Ulteriore) | 1172 | 392,619 | 421,766 |
| Benevento | 818 | 238,425 | 265,460 |
| Caserta (Terra di Lavoro) | 2033 | 714,131 | 805,345 |
| Naples | 350 | 1,001,245 | 1,141,788 |
| Salerno (Principato Citeriore) | 1916 | 550,157 | 585,132 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Campania | 6289 | 2,896,577 | 3,219,491 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Bari delle Puglie (Terra di Bari)| 2065 | 679,499 | 837,683 |
| Foggia (Capitanata) | 2688 | 356,267 | 421,115 |
| Lecce (Terra di Otranto) | 2623 | 553,298 | 705,382 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Apulia | 7376 | 1,589,064 | 1,964,180 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Potenza (Basilicata) | 3845 | 524,504 | 491,558 |
| +---------+------------|------------+
| Catanzaro (Calabria Ulteriore | | | |
| II.) | 2030 | 433,975 | 498,791 |
| Cosenza (Calabria Citeriore) | 2568 | 451,185 | 503,329 |
| Reggio di Calabria (Calabria | | | |
| Ulteriore I.) | 1221 | 372,723 | 437,209 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Calabria | 5819 | 1,257,883 | 1,439,329 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Caltanisetta | 1263 | 266,379 | 329,449 |
| Catania | 1917 | 563,457 | 703,598 |
| Girgenti | 1172 | 312,487 | 380,666 |
| Messina | 1246 | 460,924 | 550,895 |
| Palermo | 1948 | 699,151 | 796,151 |
| Syracuse | 1442 | 341,526 | 433,796 |
| Trapani | 948 | 283,977 | 373,569 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Sicily | 9936 | 2,927,901 | 3,568,124 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Cagliari | 5204 | 420,635 | 486,767 |
| Sassari | 4090 | 261,367 | 309,026 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Sardinia | 9294 | 682,002 | 795,793 |
| +---------+------------+------------+
| Kingdom of Italy | 110,623 | 28,459,628 | 32,965,504 |
+----------------------------------+---------+------------+------------+

The number of foreigners in Italy in 1901 was 61,606, of whom 37,762
were domiciled within the kingdom.

The population given in the foregoing table is the resident or "legal"
population, which is also given for the individual towns. This is
490,251 higher than the actual population, 32,475,253, ascertained by
the census of the 10th of February 1901; the difference is due to
temporary absences from their residences of certain individuals on
military service, &c., who probably were counted twice, and also to
the fact that 469,020 individuals were returned as absent from Italy,
while only 61,606 foreigners were in Italy at the date of the census.
The kingdom is divided into 69 provinces, 284 regions, of which 197
are classed as _circondarii_ and 87 as districts (the latter belonging
to the province of Mantua and the 8 provinces of Venetia), 1806
administrative divisions (_mandamenti_) and 8262 communes. These were
the figures at the date of the census. In 1906 there were 1805
_mandamenti_ and 8290 communes, and 4 boroughs in Sardinia not
connected with communes. The _mandamenti_ or administrative divisions
no longer correspond to the judicial divisions (_mandamenti
giudiziarii_) which in November 1891 were reduced from 1806 to 1535 by
a law which provided that judicial reform should not modify existing
administrative and electoral divisions. The principal elective local
administrative bodies are the provincial and the communal councils.
The franchise is somewhat wider than the parliamentary. Both bodies
are elected for six years, one-half being renewed every three years.
The provincial council elects a provincial commission and the communal
council a municipal council from among its own members; these smaller
bodies carry on the business of the larger while they are not sitting.
The syndic of each commune is elected by ballot by the communal
council from among its own members.

The actual (not the resident or "legal") population of Italy since
1770 is approximately given in the following table (the first census
of the kingdom as a whole was taken in 1871):--

1770 14,689,317 | 1861 25,016,801
1800 17,237,421 | 1871 26,801,154
1825 19,726,977 | 1881 28,459,628
1848 23,617,153 | 1901 32,475,253

The average density increased from 257.21 per sq. m. in 1881 to 293.28
in 1901. In Venetia, Emilia, the Marches, Umbria and Tuscany the
proportion of concentrated population is only from 40 to 55%; in
Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy the proportion rises to from 70 to 76%;
in southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia it attains a maximum of from 76
to 93%.

The population of towns over 100,000 is given in the following table
according to the estimates for 1906. The population of the town itself
is distinguished from that of its commune, which often includes a
considerable portion of the surrounding country.

Town. Commune.

Bologna 105,153 160,423
Catania 135,548 159,210
Florence 201,183 226,559
Genoa 255,294 267,248
Messina 108,514 165,007
Milan 560,613 ..
Naples 491,614 585,289
Palermo 264,036 323,747
Rome 403,282 516,580
Turin 277,121 361,720
Venice 146,940 169,563

The population of the different parts of Italy differs in character and
dialect; and there is little community of sentiment between them. The
modes of life and standards of comfort and morality in north Italy and
in Calabria are widely different; the former being far in front of the
latter. Much, however, is effected towards unification, by compulsory
military service, it being the principle that no man shall serve within
the military district to which he belongs. In almost all parts the idea
of personal loyalty (e.g. between master and servant) retains an almost
feudal strength. The inhabitants of the north--the Piedmontese, Lombards
and Genoese especially--have suffered less than those of the rest of the
peninsula from foreign domination and from the admixture of inferior
racial elements, and the cold winter climate prevents the heat of summer
from being enervating. They, and also the inhabitants of central Italy,
are more industrious than the inhabitants of the southern provinces, who
have by no means recovered from centuries of misgovernment and
oppression, and are naturally more hot-blooded and excitable, but less
stable, capable of organization or trustworthy. The southerners are
apathetic except when roused, and socialist doctrines find their chief
adherents in the north. The Sicilians and Sardinians have something of
Spanish dignity, but the former are one of the most mixed and the latter
probably one of the purest races of the Italian kingdom. Physical
characteristics differ widely; but as a whole the Italian is somewhat
short of stature, with dark or black hair and eyes, often good looking.
Both sexes reach maturity early. Mortality is decreasing, but if we may
judge from the physical conditions of the recruits the physique of the
nation shows little or no improvement. Much of this lack of progress is
attributed to the heavy manual (especially agricultural) work undertaken
by women and children. The women especially age rapidly, largely owing
to this cause (E. Nathan, _Vent' anni di vita italiana attraverso all'
annuario_, 169 sqq.).

_Births, Marriages, Deaths._--Birth and marriage rates vary
considerably, being highest in the centre and south (Umbria, the
Marches, Apulia, Abruzzi and Molise, and Calabria) and lowest in the
north (Piedmont, Liguria and Venetia), and in Sardinia. The death-rate
is highest in Apulia, in the Abruzzi and Molise, and in Sardinia, and
lowest in the north, especially in Venetia and Piedmont.

Taking the statistics for the whole kingdom, the annual marriage-rate
for the years 1876-1880 was 7.53 per 1000; in 1881-1885 it rose to
8.06; in 1886-1890 it was 7.77; in 1891-1895 it was 7.41, and in
1896-1900 it had gone down to 7.14 (a figure largely produced by the
abnormally low rate of 6.88 in 1898), and in 1902 was 7.23. Divorce is
forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church, and only 839 judicial
separations were obtained from the courts in 1902, more than half of
the demands made having been abandoned. Of the whole population in
1901, 57.5% were unmarried, 36.0% married, and 6.5% widowers or
widows. The illegitimate births show a decrease, having been 6.95 per
100 births in 1872 and 5.72 in 1902, with a rise, however, in the
intermediate period as high as 7.76 in 1883. The birth-rate shows a
corresponding decrease from 38.10 per 1000 in 1881 to 33.29 in 1902.
The male births have since 1872 been about 3% (3.14 in 1872-1875 and
2.72 in 1896-1900) in excess of the female births, which is rather
more than compensated for by the greater male mortality, the excess
being 2.64 in 1872-1875 and having increased to 4.08 in 1896-1900.
(The calculations are made in both cases on the total of births and
deaths of both sexes.) The result is that, while in 1871 there was an
excess of 143,370 males over females in the total population, in 1881
the excess was only 71,138, and in 1901 there were 169,684 more
females than males. The death-rate (excluding still-born children)
was, in 1872, 30.78 per 1000, and has since steadily decreased--less
rapidly between 1886-1890 than during other years; in 1902 it was only
22.15 and in 1899 was as low as 21.89. The excess of births over
deaths shows considerable variations--owing to a very low birth-rate,
it was only 3.12 per 1000 in 1880, but has averaged 11.05 per 1000
from 1896 to 1900, reaching 11.98 in 1899 and 11.14 in 1902. For the
four years 1899-1902 24.66% died under the age of one year, 9.41
between one and two years. The average expectation of life at birth
for the same period was 52 years and 11 months, 62 years and 2 months
at the age of three years, 52 years at the age of fifteen, 44 years at
the age of twenty-four, 30 years at the age of forty; while the
average period of life, which was 35 years 3 months per individual in
1882, was 43 years per individual in 1901. This shows a considerable
improvement, largely, but not entirely, in the diminution of infant
mortality; the expectation of life at birth in 1882, it is true, was
only 33 years and 6 months, and at three years of age 56 years 1
month; but the increase, both in the expectation of life and in its
average duration, goes all through the different ages.

_Occupations._--In the census of 1901 the population over nine years
of age (both male and female) was divided as follows as regards the
main professions:--

+---------------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| | Total. | Males. | Females. |
+---------------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| Agricultural (including hunting | | | |
| and fishing) | 9,666,467 | 6,466,165 | 3,200,302 |
| Industrial | 4,505,736 | 3,017,393 | 1,488,343 |
| Commerce and transport | | | |
| (public and private services) | 1,003,888 | 885,070 | 118,818 |
| Domestic service, &c. | 574,855 | 171,875 | 402,980 |
| Professional classes, | | | |
| administration, &c. | 1,304,347 | 855,217 | 449,130 |
| Defence | 204,012 | 204,012 | .. |
| Religion | 129,893 | 89,329 | 40,564 |
+---------------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+

_Emigration._--The movement of emigration may be divided into two
currents, temporary and permanent--the former going chiefly towards
neighbouring European countries and to North Africa, and consisting of
manual labourers, the latter towards trans-oceanic countries,
principally Brazil, Argentina and the United States. These emigrants
remain abroad for several years, even when they do not definitively
establish themselves there. They are composed principally of peasants,
unskilled workmen and other manual labourers. There was a tendency
towards increased emigration during the last quarter of the 19th
century. The principal causes are the growth of population, and the
over-supply of and low rates of remuneration for manual labour in
various Italian provinces. Emigration has, however, recently assumed
such proportions as to lead to scarcity of labour and rise of wages in
Italy itself. Italians form about half of the total emigrants to
America.

+-------+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| | Temporary Emigration. | Permanent Emigration. |
| +--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+
| Year. | Total No. of | Per every | Total No. of | Per every |
| | Emigrants. | 100,000 of | Emigrants. | 100,000 of |
| | | Population. | | Population. |
+-------+--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+
| 1881 | 94,225 | 333 | 41,607 | 147 |
| 1891 | 118,111 | 389 | 175,520 | 578 |
| 1901 | 281,668 | 865 | 251,577 | 772 |
+-------+--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+

The increased figures may, to a minor extent, be due to better
registration, in consequence of the law of 1901.

From the next table will be seen the direction of emigration in the
years specified:--

+------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| | 1900. | 1901. | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. |
+------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| Europe | 181,047 | 244,298 | 236,066 | 215,943 | 209,942 | 266,982 |
| N. Africa | 5,417 | 9,499 | 11,771 | 9,452 | 14,709 | 11,910 |
| U.S. and Canada | 89,400 | 124,636 | 196,723 | 200,383 | 173,537 | 322,627 |
| Mexico (Central | | | | | | |
| America) | 2,069 | 997 | 766 | 1,311 | 1,828 | 2,044 |
| South America | 74,168 | 152,543 | 85,097 | 78,699 | 74,209 | 111,943 |
| Asia and Oceania | 691 | 1,272 | 1,086 | 2,168 | 2,966 | 2,715 |
| +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| Total | 352,792 | 533,245 | 531,509 | 507,956 | 477,191 | 718,221 |
+------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

The figures for 1905 show that the total of 718,221 emigrants was made
up, as regards numbers, mainly by individuals from Venetia, Sicily,
Campania, Piedmont, Calabria and the Abruzzi; while the percentage was
highest in Calabria (4.44), the Abruzzi, Venetia, Basilicata, the
Marches, Sicily (2.86), Campania, Piedmont (2.02). Tuscany gives 1.20,
Latium 1.14%, Apulia only 1.02, while Sardinia with 0.34% occupies an
exceptional position. The figure for Sicily, which was 106,000 in
1905, reached 127,000 in 1906 (3.5%), and of these about
three-fourths would be adults; in the meantime, however, the
population increases so fast that even in 1905 there was a net
increase in Sicily of 20,000 souls; so that in three years 220,000
workers were replaced by 320,000 infants.

The phenomenon of emigration in Sicily cannot altogether be explained
by low wages, which have risen, though prices have done the same. It
has been defined as apparently "a kind of collective madness."

_Agriculture._--Accurate statistics with regard to the area occupied in
different forms of cultivation are difficult to obtain, both on account
of their varied and piecemeal character and from the lack of a complete
cadastral survey. A complete survey was ordered by the law of the 1st of
March 1886, but many years must elapse before its completion. The law,
however, enabled provinces most heavily burdened by land tax to
accelerate their portion of the survey, and to profit by the
re-assessment of the tax on the new basis. An idea of the effects of the
survey may be gathered from the fact that the assessments in the four
provinces of Mantua, Ancona, Cremona and Milan, which formerly amounted
to a total of £1,454,696, are now £2,788,080, an increase of 91%. Of the
total area of Italy, 70,793,000 acres, 71% are classed as "productive."
The unproductive area comprises 16% of the total area (this includes 4%
occupied by lagoons or marshes, and 1.75% of the total area susceptible
of _bonificazione_ or improvement by drainage. Between 1882 and 1902
over £4,000,000 was spent on this by the government). The uncultivated
area is 13%. This includes 3.50% of the total susceptible of
cultivation.

The cultivated area may be divided into five agrarian regions or
zones, named after the variety of tree culture which flourishes in
them. (1) Proceeding from south to north, the first zone is that of
the _agrumi_ (oranges, lemons and similar fruits). It comprises a
great part of Sicily. In Sardinia it extends along the southern and
western coasts. It predominates along the Ligurian Riviera from
Bordighera to Spezia, and on the Adriatic, near San Benedetto del
Tronto and Gargano, and, crossing the Italian shore of the Ionian Sea,
prevails in some regions of Calabria, and terminates around the gulfs
of Salerno, Sorrento and Naples. (2) The region of _olives_ comprises
the internal Sicilian valleys and part of the mountain slopes; in
Sardinia, the valleys near the coast on the S.E., S.W. and N.W.; on
the mainland it extends from Liguria and from the southern extremities
of the Romagna to Cape Santa Maria di Leuca in Apulia, and to Cape
Spartivento in Calabria. Some districts of the olive region are near
the lakes of upper Italy and in Venetia, and the territories of
Verona, Vicenza, Treviso and Friuli. (3) The vine region begins on the
sunny slopes of the Alpine spurs and in those Alpine valleys open
towards the south, extending over the plains of Lombardy and Emilia.
In Sardinia it covers the mountain slopes to a considerable height,
and in Sicily covers the sides of the Madonie range, reaching a level
above 3000 ft. on the southern slope of Etna. The Calabrian Alps, the
less rocky sides of the Apulian Murgie and the whole length of the
Apennines are covered at different heights, according to their
situation. The hills of Tuscany, and of Monferrato in Piedmont,
produce the most celebrated Italian vintages. (4) The region of
_chestnuts_ extends from the valleys to the high plateaus of the Alps,
along the northern slopes of the Apennines in Liguria, Modena,
Tuscany, Romagna, Umbria, the Marches and along the southern Apennines
to the Calabrian and Sicilian ranges, as well as to the mountains of
Sardinia. (5) The wooded region covers the Alps and Apennines above
the chestnut level. The woods consist chiefly of pine and hazel upon
the Apennines, and upon the Calabrian, Sicilian and Sardinian
mountains of oak, ilex, hornbeam and similar trees.

Between these regions of tree culture lie zones of different
herbaceous culture, cereals, vegetables and textile plants. The style
of cultivation varies according to the nature of the ground, terraces
supported by stone walls being much used in mountainous districts.
Cereal cultivation occupies the foremost place in area and quantity
though it has been on the decline since 1903, still representing,
however, an advance on previous years. Wheat is the most important
crop and is widely distributed. In 1905 12,734,491 acres, or about 18%
of the total area, produced 151,696,571 bushels of wheat, a yield of
only 12 bushels per acre. The importation has, however, enormously
increased since 1882--from 164,600 to 1,126,368 tons; while the extent
of land devoted to corn cultivation has slightly decreased. Next in
importance to wheat comes maize, occupying about 7% of the total area
of the country, and cultivated almost everywhere as an alternative
crop. The production of maize in 1905 reached about 96,250,000
bushels, a slight increase on the average. The production of maize is,
however, insufficient, and 208,719 tons were imported in 1902--about
double the amount imported in 1882.

Rice is cultivated in low-lying, moist lands, where spring and summer
temperatures are high. The Po valley and the valleys of Emilia and the
Romagna are best adapted for rice, but the area is diminishing on
account of the competition of foreign rice and of the impoverishment
of the soil by too intense cultivation. The area is about 0.5% of the
total of Italy. The area under rye is about 0.5% of the total, of
which about two-thirds lie in the Alpine and about one-third in the
Apennine zone. The barley zone is geographically extensive but
embraces not more than 1% of the total area, of which half is situated
in Sardinia and Sicily. Oats, cultivated in the Roman and Tuscan
maremma and in Apulia, are used almost exclusively for horses and
cattle. The area of oats cultivation is 1.5% of the total area. The
other cereals, millet and _panico sorgo_ (_Panicum italicum_), have
lost much of their importance in consequence of the introduction of
maize and rice. Millet, however, is still cultivated in the north of
Italy, and is used as bread for agricultural labourers, and as forage
when mixed with buckwheat (_Sorghum saccaratum_). The manufacture of
macaroni and similar foodstuff is a characteristic Italian industry.
It is extensively distributed, but especially flourishes in the
Neapolitan provinces. The exportation of "corn-flour pastes" sank,
however, from 7100 tons to 350 between 1882 and 1902.

The cultivation of green forage is extensive and is divided into the
categories of temporary and perennial. The temporary includes vetches,
pulse, lupine, clover and trifolium; and the perennial,
meadow-trefoil, lupinella, sulla (_Hedysarum coronarium_), lucerne and
darnel. The natural grass meadows are extensive, and hay is grown all
over the country, but especially in the Po valley. Pasture occupies
about 30% of the total area of the country, of which Alpine pastures
occupy 1.25%. Seed-bearing vegetables are comparatively scarce. The
principal are: white beans, largely consumed by the working classes;
lentils, much less cultivated than beans; and green peas, largely
consumed in Italy, and exported as a spring vegetable. Chick-pease are
extensively cultivated in the southern provinces. Horse beans are
grown, especially in the south and in the larger islands; lupines are
also grown for fodder.

Among tuberous vegetables the potato comes first. The area occupied is
about 0.7% of the whole of the country. Turnips are grown principally
in the central provinces as an alternative crop to wheat. They yield
as much as 12 tons per acre. Beetroot (_Beta vulgaris_) is used as
fodder, and yields about 10 tons per acre. Sugar beet is extensively
grown to supply the sugar factories. In 1898-1899 there were only four
sugar factories, with an output of 5972 tons; in 1905 there were
thirty-three, with an output of 93,916 tons.

Market gardening is carried on both near towns and villages, where
products find ready sale, and along the great railways, on account of
transport facilities. Rome is an exception to the former rule and
imports garden produce largely from the neighbourhood of Naples and
from Sardinia.

Among the chief industrial plants is tobacco, which grows wherever
suitable soil exists. Since tobacco is a government monopoly, its
cultivation is subject to official concessions and prescriptions.
Experiments hitherto made show that the cultivation of Oriental
tobacco may profitably be extended in Italy. The yield for 1901 was
5528 tons, but a large increase took place subsequently, eleven
million new plants having been added in southern Italy in 1905.

The chief textile plants are hemp, flax and cotton. Hemp is largely
cultivated in the provinces of Turin, Ferrara, Bologna, Forlì, Ascoli
Piceno and Caserta. Bologna hemp is specially valued. Flax covers
about 160,000 acres, with a product, in fibre, amounting to about
20,000 tons. Cotton (_Gossypium herbaceum_), which at the beginning of
the 19th century, at the time of the Continental blockade, and again
during the American War of Secession, was largely cultivated, is now
grown only in parts of Sicily and in a few southern provinces. Sumach,
liquorice and madder are also grown in the south.

The vine is cultivated throughout the length and breadth of Italy, but
while in some of the districts of the south and centre it occupies
from 10 to 20% of the cultivated area, in some of the northern
provinces, such as Sondrio, Belluno, Grosseto, &c., the average is
only about 1 or 2%. The methods of cultivation are varied; but the
planting of the vines by themselves in long rows of insignificant
bushes is the exception. In Lombardy, Emilia, Romagna, Tuscany, the
Marches, Umbria and the southern provinces, they are trained to trees
which are either left in their natural state or subjected to pruning
and pollarding. In Campania the vines are allowed to climb freely to
the tops of the poplars. In the rest of Italy the elm and the maple
are the trees mainly employed as supports. Artificial props of several
kinds--wires, cane work, trellis work, &c.--are also in use in many
districts (in the neighbourhood of Rome canes are almost exclusively
employed), and in some the plant is permitted to trail along the
ground. The vintage takes place, according to locality and climate,
from the beginning of September to the beginning of November. The vine
has been attacked by the _Oidium Tuckeri_, the _Phylloxera vastatrix_
and the _Peronospora viticola_, which in rapid succession wrought
great havoc in Italian vineyards. American vines, are, however, immune
and have been largely adopted. The production of wine in the vintage
of 1907, which was extraordinarily abundant all over the country, was
estimated at 1232 million gallons (56 million hectolitres), the
average for 1901-1903 being some 352 million gallons less; of this the
probable home consumption was estimated at rather over half, while a
considerable amount remained over from 1906. The exportation in 1902
only reached about 45 million gallons (and even that is double the
average), while an equally abundant vintage in France and Spain
rendered the exportation of the balance of 1907 impossible, and fiscal
regulations rendered the distillation of the superfluous amount
difficult. The quality, too, owing to bad weather at the time of
vintage, was not good; Italian wine, indeed, never is sufficiently
good to compete with the best wines of other countries, especially
France (though there is more opening for Italian wines of the Bordeaux
and Burgundy type); nor will many kinds of it stand keeping, partly
owing to their natural qualities and partly to the insufficient care
devoted to their preparation. There has been some improvement,
however, while some of the heavier white wines, noticeably the Marsala
of Sicily, have excellent keeping qualities. The area cultivated as
vineyards has increased enormously, from about 4,940,000 acres to
9,880,000 acres, or about 14% of the total area of the country.
Over-production seems thus to be a considerable danger, and
improvement of quality is rather to be sought after. This has been
encouraged by government prizes since 1904.

Next to cereals and the vine the most important object of cultivation
is the olive. In Sicily and the provinces of Reggio, Catanzaro,
Cosenza and Lecce this tree flourishes without shelter; as far north
as Rome, Aquila and Teramo it requires only the slightest protection;
in the rest of the peninsula it runs the risk of damage by frost every
ten years or so. The proportion of ground under olives is from 20 to
36% at Porto Maurizio, and in Reggio, Lecce, Bari, Chieti and Leghorn
it averages from 10 to 19%. Throughout Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia and
the greater part of Emilia, the tree is of little importance. In the
olive there is great variety of kinds, and the methods of cultivation
differ greatly in different districts; in Bari, Chieti and Lecce, for
instance, there are regular woods of nothing but olive-trees, while in
middle Italy there are olive-orchards with the interspaces occupied by
crops of various kinds. The Tuscan oils from Lucca, Calci and Buti are
considered the best in the world; those of Bari, Umbria and western
Liguria rank next. The wood of the olive is also used for the
manufacture of small articles. The olive-growing area occupies about
3.5% of the total area of the country, and the crop in 1905 produced
about 75,000,000 gallons of oil. The falling off of the crop,
especially in 1899, was due to bad seasons and to insects, notably the
_Cycloconium oleoginum_, and the _Dacus oleae_, or oil-fly, which have
ravaged the olive-yards, and it is noticeable that lately good and bad
seasons seem to alternate; between 1900 and 1905 the crops were
alternately one half of, and equal to, that of the latter year. With
the development of agricultural knowledge, notable improvements have
been effected in the manufacture of oil. The steam mills give the best
results. The export trade, however, is decreasing considerably, while
the home consumption is increasing. In 1901, 1985 imperial tuns of oil
were shipped from Gallipoli for abroad--two-thirds to the United
Kingdom, one-third to Russia--and 666 to Italian ports; while in 1904
the figures were reversed, 1633 tuns going to Italian ports, and only
945 tuns to foreign ports. The other principal port of shipping is
Gioia Tauro, 30 m. N.N.E. of Reggio Calabria. A certain amount of
linseed-oil is made in Lombardy, Sicily, Apulia and Calabria; colza in
Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia and Emilia; and castor-oil in Venetia and
Sicily. The product is principally used for industrial purposes, and
partly in the preparation of food, but the amount is decreasing.

The cultivation of oranges, lemons and their congeners (collectively
designated in Italian by the term _agrumi_) is of comparatively modern
date, the introduction of the _Citrus Bigaradia_ being probably due to
the Arabs. Sicily is the chief centre of cultivation--the area
occupied by lemon and orange orchards in the province of Palermo alone
having increased from 11,525 acres in 1854 to 54,340 in 1874. Reggio
Calabria, Catanzaro, Cosenza, Lecce, Salerno, Naples and Caserta are
the continental provinces which come next after Sicily. In Sardinia
the cultivation is extensive, but receives little attention. Both
crude and concentrated lime-juice is exported, and essential oils are
extracted from the rind of the _agrumi_, more particularly from that
of the lemon and the bergamot. In northern and central Italy, except
in the province of Brescia, the _agrumi_ are almost non-existent. The
trees are planted on irrigated soil and the fruit gathered between
November and August. Considerable trade is done in _agro di limone_ or
lemon extract, which forms the basis of citric acid. Extraction is
extensively carried on in the provinces of Messina and Palermo.

Among other fruit trees, apple-trees have special importance. Almonds
are widely cultivated in Sicily, Sardinia and the southern provinces;
walnut trees throughout the peninsula, their wood being more important
than their fruit; hazel nuts, figs, prickly pears (used in the south
and the islands for hedges, their fruit being a minor consideration),
peaches, pears, locust beans and pistachio nuts are among the other
fruits. The mulberry-tree (_Morus alba_), whose leaves serve as food
for silkworms, is cultivated in every region, considerable progress
having been made in its cultivation and in the rearing of silkworms
since 1850. Silkworm-rearing establishments of importance now exist
in the Marches, Umbria, in the Abruzzi, Tuscany, Piedmont and Venetia.
The chief silk-producing provinces are Lombardy, Venetia and Piedmont.
During the period 1900-1904 the average annual production of silk
cocoons was 53,500 tons, and of silk 5200 tons.

The great variety in physical and social conditions throughout the
peninsula gives corresponding variety to the methods of agriculture.
In the rotation of crops there is an amazing diversity--shifts of two
years, three years, four years, six years, and in many cases whatever
order strikes the fancy of the farmer. The fields of Tuscany for the
most part bear wheat one year and maize the next, in perpetual
interchanges, relieved to some extent by green crops. A similar method
prevails in the Abruzzi, and in the provinces of Salerno, Benevento
and Avellino. In Lombardy a six-year shift is common: either wheat,
clover, maize, rice, rice, rice (the last year manured with lupines)
or maize, wheat followed by clover, clover, clover ploughed in, and
rice, rice and rice manured with lupines. The Emilian region is one
where regular rotations are best observed--a common shift being grain,
maize, clover, beans and vetches, &c., grain, which has the
disadvantage of the grain crops succeeding each other. In the province
of Naples, Caserta, &c., the method of fallows is widely adopted, the
ground often being left in this state for fifteen or twenty years; and
in some parts of Sicily there is a regular interchange of fallow and
crop year by year. The following scheme indicates a common Sicilian
method of a type which has many varieties: fallow, grain, grain,
pasture, pasture--other two divisions of the area following the same
order, but beginning respectively with the two years of grain and the
two of pasture.

Woods and forests.

Woods and forests play an important part, especially in regard to the
consistency of the soil and to the character of the watercourses. The
chestnut is of great value for its wood and its fruit, an article of
popular consumption. Good timber is furnished by the oak and beech,
and pine and fir forests of the Alps and Apennines. Notwithstanding
the efforts of the government to unify and co-ordinate the forest laws
previously existing in the various states, deforestation has continued
in many regions. This has been due to speculation, to the unrestricted
pasturage of goats, to the rights which many communes have over the
forests, and to some extent to excessive taxation, which led the
proprietors to cut and sell the trees and then abandon the ground to
the Treasury. The results are--a lack of water-supply and of
water-power, the streams becoming mere torrents for a short period and
perfectly dry for the rest of the year; lack of a sufficient supply of
timber; the denudation of the soil on the hills, and, where the
valleys below have insufficient drainage, the formation of swamps. If
the available water-power of Italy, already very considerable, be
harnessed, converted into electric power (which is already being done
in some districts), and further increased by reafforestation, the
effect upon the industries of Italy will be incalculable, and the
importation of coal will be very materially diminished. The area of
forest is about 14.3% of the total, and of the chestnut-woods 1.5
more; and its products in 1886 were valued at £3,520,000 (not
including chestnuts). A quantity of it is really brushwood, used for
the manufacture of charcoal and for fuel, coal being little used
except for manufacturing purposes. Forest nurseries have also been
founded.

Live stock.

According to an approximate calculation the number of head of live
stock in Italy in 1890 was 16,620,000, thus divided:--horses, 720,000;
asses, 1,000,000; mules, 300,000; cattle, 5,000,000; sheep, 6,000,000;
goats, 1,800,000; swine, 1,800,000.

The breed of cattle most widely distributed is that known as the
Podolian, usually with white or grey coat and enormous horns. Of the
numerous sub-varieties, the finest is said to be that of the Val di
Chiana, where the animals are stall-fed all the year round; next is
ranked the so-called Valle Tiberina type. Wilder varieties roam in
vast herds over the Tuscan and Roman _maremmas_, and the corresponding
districts in Apulia and other regions. In the Alpine districts there
is a stock distinct from the Podolian, generally called _razza
montanina_. These animals are much smaller in stature and more regular
in form than the Podolians; they are mainly kept for dairy purposes.
Another stock, with no close allies nearer than the south of France,
is found in the plain of Racconigi and Carmagnola; the mouse-coloured
Swiss breed occurs in the neighbourhood of Milan: the Tirolese breed
stretches south to Padua and Modena; and a red-coated breed named of
Reggio or Friuli is familiar both in what were the duchies of Parma
and Modena, and in the provinces of Udine and Treviso. In Sicily the
so-called Modica race is of note; and in Sardinia there is a distinct
stock which seldom exceeds the weight of 700 lb. Buffaloes are kept in
several districts, more particularly of southern Italy.

Enormous flocks are possessed by professional sheep-farmers, who
pasture them in the mountains in the summer, and bring them down to
the plains in the winter. At Saluzzo in Piedmont there is a stock with
hanging ears, arched face and tall stature, kept for its dairy
qualities; and in the Biellese the merino breed is maintained by some
of the larger proprietors. In the upper valleys of the Alps there are
many local varieties, one of which at Ossola is like the Scottish
blackface. Liguria is not much adapted for sheep-farming on a large
scale; but a number of small flocks come down to the plain of Tuscany
in the winter. With the exception of a few sub-Alpine districts near
Bergamo and Brescia, the great Lombard plain is decidedly unpastoral.
The Bergamo sheep is the largest breed in the country; that of Cadore
and Belluno approaches it in size. In the Venetian districts the
farmers often have small stationary flocks. Throughout the Roman
province, and Umbria, Apulia, the Abruzzi, Basilicata and Calabria, is
found in its full development a remarkable system of pastoral
migration with the change of seasons which has been in existence from
the most ancient times, and has attracted attention as much by its
picturesqueness as by its industrial importance (see APULIA). Merino
sheep have been acclimatized in the Abruzzi, Capitanata and
Basilicata. The number of sheep, however, is on the decrease.
Similarly, the number of goats, which are reared only in hilly
regions, is decreasing, especially on account of the existing forest
laws, as they are the chief enemies of young plantations.
Horse-breeding is on the increase. The state helps to improve the
breeds by placing choice stallions at the disposal of private breeders
at a low tariff. The exportation is, however, unimportant, while the
importation is largely on the increase, 46,463 horses having been
imported in 1902. Cattle-breeding varies with the different regions.
In upper Italy cattle are principally reared in pens and stalls; in
central Italy cattle are allowed to run half wild, the stall system
being little practised; in the south and in the islands cattle are
kept in the open air, few shelters being provided. The erection of
shelters, however, is encouraged by the state. Swine are extensively
reared in many provinces. Fowls are kept on all farms and, though
methods are still antiquated, trade in fowls and eggs is rapidly
increasing.

In 1905 Italy exported 32,786 and imported 17,766 head of cattle;
exported 33,574 and imported 6551 sheep; exported 95,995 and imported
1604 swine. The former two show a very large decrease and the latter a
large increase on the export figures for 1882. The export of
agricultural products shows a large increase.

The north of Italy has long been known for its great dairy districts.
Parmesan cheese, otherwise called Lodigiano (from Lodi) or _grana_,
was presented to King Louis XII. as early as 1509. Parmesan is not
confined to the province from which it derives its name; it is
manufactured in all that part of Emilia in the neighbourhood of the
Po, and in the provinces of Brescia, Bergamo, Pavia, Novara and
Alessandria. Gorgonzola, which takes its name from a town in the
province, has become general throughout the whole of Lombardy, in the
eastern parts of the "ancient provinces," and in the province of
Cuneo. The cheese known as the _cacio-cavallo_ is produced in regions
extending from 37° to 43° N. lat. Gruyère, extensively manufactured in
Switzerland and France, is also produced in Italy in the Alpine
regions and in Sicily. With the exception of Parmesan, Gorgonzola, La
Fontina and Gruyère, most of the Italian cheese is consumed in the
locality of its production. Co-operative dairy farms are numerous in
north Italy, and though only about half as many as in 1889 (114 in
1902) are better organized. Modern methods have been introduced.

Drainage, &c.

The drainage of marshes and marshy lands has considerably extended. A
law passed on the 22nd of March 1900 gave a special impulse to this
form of enterprise by fixing the ratio of expenditure incumbent
respectively upon the State, the provinces, the communes, and the
owners or other private individuals directly interested.

Agrarian economics.

The Italian Federation of Agrarian Unions has greatly contributed to
agricultural progress. Government travelling teachers of agriculture,
and fixed schools of viticulture, also do good work. Some unions
annually purchase large quantities of merchandise for their members,
especially chemical manures. The importation of machinery amounted to
over 5000 tons in 1901.

Income from land has diminished on the whole. The chief diminution has
taken place in the south in regard to oranges and lemons, cereals and
(for some provinces) vines. Since 1895, however, the heavy import corn
duty has caused a slight rise in the income from corn lands. The
principal reasons for the general decrease are the fall in prices
through foreign competition and the closing of certain markets, the
diseases of plants and the increased outlay required to combat them,
and the growth of State and local taxation. One of the great evils of
Italian agricultural taxation is its lack of elasticity and of
adaptation to local conditions. Taxes are not sufficiently
proportioned to what the land may reasonably be expected to produce,
nor sufficient allowance made for the exceptional conditions of a
southern climate, in which a few hours' bad weather may destroy a
whole crop. The Italian agriculturist has come to look (and often in
vain) for action on a large scale from the state, for irrigation,
drainage of uncultivated low-lying land, which may be made fertile,
river regulation, &c.; while to the small proprietor the state often
appears only as a hard and inconsiderate tax-gatherer.

The relations between owners and tillers of the soil are still
regulated by the ancient forms of agrarian contract, which have
remained almost untouched by social and political changes. The
possibility of reforming these contracts in some parts of the kingdom
has been studied, in the hope of bringing them into closer harmony
with the needs of rational cultivation and the exigencies of social
justice.

Peasant proprietorship is most common in Lombardy and Piedmont, but it
is also found elsewhere. Large farms are found in certain of the more
open districts; but in Italy generally, and especially in Sardinia,
the land is very much subdivided. The following forms of contract are
most usual in the several regions: In Piedmont the _mezzadria_
(_métayage_), the _terzieria_, the _colonia parziaria_, the _boaria_,
the _schiavenza_ and the _affitto_, or lease, are most usual. Under
_mezzadria_ the contract generally lasts three years. Products are
usually divided in equal proportions between the owner and the tiller.
The owner pays the taxes, defrays the cost of preparing the ground,
and provides the necessary implements. Stock usually belongs to the
owner, and, even if kept on the half-and-half system, is usually
bought by him. The peasant, or _mezzadro_, provides labour. Under
_terzieria_ the owner furnishes stock, implements and seed, and the
tiller retains only one-third of the principal products. In the
_colonia parziaria_ the peasant executes all the agricultural work, in
return for which he is housed rent-free, and receives one-sixth of the
corn, one-third of the maize and has a small money wage. This contract
is usually renewed from year to year. The _boaria_ is widely diffused
in its two forms of _cascina fatta_ and _paghe_. In the former case a
peasant family undertakes all the necessary work in return for payment
in money or kind, which varies according to the crop; in the latter
the money wages and the payment in kind are fixed beforehand.
_Schiavenza_, either simple or with a share in the crops, is a form of
contract similar to the _boaria_, but applied principally to large
holdings. The wages are lower than under the _boaria_. In the
_affitto_, or lease, the proprietor furnishes seed and the implements.
Rent varies according to the quality of the soil.

In Lombardy, besides the _mezzadria_, the lease is common, but the
_terzieria_ is rare. The lessee, or farmer, tills the soil at his own
risk; usually he provides live stock, implements and capital, and has
no right to compensation for ordinary improvements, nor for
extraordinary improvements effected without the landlord's consent. He
is obliged to give a guarantee for the fulfilment of his engagements.
In some places he pays an annual tribute in grapes, corn and other
produce. In some of the Lombard _mezzadria_ contracts taxes are paid
by the cultivator.

In Venetia it is more common than elsewhere in Italy for owners to
till their own soil. The prevalent forms of contract are the
_mezzadria_ and the lease. In Liguria, also, _mezzadria_ and lease are
the chief forms of contract.

In Emilia both _mezzadria_ and lease tenure are widely diffused in the
provinces of Ferrara, Reggio and Parma; but other special forms of
contract exist, known as the _famiglio da spesa_, _boaria_,
_braccianti obbligati_ and _braccianti disobbligati_. In the _famiglio
da spesa_ the tiller receives a small wage and a proportion of certain
products. The _boaria_ is of two kinds. If the tiller receives as much
as 45 lire per month, supplemented by other wages in kind, it is said
to be _boaria a salario_; if the principal part of his remuneration is
in kind, his contract is called _boaria a spesa_.

In the Marches, Umbria and Tuscany, _mezzadria_ prevails in its purest
form. Profits and losses, both in regard to produce and stock, are
equally divided. In some places, however, the landlord takes
two-thirds of the olives and the whole of the grapes and the mulberry
leaves. Leasehold exists in the province of Grosseto alone. In Latium
leasehold and farming by landlords prevail, but cases of _mezzadria_
and of "improvement farms" exist. In the _agro Romano_, or zone
immediately around Rome, land is as a rule left for pasturage. It
needs, therefore, merely supervision by guardians and mounted
overseers, or _butteri_, who are housed and receive wages. Large
landlords are usually represented by _ministri_, or factors, who
direct agricultural operations and manage the estates, but the estate
is often let to a middleman, or _mercante di campagna_. Wherever corn
is cultivated, leasehold predominates. Much of the work is done by
companies of peasants, who come down from the mountainous districts
when required, permanent residence not being possible owing to the
malaria. Near Velletri and Frosinone "improvement farms" prevail. A
piece of uncultivated land is made over to a peasant for from 20 to 29
years. Vines and olives are usually planted, the landlord paying the
taxes and receiving one-third of the produce. At the end of the
contract the landlord either cultivates his land himself or leases it,
repaying to the improver part of the expenditure incurred by him. This
repayment sometimes consists of half the estimated value of the
standing crops.

In the Abruzzi and in Apulia leasehold is predominant. Usually leases
last from three to six years. In the provinces of Foggia and Lecce
long leases (up to twenty-nine years) are granted, but in them it is
explicitly declared that they do not imply _enfiteusi_ (perpetual
leasehold), nor any other form of contract equivalent to
co-proprietorship. _Mezzadria_ is rarely resorted to. On some small
holdings, however, it exists with contracts lasting from two to six
years. Special contracts, known as _colonie immovibili_ and _colonie
temporanee_ are applied to the _latifondi_ or huge estates, the owners
of which receive half the produce, except that of the vines,
olive-trees and woods, which he leases separately. "Improvement
contracts" also exist. They consist of long leases, under which the
landlord shares the costs of improvements and builds farm-houses; also
leases of orange and lemon gardens, two-thirds of the produce of which
go to the landlord, while the farmer contributes half the cost of
farming besides the labour. Leasehold, varying from four to six years
for arable land and from six to eighteen years for forest-land,
prevails also in Campania, Basilicata and Calabria. The _estaglio_, or
rent, is often paid in kind, and is equivalent to half the produce of
good land and one-third of the produce of bad land. "Improvement
contracts" are granted for uncultivated bush districts, where one
fourth of the produce goes to the landlord, and for plantations of
fig-trees, olive-trees and vines, half of the produce of which belongs
to the landlord, who at the end of ten years reimburses the tenant for
a part of the improvements effected. Other forms of contract are the
_piccola mezzadria_, or sub-letting by tenants to under-tenants, on
the half-and-half system; _enfiteusi_, or perpetual leases at low
rents--a form which has almost died out; and _mezzadria_ (in the
provinces of Caserta and Benevento).

In Sicily leasehold prevails under special conditions. In pure
leasehold the landlord demands at least six months' rent as guarantee,
and the forfeiture of any fortuitous advantages. Under the _gabella_
lease the contract lasts twenty-nine years, the lessee being obliged
to make improvements, but being sometimes exempted from rent during
the first years. _Inquilinaggio_ is a form of lease by which the
landlord, and sometimes the tenant, makes over to tenant or sub-tenant
the sowing of corn. There are various categories of _inquilinaggio_,
according as rent is paid in money or in kind. Under _mezzadria_ or
_metateria_ the landlord divides the produce with the farmer in
various proportions. The farmer provides all labour. _Latifondi_ farms
are very numerous in Sicily. The landlord lets his land to two or more
persons jointly, who undertake to restore it to him in good condition
with one-third of it "_interrozzito_," that is, fallow, so as to be
cultivated the following year according to triennial rotation. These
lessees are usually speculators, who divide and sub-let the estate.
The sub-tenants in their turn let a part of their land to peasants in
_mezzadria_, thus creating a system disastrous both for agriculture
and the peasants. At harvest-time the produce is placed in the barns
of the lessor, who first deducts 25% as premium, then 16% for
_battiteria_ (the difference between corn before and after winnowing),
then deducts a proportion for rent and subsidies, so that the portion
retained by the actual tiller of the soil is extremely meagre. In bad
years the tiller, moreover, gives up seed corn before beginning
harvest.

In Sardinia landlord-farming and leasehold prevail. In the few cases
of _mezzadria_ the Tuscan system is followed.

_Mines._--The number of mines increased from 589 in 1881 to 1580 in
1902. The output in 1881 was worth about £2,800,000, but by 1895 had
decreased to £1,800,000, chiefly on account of the fall in the price
of sulphur. It afterwards rose, and was worth more than £3,640,000 in
1899, falling again to £3,118,600 in 1902 owing to severe American
competition in sulphur (see SICILY). The chief minerals are sulphur,
in the production of which Italy holds one of the first places, iron,
zinc, lead; these, and, to a smaller extent, copper of an inferior
quality, manganese and antimony, are successfully mined. The bulk of
the sulphur mines are in Sicily, while the majority of the lead and
zinc mines are in Sardinia; much of the lead smelting is done at
Pertusola, near Genoa, the company formed for this purpose having
acquired many of the Sardinian mines. Iron is mainly mined in Elba.
Quicksilver and tin are found (the latter in small quantities) in
Tuscany. Boracic acid is chiefly found near Volterra, where there is
also a little rock salt, but the main supply is obtained by
evaporation. The output of stone from quarries is greatly diminished
(from 12,500,000 tons, worth £1,920,000, in 1890, to 8,000,000 tons,
worth £1,400,000, in 1899), a circumstance probably attributable to
the slackening of building enterprise in many cities, and to the
decrease in the demand for stone for railway, maritime and river
embankment works. The value of the output had, however, by 1902 risen
to £1,600,000, representing a tonnage of about 10,000,000. There is
good travertine below Tivoli and elsewhere in Italy; the finest
granite is found at Baveno. Lava is much used for paving-stones in the
neighbourhood of volcanic districts, where pozzolana (for cement) and
pumice stone are also important. Much of Italy contains Pliocene clay,
which is good for pottery and brickmaking. Mineral springs are very
numerous, and of great variety.

_Fisheries._--The number of boats and smacks engaged in the fisheries
has considerably increased. In 1881 the total number was 15,914, with
a tonnage of 49,103. In 1902 there were 23,098 boats, manned by
101,720 men, and the total catch was valued at just over half a
million sterling--according to the government figures, which are
certainly below the truth. The value has, however, undoubtedly
diminished, though the number of boats and crews increases. Most of
the fishing boats, properly so called, start from the Adriatic coast,
the coral boats from the western Mediterranean coast, and the sponge
boats from the western Mediterranean and Sicilian coasts. Fishing and
trawling are carried on chiefly off the Italian (especially Ligurian),
Austrian and Tunisian coasts; coral is found principally near Sardinia
and Sicily, and sponges almost exclusively off Sicily and Tunisia in
the neighbourhood of Sfax. For sponge fishing no accurate statistics
are available before 1896; in that year 75 tons of sponges were
secured, but there has been considerable diminution since, only 31
tons being obtained in 1902. A considerable proportion was obtained by
foreign boats. The island of Lampedusa may be considered its centre.
Coral fishing, which fell off between 1889 and 1892 on account of the
temporary closing of the Sciacca coral reefs has greatly decreased
since 1884, when the fisheries produced 643 tons, whereas in 1902 they
only produced 225 tons. The value of the product has, however,
proportionately increased, so that the sum realized was little less,
while less than half the number of men was employed. Sardinian coral
commands from £3 to £4 per kilogramme (2.204 lb.), and is much more
valuable than the Sicilian coral. The Sciacca reefs were again closed
for three winters by a decree of 1904. The fishing is largely carried
on by boats from Torre del Greco, in the Gulf of Naples, where the
best coral beds are now exhausted. In 1879 4000 men were employed; in
1902 only just over 1000. In 1902 there were 48 tunny fisheries,
employing 3006 men, and 5116 tons of fish worth £80,000 were caught.
The main fisheries are in Sardinia, Sicily and Elba. Anchovy and
sardine fishing (the products of which are reckoned among the general
total) are also of considerable importance, especially along the
Ligurian and Tuscan coasts. The lagoon fisheries are also of great
importance, more especially those of Comacchio, the lagoon of
Orbetello and the Mare Piccolo at Taranto &c. The deep-sea fishing
boats in 1902 numbered 1368, with a total tonnage of 16,149; 100 of
these were coral-fishing boats and 111 sponge-fishing boats.

_Industrial Progress._--The industrial progress of Italy has been great
since 1880. Many articles formerly imported are now made at home, and
some Italian manufactures have begun to compete in foreign markets.
Italy has only unimportant lignite and anthracite mines, but water power
is abundant and has been largely applied to industry, especially in
generating electricity. The electric power required for the tramways and
the illumination of Rome is entirely supplied by turbines situated at
Tivoli, and this is the case elsewhere, and the harnessing of this
water-power is capable of very considerable extension. A sign of
industrial development is to be found in the growing number of
manufacturing companies, both Italian and foreign.

Mechanical industries.

The chief development has taken place in mechanical industries, though
it has also been marked in metallurgy. Sulphur mining supplies large
industries of sulphur-refining and grinding, in spite of American
competition. Very little pig iron is made, most of the iron ore being
exported, and iron manufactured consists of old iron resmelted. For
steel-making foreign pig iron is chiefly used. The manufacture of
steel rails, carried on first at Terni and afterwards at Savona, began
in Italy in 1886. Tin has been manufactured since 1892. Lead,
antimony, mercury and copper are also produced. The total salt
production in 1902 was 458,497 tons, of which 248,215 were produced in
the government salt factories and the rest in the free salt-works of
Sicily. Great progress has been made in the manufacture of machinery;
locomotives, railway carriages, electric tram-cars, &c., and machinery
of all kinds, are now largely made in Italy itself, especially in the
north and in the neighbourhood of Naples. At Turin the manufacture of
motor-cars has attained great importance and the F.I.A.T. (Fabbrica
Italiana Automobili Torino) factory employs 2000 workmen, while eight
others employ 2780 amongst them.

Textiles.

The textile industries, some of which are of ancient date, are among
those that have most rapidly developed. Handlooms and small spinning
establishments have, in the silk industry, given place to large
establishments with steam looms. The production of raw silk at least
tripled itself between 1875 and 1900, and the value of the silks woven
in Italy, estimated in 1890 to be £2,200,000, is now, on account of
the development of the export trade, calculated to be almost
£4,000,000. Lombardy (especially Como, Milan and Bergamo), Piedmont
and Venetia are the chief silk-producing regions. There are several
public assay offices in Italy for silk; the first in the world was
established in Turin in 1750. The cotton industry has also rapidly
developed. Home products not only supply the Italian market in
increasing degree, but find their way into foreign markets. While
importation of raw cotton increases importations of cotton thread and
of cotton stuffs have rapidly decreased. The value of the annual
produce of the various branches of the cotton industry, which in 1885
was calculated to be £7,200,000, was in 1900, notwithstanding the fall
in prices, about £12,000,000. The industry is chiefly developed in
Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria; to some extent also in Campania,
Venetia and Tuscany, and to a less extent in Lazio (Rome), Apulia,
Emilia, the Marches, Umbria, the Abruzzi and Sicily. A government
weaving school was established in Naples in 1906. As in the case of
cotton, Italian woollen fabrics are conquering the home market in
increasing degree. The industry centres chiefly in Piedmont (province
of Novara), Venetia (province of Vicenza), Tuscany (Florence),
Lombardy (Brescia), Campania (Caserta), Genoa, Umbria, the Marches and
Rome. To some extent the industry also exists in Emilia, Calabria,
Basilicata, the Abruzzi, Sardinia and Sicily. It has, however, a
comparatively small export trade.

The other textile industries (flax, jute, &c.) have made notable
progress. The jute industry is concentrated in a few large factories,
which from 1887 onwards have more than supplied the home market, and
have begun considerably to export.

Chemicals.

Chemical industries show an output worth £2,640,000 in 1902 as against
£1,040,000 in 1893. The chief products are sulphuric acid; sulphate of
copper, employed chiefly as a preventive of certain maladies of the
vine; carbonate of lead, hyperphosphates and chemical manures; calcium
carbide; explosive powder; dynamite and other explosives.
Pharmaceutical industries, as distinguished from those above
mentioned, have kept pace with the general development of Italian
activity. The principal product is quinine, the manufacture of which
has acquired great importance, owing to its use as a specific against
malaria. Milan and Genoa are the principal centres, and also the
government military pharmaceutical factory at Turin. Other industries
of a semi-chemical character are candle-, soap-, glue-, and
perfume-making, and the preparation of india-rubber. The last named
has succeeded, by means of the large establishments at Milan in
supplying not only the whole Italian market but an export trade.

The match-making industry is subject to special fiscal conditions. In
1902-1903 there were 219 match factories scattered throughout Italy,
but especially in Piedmont, Lombardy and Venetia. The number has been
reduced to less than half since 1897 by the suppression of smaller
factories, while the production has increased from 47,690 millions to
59,741 millions.

The beetroot-sugar industry has attained considerable proportions in
Umbria, the Marches, Lazio, Venetia and Piedmont since 1890. In
1898-1899, 5972 tons were produced, while in 1905 the figure had risen
to 93,916. The rise of the industry has been favoured by protective
tariffs and by a system of excise which allows a considerable premium
to manufacturers.

Alcohol has undergone various oscillations, according to the
legislation governing distilleries. In 1871 only 20 hectolitres were
produced, but in 1881 the output was 318,000 hectolitres, the maximum
hitherto attained. Since then special laws have hampered development,
some provinces, as for instance Sardinia, being allowed to manufacture
for their own consumption but not for export. In other parts the
industry is subjected to an almost prohibitive excise-duty. The
average production is about 180,000 hectolitres per annum. The
greatest quantity is produced in Lombardy, Piedmont, Venetia and
Tuscany. The quantity of beer is about the same, the greater part of
the beer drunk being imported from Germany, while the production of
artificial mineral waters has somewhat decreased. There is a
considerable trade (not very large for export, however) in natural
mineral waters, which are often excellent.

Paper-making is highly developed in the provinces of Novara, Caserta,
Milan, Vicenza, Turin, Como, Lucca, Ancona, Genoa, Brescia, Cuneo,
Macerata and Salerno. The hand-made paper of Fabriano is especially
good.

Furniture-making in different styles is carried on all over Italy,
especially as a result of the establishment of industrial schools.
Each region produces a special type, Venetia turning out imitations of
16th- and 17th-century styles, Tuscany the 15th-century or cinquecento
style, and the Neapolitan provinces the Pompeian style. Furniture and
cabinet-making in great factories are carried on particularly in
Lombardy and Piedmont. Bent-wood factories have been established in
Venetia and Liguria.

A characteristic Italian industry is that of straw-plaiting for
hat-making, which is carried on principally in Tuscany, in the
district of Fermo, in the Alpine villages of the province of Vicenza,
and in some communes of the province of Messina. The plaiting is done
by country women, while the hats are made up in factories. Both plaits
and hats are largely exported.

Tobacco is entirely a government monopoly; the total amount
manufactured in 1902-1903 was 16,599 tons--a fairly constant figure.

The finest glass is made in Tuscany and Venetia; Venetian glass is
often coloured and of artistic form.

Artistic industries.

In the various ceramic arts Italy was once unrivalled, but the ancient
tradition for a long time lost its primeval impulse. The works at
Vinovo, which had fame in the 18th century, came to an untimely end in
1820; those of Castelli (in the Abruzzi), which have been revived,
were supplanted by Charles III.'s establishment at Capodimonte, 1750,
which after producing articles of surprising execution was closed
before the end of the century. The first place now belongs to the
Della Doccia works at Florence. Founded in 1735 by the marquis Carlo
Ginori, they maintained a reputation of the very highest kind down to
about 1860; but since then they have not kept pace with their younger
rivals in other lands. They still, however, are commercially
successful. Other cities where the ceramic industries keep their
ground are Pesaro, Gubbio, Faenza (whose name long ago became the
distinctive term for the finer kind of potter's work in France,
faïence), Savona and Albissola, Turin, Mondovi, Cuneo, Castellamonte,
Milan, Brescia, Sassuolo, Imola, Rimini, Perugia, Castelli, &c. In all
these the older styles, by which these places became famous in the
16th-18th centuries, have been revived. It is estimated that the total
production of the finer wares amounts on the average to £400,000 per
annum. The ruder branches of the art--the making of tiles and common
wares--are pretty generally diffused.

The jeweller's art received large encouragement in a country which had
so many independent courts; but nowhere has it attained a fuller
development than at Rome. A vast variety of trinkets--in coral, glass,
lava, &c.--is exported from Italy, or carried away by the annual host
of tourists. The copying of the paintings of the old masters is
becoming an art industry of no small mercantile importance in some of
the larger cities.

The production of mosaics is an industry still carried on with much
success in Italy, which indeed ranks exceedingly high in the
department. The great works of the Vatican are especially famous
(more than 17,000 distinct tints are employed in their productions),
and there are many other establishments in Rome. The Florentine
mosaics are perhaps better known abroad; they are composed of larger
pieces than the Roman. Those of the Venetian artists are remarkable
for the boldness of their colouring. There is a tendency towards the
fostering of feminine home industries--lace-making, linen-weaving, &c.

_Condition of the Working Classes._--The condition of the numerous
agricultural labourers (who constitute one-third of the population) is,
except in some regions, hard, and in places absolutely miserable. Much
light was thrown upon their position by the agricultural inquiry
(_inchiesta agraria_) completed in 1884. The large numbers of emigrants,
who are drawn chiefly from the rural classes, furnish another proof of
poverty. The terms of agrarian contracts and leases (except in districts
where _mezzadria_ prevails in its essential form), are in many regions
disadvantageous to the labourers, who suffer from the obligation to
provide guarantees for payment of rent, for repayment of seed corn and
for the division of products.

Malaria.

It was only at the close of the 19th century that the true cause of
malaria--the conveyance of the infection by the bite of the _Anopheles
claviger_--was discovered. This mosquito does not as a rule enter the
large towns; but low-lying coast districts and ill-drained plains are
especially subject to it. Much has been done in keeping out the
insects by fine wire netting placed on the windows and the doors of
houses, especially in the railwaymen's cottages. In 1902 the state
took up the sale of quinine at a low price, manufacturing it at the
central military pharmaceutical laboratory at Turin. Statistics show
the difference produced by this measure.

+---------------+-----------------------+------------------+
|Financial Year.|Pounds of quinine sold.|Deaths by Malaria.|
+---------------+-----------------------+------------------+
| 1901-1902 | .. | 13,358 |
| 1902-1903 | 4,932 | 9,908 |
| 1903-1904 | 15,915 | 8,513 |
| 1904-1905 | 30,956 | 8,501 |
| 1905-1906 | 41,166 | 7,838 |
| 1906-1907 | 45,591 | 4,875 |
+---------------+-----------------------+------------------+

The profit made by the state, which is entirely devoted to a special
fund for means against malaria, amounted in these five years to
£41,759. It has been established that two 3-grain pastilles a day are
a sufficient prophylactic; and the proprietors of malarious estates
and contractors for public works in malarious districts are bound by
law to provide sufficient quinine for their workmen, death for want of
this precaution coming under the provisions of the workmen's
compensation act. Much has also been, though much remains to be, done
in the way of _bonificamento_, i.e. proper drainage and improvement of
the (generally fertile) low-lying and hitherto malarious plains.

In Venetia the lives of the small proprietors and of the salaried
peasants are often extremely miserable. There and in Lombardy the
disease known as _pellagra_ is most widely diffused. The disease is
due to poisoning by micro-organisms produced by deteriorated maize,
and can be combated by care in ripening, drying and storing the maize.
The most recent statistics show the disease to be diminishing. Whereas
in 1881 there were 104,067 (16.29 per 1000) peasants afflicted by the
disease, in 1899 there were only 72,603 (10.30 per 1000) peasants,
with a maximum of 39,882 (34.32 per 1000) peasants in Venetia, and
19,557 (12.90 per 1000) peasants in Lombardy. The decrease of the
disease is a direct result of the efforts made to combat it, in the
form of special hospitals or _pellagrosari_, economic kitchens, rural
bakeries and maize-drying establishments. A bill for the better
prevention of pellagra was introduced in the spring of 1902. The
deaths from it dropped in that year to 2376, from 3054 in the previous
year and 3788 in 1900.

In Liguria, on account of the comparative rarity of large estates,
agricultural labourers are in a better condition. Men earn between 1s.
3d. and 2s. 1d. a day, and women from 5d. to 8d. In Emilia the day
labourers, known as _disobbligati_, earn, on the contrary, low wages,
out of which they have to provide for shelter and to lay by something
against unemployment. Their condition is miserable. In Tuscany,
however, the prevalence of _mezzadria_, properly so called, has raised
the labourers' position. Yet in some Tuscan provinces, as, for
instance, that of Grosseto, where malaria rages, labourers are
organized in gangs under "corporals," who undertake harvest work. They
are poverty-stricken, and easily fall victims to fever. In the Abruzzi
and in Apulia both regular and irregular workmen are engaged by the
year. The _curatori_ or _curatoli_ (factors) receive £40 a year, with
a slight interest in the profits; the stockmen hardly earn in money
and kind £13; the muleteers and under-workmen get between £5 to £8,
plus firewood, bread and oil; irregular workmen have even lower
wages, with a daily distribution of bread, salt and oil. In Campania
and Calabria the _curatoli_ and _massari_ earn, in money and kind,
about £12 a year; cowmen, shepherds and muleteers about £10; irregular
workmen are paid from 8½d. to 1s. 8d. per day, but only find
employment, on an average, 230 days in the year. The condition of
Sicilian labourers is also miserable. The huge extent of the
_latifondi_, or large estates, often results in their being left in
the hands of speculators, who exploit both workmen and farmers with
such usury that the latter are often compelled, at the end of a scanty
year, to hand over their crops to the usurers before harvest. In
Sardinia wage-earners are paid 10d. a day, with free shelter and an
allotment for private cultivation. Irregular adult workmen earn
between 10d. and 1s. 3d., and boys from 6d. to 10d. a day. Woodcutters
and vine-waterers, however, sometimes earn as much as 3s. a day.

The peasants somewhat rarely use animal food--this is most largely
used in Sardinia and least in Sicily--bread and polenta or macaroni
and vegetables being the staple diet. Wine is the prevailing drink.

The condition of the workmen employed in manufactures has improved
during recent years. Wages are higher, the cost of the prime necessaries
of life is, as a rule, lower, though taxation on some of them is still
enormous; so that the remuneration of work has improved. Taking into
account the variations in wages and in the price of wheat, it may be
calculated that the number of hours of work requisite to earn a sum
equal to the price of a cwt. of wheat fell from 183 in 1871 to 73 in
1894. In 1898 it was 105, on account of the rise in the price of wheat,
and since then up till 1902 it oscillated between 105 and 95.

Wages have risen from 22.6 centimes per hour (on an average) to 26.3
centimes, but not in all industries. In the mining and woollen
industries they have fallen, but have increased in mechanical,
chemical, silk and cotton industries. Wages vary greatly in different
parts of Italy, according to the cost of the necessaries of life, the
degree of development of working-class needs and the state of
working-class organization, which in some places has succeeded in
increasing the rates of pay. Women are, as a rule, paid less than men,
and though their wages have also increased, the rise has been slighter
than in the case of men. In some trades, for instance the silk trade,
women earn little more than 10d. a day, and, for some classes of work,
as little as 7d. and 4½d. The general improvement in sanitation has
led to a corresponding improvement in the condition of the working
classes, though much still remains to be done, especially in the
south. On the other hand, it is generally the case that even in the
most unpromising inn the bedding is clean.

Strikes.

The number of industrial strikes has risen from year to year,
although, on account of the large number of persons involved in some
of them, the rise in the number of strikers has not always
corresponded to the number of strikes. During the years 1900 and 1901
strikes were increasingly numerous, chiefly on account of the growth
of Socialist and working-class organizations.

The greatest proportion of strikes takes place in northern Italy,
especially Lombardy and Piedmont, where manufacturing industries are
most developed. Textile, building and mining industries show the
highest percentage of strikes, since they give employment to large
numbers of men concentrated in single localities. Agricultural
strikes, though less frequent than those in manufacturing industries,
have special importance in Italy. They are most common in the north
and centre, a circumstance which shows them to be promoted less by the
more backward and more ignorant peasants than by the better-educated
labourers of Lombardy and Emilia, among whom Socialist organizations
are widespread. Since 1901 there have been, more than once, general
strikes at Milan and elsewhere, and one in the autumn of 1905 caused
great inconvenience throughout the country, and led to no effective
result.

Although in some industrial centres the working-class movement has
assumed an importance equal to that of other countries, there is no
general working-class organization comparable to the English trade
unions. Mutual benefit and co-operative societies serve the purpose of
working-class defence or offence against the employers. In 1893, after
many vicissitudes, the Italian Socialist Labour Party was founded, and
has now become the Italian Socialist Party, in which the majority of
Italian workmen enrol themselves. Printers and hat-makers, however,
possess trade societies. In 1899 an agitation began for the
organization of "Chambers of Labour," intended to look after the
technical education of workmen and to form commissions of arbitration
in case of strikes. They act also as employment bureaux, and are often
centres of political propaganda. At present such "chambers" exist in
many Italian cities, while "leagues of improvement," or of
"resistance," are rapidly spreading in the country districts. In many
cases the action of these organizations has proved, at least
temporarily, advantageous to the working classes.

Labour legislation is backward in Italy, on account of the late
development of manufacturing industry and of working-class
organization. On the 17th of April 1898 a species of Employers'
Liability Act compelled employers of more than five workmen in certain
industries to insure their employees against accidents. On the 17th
of July 1898 a national fund for the insurance of workmen against
illness and old age was founded by law on the principle of optional
registration. In addition to an initial endowment by the state, part
of the annual income of the fund is furnished in various forms by the
state (principally by making over a proportion of the profits of the
Post Office Savings Bank), and part by the premiums of the workmen.
The minimum annual premium is six lire for an annuity of one lira per
day at the age of sixty, and insurance against sickness. The low level
of wages in many trades and the jealousies of the "Chambers of Labour"
and other working-class organizations impede rapid development.

A law came into operation in February 1908, according to which a
weekly day of rest (with few exceptions) was established on Sunday in
every case in which it was possible, and otherwise upon some other day
of the week.

The French institution of _Prudhommes_ was introduced into Italy in
1893, under the name of _Collegi di Probiviri_. The institution has
not attained great vogue. Most of the colleges deal with matters
affecting textile and mechanical industries. Each "college" is founded
by royal decree, and consists of a president, with not fewer than ten
and not more than twenty members. A conciliation bureau and a jury are
elected to deal with disputes concerning wages, hours of work, labour
contracts, &c., and have power to settle the disputes, without appeal,
whenever the amounts involved do not exceed £8.

Provident Institutions.

Provident institutions have considerably developed in Italy under the
forms of savings banks, assurance companies and mutual benefit
societies. Besides the Post Office Savings Bank and the ordinary savings
banks, many co-operative credit societies and ordinary credit banks
receive deposits of savings.

The greatest number of savings banks exists in Lombardy; Piedmont and
Venetia come next. Campania holds the first place in the south, most
of the savings of that region being deposited in the provident
institutions of Naples. In Liguria and Sardinia the habit of thrift is
less developed. Assurance societies in Italy are subject to the
general dispositions of the commercial code regarding commercial
companies. Mutual benefit societies have increased rapidly, both
because their advantages have been appreciated, and because, until
recently, the state had taken no steps directly to insure workmen
against illness. The present Italian mutual benefit societies resemble
the ancient beneficent corporations, of which in some respects they
may be considered a continuation. The societies require government
recognition if they wish to enjoy legal rights. The state (law of the
15th of April 1896) imposed this condition in order to determine
exactly the aims of the societies, and, while allowing them to give
help to their sick, old or feeble members, or aid the families of
deceased members, to forbid them to pay old-age pensions, lest they
assumed burdens beyond their financial strength. Nevertheless, the
majority of societies have not sought recognition, being suspicious of
fiscal state intervention.

Co-operation.

Co-operation, for the various purposes of credit, distribution,
production and labour, has attained great development in Italy. Credit
co-operation is represented by a special type of association known as
People's Banks (_Banche Popolari_). They are not, as a rule, supported
by workmen or peasants, but rather by small tradespeople, manufacturers
and farmers. They perform a useful function in protecting their clients
from the cruel usury which prevails, especially in the south. A recent
form of co-operative credit banks are the _Casse Rurali_ or rural banks,
on the Raffeisen system, which lend money to peasants and small
proprietors out of capital obtained on credit or by gift. These loans
are made on personal security, but the members of the bank do not
contribute any quota of the capital, though their liability is unlimited
in case of loss. They are especially widespread in Lombardy and Venetia.

Distributive co-operation is confined almost entirely to Piedmont,
Liguria, Lombardy, Venetia, Emilia and Tuscany, and is practically
unknown in Basilicata, the Abruzzi and Sardinia.

Co-operative dairies are numerous. They have, however, much decreased
in number since 1889. More numerous are the agricultural and
viticultural co-operative societies, which have largely increased in
number. They are to be found mainly in the fertile plains of north
Italy, where they enjoy considerable success, removing the cause of
labour troubles and strikes, and providing for cultivation on a
sufficiently large scale. The richest, however, of the co-operative
societies, though few in number, are those for the production of
electricity, for textile industries and for ceramic and glass
manufactures.

Co-operation in general is most widely diffused, in proportion to
population, in central Italy; less so in northern Italy, and much less
so in the south and the islands. It thus appears that co-operation
flourishes most in the districts in which the _mezzadria_ system has
been prevalent.

_Railways._--The first railway in Italy, a line 16 m. long from Naples
to Castellammare, was opened in 1840. By 1881 there were some 5500 m.
open, in 1891 some 8000 m., while in 1901 the total length was 9317 m.
In July 1905 all the principal lines, which had been constructed by
the state, but had been since 1885 let out to three companies
(Mediterranean, Adriatic, Sicilian), were taken over by the state;
their length amounted in 1901 to 6147 m., and in 1907 to 8422 m. The
minor lines (many of them narrow gauge) remain in the hands of private
companies. The total length, including the Sardinian railways, was
10,368 m. in 1907. The state, in taking over the railways, did not
exercise sufficient care to see that the lines and the rolling stock
were kept up to a proper state of efficiency and adequacy for the work
they had to perform; while the step itself was taken somewhat hastily.
The result was that for the first two years of state administration
the service was distinctly bad, and the lack of goods trucks at the
ports was especially felt. A capital expenditure of £4,000,000
annually was decided on to bring the lines up to the necessary state
of efficiency to be able to cope with the rapidly increasing traffic.
It was estimated in 1906 that this would have to be maintained for a
period of ten years, with a further total expenditure of £14,000,000
on new lines.

Comparing the state of things in 1901 with that of 1881, for the whole
country, we find the passenger and goods traffic almost doubled
(except the cattle traffic), the capital expenditure almost doubled,
the working expenses per mile almost imperceptibly increased, and the
gross receipts per mile slightly lower. The _personnel_ had increased
from 70,568 to 108,690. The construction of numerous unremunerative
lines, and the free granting of concessions to government and other
employees (and also of cheap tickets on special occasions for
congresses, &c., in various towns, without strict inquiry into the
qualifications of the claimants) will account for the failure to
realize a higher profit. The fares (in slow trains, with the addition
of 10% for expenses) are: 1st class, 1.85d.; 2nd, 1.3d.; 3rd, 0.725d.
per mile. There are, however, considerable reductions for distances
over 93 m., on a scale increasing in proportion to the distance.

The taking over of the main lines by the state has of course produced
a considerable change in the financial situation of the railways. The
state incurred in this connexion a liability of some £20,000,000, of
which about £16,000,000 represented the rolling stock. The state has
considerably improved the engines and passenger carriages. The capital
value of the whole of the lines, rolling stock, &c., for 1908-1909 was
calculated approximately at £244,161,400, and the profits at
£5,295,019, or 2.2%.

Milan is the most important railway centre in the country, and is
followed by Turin, Genoa, Verona, Bologna, Rome, Naples. Lombardy and
Piedmont are much better provided with railways in proportion to their
area than any other parts of Italy; next come Venetia, Emilia and the
immediate environs of Naples.

The northern frontier is crossed by the railway from Turin to
Ventimiglia by the Col di Tenda, the Mont Cenis line from Turin to
Modane (the tunnel is 7 m. in length), the Simplon line (tunnel 11 m.
in length) from Domodossola to Brigue, the St Gotthard from Milan to
Chiasso (the tunnel is entirely in Swiss territory), the Brenner from
Verona to Trent, the line from Udine to Tarvis and the line from
Venice to Triest by the Adriatic coast. Besides these international
lines the most important are those from Milan to Turin (via Vercelli
and via Alessandria), to Genoa via Tortona, to Bologna via Parma and
Modena, to Verona, and the shorter lines to the district of the lakes
of Lombardy; from Turin to Genoa via Savona and via Alessandria; from
Genoa to Savona and Ventimiglia along the Riviera, and along the
south-west coast of Italy, via Sarzana (whence a line runs to Parma)
to Pisa (whence lines run to Pistoia and Florence) and Rome; from
Verona to Modena, and to Venice via Padua; from Bologna to Padua, to
Rimini (and thence along the north-east coast via Ancona,
Castellammare Adriatico and Foggia to Brindisi and Otranto), and to
Florence and Rome; from Rome to Ancona, to Castellammare Adriatico and
to Naples; from Naples to Foggia, via Metaponto (with a junction for
Reggio di Calabria), to Brindisi and to Reggio di Calabria. (For the
Sicilian and Sardinian lines, see SICILY and SARDINIA.) The speed of
the trains is not high, nor are the runs without stoppage long as a
rule. One of the fastest runs is from Rome to Orte, 52.40 m. in 69
min., or 45.40 m. per hour, but this is a double line with little
traffic. The low speed reduces the potentiality of the lines. The
insufficiency of rolling stock, and especially of goods wagons, is
mainly caused by delays in "handling" traffic consequent on this or
other causes, among which may be mentioned the great length of the
single lines south of Rome. It is thus a matter of difficulty to
provide trucks for a sudden emergency, e.g. the vintage season; and in
1905-1907 complaints were many, while the seaports were continually
short of trucks. This led to deficiencies in the supply of coal to the
manufacturing centres, and to some diversion elsewhere of shipping.

_Steam and Electric Tramways._--Tramways with mechanical traction have
developed rapidly. Between 1875, when the first line was opened, and
1901, the length of the lines grew to 1890 m. of steam and 270 m. of
electric tramways. These lines exist principally in Lombardy
(especially in the province of Milan), in Piedmont, especially in the
province of Turin, and in other regions of northern and central Italy.
In the south they are rare, on account partly of the mountainous
character of the country, and partly of the scarcity of traffic. All
the important towns of Italy are provided with internal electric
tramways, mostly with overhead wires.

_Carriage-roads_ have been greatly extended in modern times, although
their ratio to area varies in different localities. In north Italy
there are 1480 yds. of road per sq. m.; in central Italy 993; in
southern Italy 405; in Sardinia 596, and in Sicily only 244. They are
as a rule well kept up in north and central Italy, less so in the
south, where, especially in Calabria, many villages are inaccessible
by road and have only footpaths leading to them. By the act of 1903
the state contributes half and the province a quarter of the cost of
roads connecting communes with the nearest railway stations or landing
places.

_Inland Navigation._--Navigable canals had in 1886 a total length of
about 655 m.; they are principally situated in Piedmont, Lombardy and
Venetia, and are thus practically confined to the Po basin. Canals
lead from Milan to the Ticino, Adda and Po. The Po is itself navigable
from Turin downwards, but through its delta it is so sandy that canals
are preferred, the Po di Volano and the Po di Primaro on the right,
and the Canale Bianco on the left. The total length of navigable
rivers is 967 m.

_Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones._--The number of post offices
(including collettorie, or collecting offices, which are rapidly being
eliminated) increased from 2200 in 1862 to 4823 in 1881, 6700 in 1891
and 8817 in 1904. In spite of a large increase in the number of
letters and post cards (i.e. nearly 10 per inhabitant per annum in
1904, as against 5.65 in 1888) the average is considerably below that
of most other European countries. The number of state telegraph
offices was 4603, of other offices (railway and tramway stations,
which accept private telegrams for transmission) 1930. The telephone
system is considerably developed; in 1904, 92 urban and 66 inter-urban
systems existed. They were installed by private companies, but have
been taken over by the state. International communication between Rome
and Paris, and Italy and Switzerland also exists. The parcel post and
money order services have largely increased since 1887-1888, the
number of parcels having almost doubled (those for abroad are more
than trebled), while the number of money orders issued is trebled and
their value doubled (about £40,000,000). The value of the foreign
orders paid in Italy increased from £1,280,000 to £2,356,000--owing to
the increase of emigration and of the savings sent home by emigrants.

At the end of 1907 Italy was among the few countries that had not
adopted the reduction of postage sanctioned at the Postal Union
congress, held in Rome in 1906, by which the rates became 2½d. for the
first oz., and 1½d. per oz. afterwards. The internal rate is 15c.
(1½d.) per ½ oz.; post-cards 10c. (1d.), reply 15c. On the other hand,
letters within the postal district are only 5c. (½d.) per ½ oz.
Printed matter is 2c. (1/5d.) per 50 grammes (1(2/3) oz.). The
regulations provide that if there is a greater weight of
correspondence (including book-packets) than 1¼ lb. for any individual
by any one delivery, notice shall be given him that it is lying at the
post office, he being then obliged to arrange for fetching it. Letters
insured for a fixed sum are not delivered under any circumstances.

Money order cards are very convenient and cheap (up to 10 lire [8s.]
for 10c. [1d.]), as they need not be enclosed in a letter, while a
short private message can be written on them. Owing to the
comparatively small amount of letters, it is found possible to have a
travelling post office on all principal trains (while almost every
train has a travelling sorter, for whom a compartment is reserved)
without a late fee being exacted in either case. In the principal
towns letters may be posted in special boxes at the head office just
before the departure of any given mail train, and are conveyed direct
to the travelling post office. Another convenient arrangement is the
provision of letter-boxes on electric tram-cars in some cities.

_Mercantile Marine._--Between the years 1881 and 1905 the number of
ships entered and cleared at Italian ports decreased slightly (219,598
in 1881 and 208,737 in 1905), while their aggregate tonnage increased
(32,070,704 in 1881 and 80,782,030 in 1905). In the movement of
shipping, trade with foreign countries prevails (especially as regards
arrivals) over trade between Italian ports. Most of the merchandise
and passengers bound for and hailing from foreign ports sail under
foreign flags. Similarly, foreign vessels prevail over Italian vessels
in regard to goods embarked. European countries absorb the greater
part of Italian sea-borne trade, whereas most of the passenger traffic
goes to North and South America. The substitution of steamships for
sailing vessels has brought about a diminution in the number of
vessels belonging to the Italian mercantile marine, whether employed
in the coasting trade, the fisheries or in traffic on the high seas.
Thus:--

+------+--------+-------------------+-------------------+
| | Total | Steamships. | Sailing Vessels. |
| Year.| No. of +---------+---------+---------+---------+
| | Ships. | Number. | Tonnage | Number. | Tonnage |
| | | | (Net). | | (Net.) |
+------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| 1881 | 7815 | 176 | 93,698 | 7,639 | 895,359 |
| 1905 | 5596 | 513 | 462,259 | 5,083 | 570,355 |
+------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

Among the steamers the increase has chiefly taken place in vessels of
more than 1000 tons displacement, but the number of large sailing
vessels has also increased. The most important Italian ports are (in
order): Genoa, Naples, Palermo, Leghorn, Messina, Venice, Catania.

_Foreign Trade._--Italian trade with foreign countries (imports and
exports) during the quinquennium 1872-1876 averaged £94,000,000 a
year; in the quinquennium 1893-1897 it fell to £88,960,000 a year. In
1898, however, the total rose to £104,680,000, but the increase was
principally due to the extra importation of corn in that year. In 1899
it was nearly £120,000,000. Since 1899 there has been a steady
increase both in imports and exports. Thus:--

+------+---------------------------------------+
| | Trade with Foreign Countries in £1000 |
| | (exclusive of Precious Metals).* |
| Year.+--------+--------+--------+------------+
| | | | | Excess of |
| | Totals.|Imports.|Exports.|Imports over|
| | | | | Exports. |
+------+--------+--------+--------+------------+
| 1871 | 81,966 | 38,548 | 43,418 | -4,870 |
| 1881 | 96,208 | 49,587 | 46,621 | 2,966 |
| 1891 | 80,135 | 45,063 | 35,072 | 9,991 |
| 1900 |121,538 | 68,009 | 53,529 | 14,480 |
| 1904 |140,437 | 76,549 | 63,888 | 12,661 |
+------+--------+--------+--------+------------+

* No account has here been taken of fluctuations of exchange.

The great extension of Italian coast-line is thought by some to be not
really a source of strength to the Italian mercantile marine, as few
of the ports have a large enough hinterland to provide them with
traffic, and in this hinterland (except in the basin of the Po) there
are no canals or navigable rivers. Another source of weakness is the
fact that Italy is a country of transit and the Italian mercantile
marine has to enter into competition with the ships of other
countries, which call there in passing. A third difficulty is the
comparatively small tonnage and volume of Italian exports relatively
to the imports, the former in 1907 being about one-fourth of the
latter, and greatly out of proportion to the relative value; while a
fourth is the lack of facilities for handling goods, especially in the
smaller ports.

The total imports for the first six months of 1907 amounted to
£57,840,000, an increase of £7,520,000 as compared with the
corresponding period of 1906. The exports for the corresponding period
amounted to £35,840,000, a diminution of £1,520,000 as compared with
the corresponding period of 1906. The diminution was due to a smaller
exportation of raw silk and oil. The countries with which this trade
is mainly carried on are: (imports) United Kingdom, Germany, United
States, France, Russia and India; (exports) Switzerland, United
States, Germany, France, United Kingdom and Argentina.

The most important imports are minerals, including coal and metals
(both in pig and wrought); silks, raw, spun and woven; stone, potter's
earths, earthenware and glass; corn, flour and farinaceous products;
cotton, raw, spun and woven; and live stock. The principal exports are
silk and cotton tissues, live stock, wines, spirits and oils; corn,
flour, macaroni and similar products; and minerals, chiefly sulphur.
Before the tariff reform of 1887 manufactured articles, alimentary
products and raw materials for manufacture held the principal places
in the imports. In the exports, alimentary products came first, while
raw materials for manufacture and manufactured articles were of little
account. The transformation of Italy from a purely agricultural into a
largely industrial country is shown by the circumstance that trade in
raw stuffs, semi-manufactured and manufactured materials, now
preponderates over that in alimentary products and wholly-manufactured
articles, both the importation of raw materials and the exportation of
manufactured articles having increased. The balance of Italian trade
has undergone frequent fluctuations. The large predominance of imports
over exports after 1884 was a result of the falling off of the export
trade in live stock, olive oil and wine, on account of the closing of
the French market, while the importation of corn from Russia and the
Balkan States increased considerably. In 1894 the excess of imports
over exports fell to £2,720,000, but by 1898 it had grown to
£8,391,000, in consequence chiefly of the increased importation of
coal, raw cotton and cotton thread, pig and cast iron, old iron,
grease and oil-seeds for use in Italian industries. In 1899 the excess
of imports over exports fell to £3,006,000; but since then it has
never been less than £12,000,000.

_Education._--Public instruction in Italy is regulated by the state,
which maintains public schools of every grade, and requires that other
public schools shall conform to the rules of the state schools. No
private person may open a school without state authorization. Schools
may be classed thus:--

1. Elementary, of two grades, of the lower of which there must legally
be at least one for boys and one for girls in each commune; while the
upper grade elementary school is required in communes having normal and
secondary schools or over 4000 inhabitants. In both the instruction is
free. They are maintained by the communes, sometimes with state help.
The age limit is six to nine years for the lower grade, and up to
twelve for the higher grade, attendance being obligatory at the latter
also where it exists. 2. Secondary instruction (i.) classical in the
_ginnasi_ and _licei_, the latter leading to the universities; (ii.)
technical. 3. Higher education--universities, higher institutes and
special schools.

Of the secondary and higher educatory methods, in the normal schools and
licei the state provides for the payment of the staff and for scientific
material, and often largely supports the ginnasi and technical schools,
which should by law be supported by the communes. The universities are
maintained by the state and by their own ancient resources; while the
higher special schools are maintained conjointly by the state, the
province, the commune and (sometimes) the local chamber of commerce.

The number of persons unable to read and write has gradually decreased,
both absolutely and in proportion to the number of inhabitants. The
census of 1871 gave 73% of illiterates, that of 1881, 67%, and that of
1901, 56%, i.e. 51.8 for males and 60.8 for females. In Piedmont there
were 17.7% of illiterates above six years (the lowest) and in Calabria
78.7% (the highest), the figures for the whole country being 48.5. As
might be expected, progress has been most rapid wherever education, at
the moment of national unification, was most widely diffused. For
instance, the number of bridegrooms unable to write their names in 1872
was in the province of Turin 26%, and in the Calabrian province of
Cosenza 90%; in 1899 the percentage in the province of Turin had fallen
to 5%, while in that of Cosenza it was still 76%. Infant asylums (where
the first rudiments of instruction are imparted to children between two
and a half and six years of age) and elementary schools have increased
in number. There has been a corresponding increase in the number of
scholars. Thus:--

+---------+---------------------+------------------------+
| | Infant Asylums |Daily Elementary Schools|
| |(Public and Private).| (Public and Private). |
| Year. +----------+----------+------------+-----------+
| |Number of |Number of | Number of | Number of |
| | Asylums | Scholars.|Schoolrooms.| Scholars. |
+---------+----------+----------+------------+-----------+
| 1885-86 | 2083 | 240,365 | 53,628 | 2,252,898 |
| 1890-91 | 2296 | 278,204 | 57,077 | 2,418,692 |
| 1901-02 | 3314 | 355,594 | 61,777 | 2,733,349 |
+---------+----------+----------+------------+-----------+

The teachers in 1901-1902 numbered 65,739 (exclusive of 576 non-teaching
directors and 322 teachers of special subjects) or about 41.5 scholars
per teacher.

The rate of increase in the public state-supported schools has been
much greater than in the private schools. School buildings have been
improved and the qualifications of teachers raised. Nevertheless, many
schools are still defective, both from a hygienic and a teaching point
of view; while the economic position of the elementary teachers, who
in Italy depend upon the communal administrations and not upon the
state, is still in many parts of the country extremely low.

The law of 1877 rendering education compulsory for children between
six and nine years of age has been the principal cause of the spread
of elementary education. The law is, however, imperfectly enforced for
financial reasons. In 1901-1902 only 65% out of the whole number of
children between six and nine years of age were registered in the
lower standards of the elementary and private schools. The evening
schools have to some extent helped to spread education. Their number
and that of their scholars have, however, decreased since the
withdrawal of state subsidies. In 1871-1872 there were 375,947
scholars at the evening schools and 154,585 at the holiday schools,
while in 1900-1901 these numbers had fallen to 94,510 and 35,460
respectively. These are, however, the only institutions in which a
decrease is shown, and by the law of 1906 5000 of these institutions
are to be provided in the communes where the proportion of illiterates
is highest. In 1895 they numbered 4245, with 138,181 scholars.
Regimental schools impart elementary education to illiterate soldiers.
Whereas the levy of 1894 showed 40% of the recruits to be completely
illiterate, only 27% were illiterate when the levy was discharged in
1897. Private institutions and working-class associations have striven
to improve the intellectual conditions of the working classes. Popular
universities have lately attained considerable development. The number
of institutes devoted to secondary education remained almost unchanged
between 1880-1881 and 1895-1896. In some places the number has even
been diminished by the suppression of private educational institutes.
But the number of scholars has considerably increased, and shows a
ratio superior to the general increase of the population. The
greatest increase has taken place in technical education, where it
has been much more rapid than in classical education. There are three
higher commercial schools, with academic rank, at Venice, Genoa and
Bari, and eleven secondary commercial schools; and technical and
commercial schools for women at Florence and Milan. The number of
agricultural schools has also grown, although the total is relatively
small when compared with population. The attendance at the various
classes of secondary schools in 1882 and 1902 is shown by the
following table:--

+---------------------------+-------+---------+--------+
| | 1882. | 1902. | No. of |
| | | |Schools.|
+---------------------------+-------+---------+--------+
| Ginnasi-- | | | |
| Government |13,875 | 24,081 | 192 |
| On an equal footing with| | | |
| government schools | 6,417 | 7,208 | 76 |
| Not on such a footing |22,609 | 24,850* | 442 |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Total |42,811 | 56,139 | 710 |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Technical schools-- | | | |
| Government | 7,510 | 30,411 | 188 |
| On an equal footing | 8,653 | 12,055 | 101 |
| Not on such a footing | 8,670 | 3,623* | 106* |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Total |24,833 | 46,089 | 395 |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Licei-- | | | |
| Government | 6,623 | 10,983 | 121 |
| On an equal footing | 1,167 | 1,955 | 33 |
| Not on such a footing | 4,600 | 4,962* | 187 |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Total |12,390 | 17,900 | 341 |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Technical institutes-- | | | |
| Government | 5,555 | 9,654 | 54 |
| On an equal footing | 1,684 | 1,898 | 18 |
| Not on such a footing | 619 | 378* | 7 |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Total | 7,858 | 11,930 | 79 |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Nautical institutes-- | | | |
| Government | 758 | 1,878 | 18 |
| On an equal footing | 69 | 38 | 1 |
| Not on such a footing | 13 | 29* | 1 |
| +-------+---------+--------+
| Total | 816 | 1,945 | 20 |
+---------------------------+-------+---------+--------+

* 1: 1896.

The schools which do not obtain equality with government schools are
either some of those conducted by religious orders, or else those in
which a sufficient standard is not reached. The total number of such
schools was, in 1896, 742 with 33,813 pupils.

The pupils of the secondary schools reach a maximum of 6.60 per 1000
in Liguria and 5.92 in Latium, and a minimum of 2.30 in the Abruzzi,
2.27 in Calabria and 1.65 in Basilicata.

For the boarding schools, or _convitti_, there are only incomplete
reports except for the institutions directly dependent on the ministry
of public instruction, which are comparatively few. The rest are
largely directed by religious institutions. In 1895-1896 there were
919 convitti for boys, with 59,066 pupils, of which 40, with 3814
pupils, were dependent on the ministry (in 1901-1902 there were 43 of
these with 4036 pupils); and 1456 for girls, with 49,367 pupils, of
which only 8, with about 600 pupils, were dependent on the ministry.

The _scuole normali_ or training schools (117 in number, of which 75
were government institutions) for teachers had 1329 male students in
1901-1902, showing hardly any increase, while the female students
increased from 8005 in 1882-1883 to 22,316 in 1895-1896, but decreased
to 19,044 in 1901-1902, owing to the admission of women to telegraph
and telephone work. The female secondary schools in 1881-1882 numbered
77, of which 7 were government institutions, with 3569 pupils; in
1901-1902 there were 233 schools (9 governmental) with 9347 pupils.

The total attendance of students in the various faculties at the
different universities and higher institutes is as follows:--

+--------------------------------+--------+--------+
| | 1882. | 1902. |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+
| Law | 4,801 | 8,385 |
| Philosophy and letters | 419 | 1,703 |
| Medicine and surgery | 4,428 | 9,055 |
| Professional diploma, pharmacy | 798 | 3,290 |
| Mathematics and natural science| 1,364 | 3,500 |
| Engineering | 982 | 1,293 |
| Agriculture | 145 | 507 |
| Commerce | 128 | 167 |
| +--------+--------+
| Total | 13,065 | 27,900 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+

Thus a large all-round increase in secondary and higher education is
shown--satisfactory in many respects, but showing that more young men
devote themselves to the learned professions (especially to the law)
than the economic condition of the country will justify. There are 21
universities--Bologna, Cagliari, Camerino, Catania, Ferrara, Genoa,
Macerata, Messina, Modena, Naples, Padua, Palermo, Parma, Pavia,
Perugia, Pisa, Rome, Sassari, Siena, Turin, Urbino, of which Camerino,
Ferrara, Perugia and Urbino are not state institutions; university
courses are also given at Aquila, Bari and Catanzaro. Of these the
most frequented in 1904-1905 were: Naples (4745), Turin (3451), Rome
(2630), Bologna (1711), Pavia (1559), Padua (1364), Genoa (1276), and
the least frequented, Cagliari (254), Siena (235) and Sassari (200).
The professors are ordinary and extraordinary, and free professors
(_liberi docenti_), corresponding to the German _Privatdozenten_, are
also allowed to be attached to the universities.

The institutions which co-operate with the universities are the
special schools for engineers at Turin, Naples, Rome and Bologna (and
others attached to some of the universities), the higher technical
institute at Milan, the higher veterinary schools of Milan, Naples and
Turin, the institute for higher studies at Florence (_Istituto di
studi superiori, pratici e di perfezionamento_), the literary and
scientific academy of Milan, the higher institutes for the training of
female teachers at Florence and Rome, the Institute of Social Studies
at Florence, the higher commercial schools at Venice, Bari and Genoa,
the commercial university founded by L. Bocconi at Milan in 1902, the
higher naval school at Genoa, the higher schools of agriculture at
Milan and Portici, the experimental institute at Perugia, the school
of forestry at Vallambrosa, the industrial museum at Turin. The
special secondary institutions, distinct from those already reckoned
under the universities and allied schools, include an Oriental
institute at Naples with 243 pupils; 34 schools of agriculture with
(1904-1905) 1925 students; 2 schools of mining (at Caltanisetta and
Iglesias) with (1904-1905) 83 students; 308 industrial and commercial
schools with (1903-1904) 46,411 students; 174 schools of design and
moulding with (1898) 12,556 students; 13 government fine art
institutes (1904-1905) with 2778 students and 13 non-government with
1662 students; 5 government institutes of music with 1026 students,
and 51 non-government with 4109 pupils (1904-1905). Almost all of
these show a considerable increase.

_Libraries_ are numerous in Italy, those even of small cities being
often rich in manuscripts and valuable works. Statistics collected in
1893-1894 and 1896 revealed the existence of 1831 libraries, either
private (but open to the public) or completely public. The public
libraries have been enormously increased since 1870 by the incorporation
of the treasures of suppressed monastic institutions. The richest in
manuscripts is that of the Vatican, especially since the purchase of the
Barberini Library in 1902; it now contains over 34,000 MSS. The Vatican
archives are also of great importance. Most large towns contain
important state or communal archives, in which a considerable amount of
research is being done by local investigators; the various societies for
local history (_Società di Storia Patria_) do very good work and issue
valuable publications; the treasures which the archives contain are by
no means exhausted. Libraries and archives are under the superintendence
of the Ministry of Public Instruction. A separate department of this
ministry under a director-general has the charge of antiquities and fine
arts, making archaeological excavations and supervising those undertaken
by private persons (permission to foreigners, even to foreign schools,
to excavate in Italy is rarely granted), and maintaining the numerous
state museums and picture galleries. The exportation of works of art and
antiquities from Italy without leave of the ministry is forbidden
(though it has in the past been sometimes evaded). An inventory of those
subjects, the exportation of which can in no case be permitted, has been
prepared; and the ministry has at its disposal a fund of £200,000 for
the purchase of important works of art of all kinds.

_Charities._--In Italy there is no legal right in the poor to be
supported by the parish or commune, nor any obligation on the commune to
relieve the poor--except in the case of forsaken children and the sick
poor. Public charity is exercised through the permanent charitable
foundations (_opere pie_), which are, however, very unequally
distributed in the different provinces. The districts of Italy which
show between 1881 and 1903 the greatest increase of new institutions, or
of gifts to old ones, are Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, while Sardinia,
Calabria and Basilicata stand lowest, Latium standing comparatively low.

The patrimony of Italian charitable institutions is considerable and
is constantly increasing. In 1880 the number of charitable
institutions (exclusive of public pawnshops, or _Monti di Pietà_, and
other institutions which combine operations of credit with charity)
was approximately 22,000, with an aggregate patrimony of nearly
£80,000,000. The revenue was about £3,600,000; after deduction of
taxes, interest on debts, expenses of management, &c., £2,080,000.
Adding to this £1,240,000 of communal and provincial subsidies, the
product of the labour of inmates, temporary subscriptions, &c., the
net revenue available for charity was, during 1880, £3,860,000. Of
this sum £260,000 was spent for religious purposes. Between 1881 and
1905 the bequests to existing institutions and sums left for the
endowment of new institutions amounted to about £16,604,600.

Charitable institutions take, as a rule, the two forms of outdoor and
indoor relief and attendance. The indoor institutions are the more
important in regard to endowment, and consist of hospitals for the
infirm (a number of these are situated at the seaside); of hospitals
for chronic and incurable diseases; of orphan asylums; of poorhouses
and shelters for beggars; of infant asylums or institutes for the
first education of children under six years of age; of lunatic
asylums; of homes for the deaf and dumb; and of institutes for the
blind. The outdoor charitable institutions include those which
distribute help in money or food; those which supply medicine and
medical help; those which aid mothers unable to rear their own
children; those which subsidize orphans and foundlings; those which
subsidize educational institutes; and those which supply marriage
portions. Between 1881 and 1898 the chief increases took place in the
endowments of hospitals; orphan asylums; infant asylums; poorhouses;
almshouses; voluntary workhouses; and institutes for the blind. The
least creditably administered of these are the asylums for abandoned
infants; in 1887, of a total of 23,913, 53.77% died; while during the
years 1893-1896 (no later statistics are available) of 117,970 51.72%
died. The average mortality under one year for the whole of Italy in
1893-1896 was only 16.66%.

Italian charity legislation was reformed by the laws of 1862 and 1890,
which attempted to provide efficacious protection for endowments, and
to ensure the application of the income to the purposes for which it
was intended. The law considers as "charitable institutions" (_opere
pie_) all poorhouses, almshouses and institutes which partly or wholly
give help to able-bodied or infirm paupers, or seek to improve their
moral and economic condition; and also the _Congregazioni di carità_
(municipal charity boards existing in every commune, and composed of
members elected by the municipal council), which administer funds
destined for the poor in general. All charitable institutions were
under the protection of provincial administrative junta, existing in
every province, and empowered to control the management of charitable
endowments. The supreme control was vested in the minister of the
Interior. The law of 1890 also empowers every citizen to appeal to the
tribunals on behalf of the poor, for whose benefit a given charitable
institution may have been intended. A more recent law provides for the
formation of a central body, with provincial commissions under it. Its
effect, however, has been comparatively small.

Public pawnshops or _Monti di pietà_ numbered 555 in 1896, with a net
patrimony of £2,879,625. In that year their income, including revenue
from capital, was £416,385, and their expenditure £300,232. The amount
lent on security was £4,153,229.

The _Monti frumentarii_ or co-operative corn deposits, which lend seed
corn to farmers, and are repaid after harvest with interest in kind,
numbered 1615 in 1894, and possessed a patrimony of £240,000.

In addition to the regular charitable institutions, the communal and
provincial authorities exercise charity, the former (in 1899) to the
extent of £1,827,166 and the latter to the extent of £919,832 per
annum. Part of these sums is given to hospitals, and part spent
directly by the communal and provincial authorities. Of the sum spent
by the communes, about ½ goes for the sanitary service (doctors,
midwives, vaccination), 1/8 for the maintenance of foundlings, 1/10
for the support of the sick in hospitals, and 1/22 for sheltering the
aged and needy. Of the sum spent by the provincial authorities, over
half goes to lunatic asylums and over a quarter to the maintenance of
foundling hospitals.

_Religion._--The great majority of Italians--97.12%--are Roman
Catholics. Besides the ordinary Latin rite, several others are
recognized. The Armenians of Venice maintain their traditional
characteristics. The Albanians of the southern provinces still employ
the Greek rite and the Greek language in their public worship, and their
priests, like those of the Greek Church, are allowed to marry. Certain
peculiarities introduced by St Ambrose distinguish the ritual of Milan
from that of the general church. Up to 1871 the island of Sicily was,
according to the bull of Urban II., ecclesiastically dependent on the
king, and exempt from the canonical power of the pope.

Though the territorial authority of the papal see was practically
abolished in 1870, the fact that Rome is the seat of the administrative
centre of the vast organization of the church is not without
significance to the nation. In the same city in which the administrative
functions of the body politic are centralized there still exists the
court of the spiritual potentate which in 1879 consisted of 1821
persons. Protestants number some 65,000, of whom half are Italian and
half foreign. Of the former 22,500 are Waldensians. The number of Jews
was returned as 36,000, but is certainly higher. There are, besides, in
Italy some 2500 members of the Greek Orthodox Church. There were in 1901
20,707 parishes in Italy, 68,444 secular clergy and 48,043 regulars
(monks, lay brothers and nuns). The size of parishes varies from
province to province, Sicily having larger parishes in virtue of the old
Sicilian church laws, and Naples, and some parts of central Italy,
having the smallest. The Italian parishes had in 1901 a total gross
revenue, including assignments from the public worship endowment fund,
of £1,280,000 or an average of £63 per parish; 51% of this gross sum
consists of revenue from glebe lands.

The kingdom is divided into 264 sees and ten abbeys, or prelatures
_nullius dioceseos_. The dioceses are as follows:--

A. 6 suburbicarian sees--Ostia and Velletri, Porto and Sta Rufina,
Albano, Frascati, Palestrina, Sabina--all held by cardinal bishops.

B. 74 sees immediately subject to the Holy See, of which 12 are
archiepiscopal and 61 episcopal.

C. 37 ecclesiastical provinces, each under a metropolitan, composed of
148 suffragan dioceses. Their position is indicated in the following
table:--

_Metropolitans._ _Suffragans._

Acerenza-Matera Anglona-Tursi, Tricarico, Venosa.

Bari Conversano, Ruvo-Bitonto.

Benevento S. Agata de' Goti, Alife, Ariano, Ascoli
Satriano Cerignola, Avellino, Bojano,
Bovino, Larino, Lucera, S. Severo, Telese
(Cerreto), Termoli.

Bologna Faenza, Imola.

Brindisi and Ostuni No suffragan.

Cagliari Galtelli-Nuoro, Iglesias, Ogliastra.

Capua Caiazzo, Calvi-Teano, Caserta,
Isernia-Venafro, Sessa.

Chieti and Vasto No suffragan.

Conza and Campagna S. Angelo de' Lombardi-Bisaccia, Lacedonia,
Muro Lucano.

Fermo Macerata-Tolentino, Montalto, Ripatransone,
S. Severino.

Florence Borgo S. Sepolcro, Colle di Val d'Elsa,
Fiesole, S. Miniato, Modigliana,
Pistoia-Prato.

Genoa Albenga, Bobbio, Chiavari, Savona-Noli,
Tortona, Ventimiglia.

Lanciano and Ortona No suffragan.

Manfredonia and Viesti No suffragan.

Messina Lipari, Nicosia, Patti.

Milan Bergamo, Brescia, Como, Crema, Cremona, Lodi,
Mantua, Pavia.

Modena Carpi, Guastalla, Massa-Carrara, Reggio.

Monreale Caltanisetta, Girgenti.

Naples Acerra, Ischia, Nola, Pozzuoli.

Oristano Ales-Terralba.

Otranto Gallipoli, Lecce, Ugento.

Palermo Cefalù, Mazzara, Trapani.

Pisa Leghorn, Pescia, Pontremoli, Volterra.

Ravenna Bertinoro, Cervia, Cesena, Comacchio, Forlì,
Rimini, Sarsina.

Reggio Calabria Bova, Cassano, Catanzaro, Cotrone, Gerace,
Nicastro, Oppido, Nicotera-Tropea,
Squillace.

Salerno Acerno, Capaccio-Vallo, Diano, Marsico-Nuovo
and Potenza, Nocera dei Pagani, Nusco,
Policastro.

Sassari Alghero, Ampurias and Tempio, Bisarhio, Bosa.

S. Severino Cariati.

Siena Chiusi-Pienza, Grosseto, Massa Marittima,
Sovana-Pitigliano.

Syracuse Caltagirone, Noto, Piazza-Armerina.

Sorrento Castellammare.

Taranto Castellaneta, Oria.

Trani-Nazareth-
Barletta, Bisceglie Andria.

Turin Acqui, Alba, Aosta, Asti, Cuneo, Fossano,
Ivrea, Mondovi, Pinerolo, Saluzzo, Susa.

Urbino S. Angelo in Vado-Urbania, Cagli-Pergola,
Fossombrone, Montefeltro, Pesaro,
Sinigaglia.

Venice (patriarch) Adria, Belluno-Feltre, Ceneda (Vittorio),
Chioggia, Concordia-Portogruaro, Padua,
Treviso, Verona, Vicenza.

Vercelli Alessandria della Paglia, Biella, Casale,
Monferrato, Novara, Vigevano.

Twelve archbishops and sixty-one bishops are independent of all
metropolitan supervision, and hold directly of the Holy See. The
archbishops are those of Amalfi, Aquila, Camerino and Treia, Catania,
Cosenza, Ferrara, Gaeta, Lucca, Perugia, Rossano, Spoleto, and Udine,
and the bishops those of Acireale, Acquapendente, Alatri, Amelia,
Anagni, Ancona-Umana, Aquino-Sora-Pontecorvo, Arezzo, Ascoli, Assisi,
Aversa, Bagnorea, Borgo San Donnino, Cava-Sarno, Città di Castello,
Città della Pieve, Cività Castellana-Orte-Gallese, Corneto-Civita
Vecchia, Cortona, Fabriano-Matelica, Fano, Ferentino, Foggia, Foligno,
Gravina-Montepeloso, Gubbio, Jesi, Luni-Sarzana and Bragnato, S.
Marco-Bisignano, Marsi (Pescina), Melfi-Rapolla, Mileto,
Molfetta-Terlizzi-Giovennazzo, Monopoli, Montalcino, Montefiascone,
Montepulciano, Nardo, Narni, Nocera in Umbria, Norcia, Orvieto,
Osimo-Cingoli, Parma, Penne-Atri, Piacenza, Poggio Mirteto,
Recanati-Loreto, Rieti, Segni, Sutri-Nepi, Teramo, Terni,
Terracina-Piperno-Sezze, Tivoli, Todi, Trivento, Troia, Valva-Sulmona,
Veroli, Viterbo-Toscanella. Excluding the diocese of Rome and
suburbicarian sees, each see has an average area of 430 sq. m. and a
population of 121,285 souls. The largest sees exist in Venetia and
Lombardy, and the smallest in the provinces of Naples, Leghorn, Forlì,
Ancona, Pesaro, Urbino, Caserta, Avellino and Ascoli. The Italian sees
(exclusive of Rome and of the suburbicarian sees) have a total annual
revenue of £206,000 equal to an average of £800 per see. The richest
is that of Girgenti, with £6304, and the poorest that of Porto
Maurizio, with only £246. In each diocese is a seminary or diocesan
school.

Religious Foundations.

In 1855 an act was passed in the Sardinian states for the
disestablishment of all houses of the religious orders not engaged in
preaching, teaching or the care of the sick, of all chapters of
collegiate churches not having a cure of souls or existing in towns of
less than 20,000 inhabitants, and of all private benefices for which
no service was paid by the holders. The property and money thus
obtained were used to form an ecclesiastical fund (_Cassa
Ecclesiastica_) distinct from the finances of the state. This act
resulted in the suppression of 274 monasteries with 3733 friars, of 61
nunneries with 1756 nuns and of 2722 chapters and benefices. In 1860
and 1861 the royal commissioners (even before the constitution of the
new kingdom of Italy had been formally declared) issued decrees by
which there were abolished--(1) in Umbria, 197 monasteries and 102
convents with 1809 male and 2393 female associates, and 836 chapters
or benefices; (2) in the Marches, 292 monasteries and 127 convents
with 2950 male and 2728 female associates; (3) in the Neapolitan
provinces, 747 monasteries and 275 convents with 8787 male and 7493
female associates. There were thus disestablished in seven or eight
years 2075 houses of the regular clergy occupied by 31,649 persons;
and the confiscated property yielded a revenue of £398,298. And at the
same time there had been suppressed 11,889 chapters and benefices of
the secular clergy, which yielded an annual income of £199,149. The
value of the capital thus potentially freed was estimated at
£12,000,000; though hitherto the ecclesiastical possessions in
Lombardy, Emilia, Tuscany and Sicily had been untouched. As yet the
Cassa Ecclesiastica had no right to dispose of the property thus
entrusted to it; but in 1862 an act was passed by which it transferred
all its real property to the national domain, and was credited with a
corresponding amount by the exchequer. The property could now be
disposed of like the other property of the domain; and except in
Sicily, where the system of emphyteusis was adopted, the church lands
began to be sold by auction. To encourage the poorer classes of the
people to become landholders, it was decided that the lots offered for
sale should be small, and that the purchaser should be allowed to pay
by five or ten yearly instalments. By a new act in 1866 the process of
secularization was extended to the whole kingdom. All the members of
the suppressed communities received full exercise of all the ordinary
political and civil rights of laymen; and annuities were granted to
all those who had taken permanent religious vows prior to the 18th of
January 1864. To priests and choristers, for example, of the
proprietary or endowed orders were assigned £24 per annum if they were
upwards of sixty years of age, £16 if upwards of 40, and £14, 8s. if
younger. The Cassa Ecclesiastica was abolished, and in its stead was
instituted a _Fondo pel Culto_, or public worship fund. From the
general confiscation were exempted the buildings actually used for
public worship, as episcopal residences or seminaries, &c., or which
had been appropriated to the use of schools, poorhouses, hospitals,
&c.; as well as the buildings, appurtenances, and movable property of
the abbeys of Monte Casino, Della Cava dei Tirreni, San Martino della
Scala, Monreale, Certosa near Pavia, and other establishments of the
same kind of importance as architectural or historical monuments. An
annuity equal to the ascertained revenue of the suppressed
institutions was placed to the credit of the fund in the government 5%
consols. A fourth of this sum was to be handed to the communes to be
employed on works of beneficence or education as soon as a surplus was
obtained from that part of the annuity assigned for the payment of
monastic pensions; and in Sicily, 209 communes entered on their
privileges as soon as the patrimony was liquidated. Another act in
1867 decreed the suppression of certain foundations which had escaped
the action of previous measures, put an extraordinary tax of 30% on
the whole of the patrimony of the church, and granted the government
the right of issuing 5% bonds sufficient to bring into the treasury
£16,000,000, which were to be accepted at their nominal value as
purchase money for the alienated property. The public worship
endowment fund has relieved the state exchequer of the cost of public
worship; has gradually furnished to the poorer parish priests an
addition to their stipends, raising them to £32 per annum, with the
prospect of further raising them to £40; and has contributed to the
outlay incurred by the communes for religious purposes. The monastic
buildings required for public purposes have been made over to the
communal and provincial authorities, while the same authorities have
been entrusted with the administration of the ecclesiastical revenues
previously set apart for charity and education, and objects of art and
historical interest have been consigned to public libraries and
museums. By these laws the reception of novices was forbidden in the
existing conventual establishments the extinction of which had been
decreed, and all new foundations were forbidden, except those engaged
in instruction and the care of the sick. But the laws have not been
rigorously enforced of late years; and the ecclesiastical possessions
seized by the state were thrown on the market simultaneously, and so
realized very low prices, being often bought up by wealthy religious
institutions. The large number of these institutions was increased
when these bodies were expelled from France.

On the 30th of June 1903 the patrimony of the endowment fund amounted
to £17,339,040, of which only £264,289 were represented by buildings
still occupied by monks or nuns. The rest was made up of capital and
interest. The liabilities of the fund (capitalized) amounted to
£10,668,105, of which monastic pensions represented a rapidly
diminishing sum of £2,564,930. The chief items of annual expenditure
drawn from the fund are the supplementary stipends to priests and the
pensions to members of suppressed religious houses. The number of
persons in receipt of monastic pensions on the 30th of June 1899 was
13,255; but while this item of expenditure will disappear by the
deaths of those entitled to pensions, the supplementary stipends and
contributions are gradually increasing. The following table shows the
course of the two main categories of the fund from 1876 to
1902-1903:--

+----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| | 1876. |1885-1886.|1898-1899.|1902-1903.|
+----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| Monastic pensions, | | | | |
| liquidation of religious | | | | |
| property and provision of| | | | |
| shelter for nuns | £749,172 | £491,339 | £220,479 | £165,144 |
| Supplementary stipends to | | | | |
| bishops and parochial | | | | |
| clergy, assignments to | | | | |
| Sardinian clergy and | | | | |
| expenditure for education| | | | |
| and charitable purposes | 142,912 | 128,521 | 210,020 | 347,940 |
+----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+

_Roman Charitable and Religious Fund._--The law of the 19th of June
1873 contained special provisions, in conformity with the character of
Rome as the seat of the papacy, and with the situation created by the
Law of Guarantees. According to the census of 1871 there were in the
city and province of Rome 474 monastic establishments (311 for monks,
163 for nuns), occupied by 4326 monks and 3825 nuns, and possessing a
gross revenue of 4,780,891 lire. Of these, 126 monasteries and 90
convents were situated in the city, 51 monasteries and 22 convents in
the "suburbicariates." The law of 1873 created a special charitable
and religious fund of the city, while it left untouched 23 monasteries
and 49 convents which had either the character of private institutions
or were supported by foreign funds. New parishes were created, old
parishes were improved, the property of the suppressed religious
corporations was assigned to charitable and educational institutions
and to hospitals, while property having no special application was
used to form a charitable and religious fund. On the 30th of June 1903
the balance-sheet of this fund showed a credit amounting to £1,796,120
and a debit of £460,819. Expenditure for the year 1902-1903 was
£889,858 and revenue £818,674.

_Constitution and Government._--The Vatican palace itself (with St
Peter's), the Lateran palace, and the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo
have secured to them the privilege of extraterritoriality by the law of
1871. The small republic of San Marino is the only other enclave in
Italian territory. Italy is a constitutional monarchy, in which the
executive power belongs exclusively to the sovereign, while the
legislative power is shared by him with the parliament. He holds supreme
command by land and sea, appoints ministers and officials, promulgates
the laws, coins money, bestows honours, has the right of pardoning, and
summons and dissolves the parliament. Treaties with foreign powers,
however, must have the consent of parliament. The sovereign is
irresponsible, the ministers, the signature of one of whom is required
to give validity to royal decrees, being responsible. Parliament
consists of two chambers, the senate and the Chamber of Deputies, which
are nominally on an equal footing, though practically the elective
chamber is the more important. The senate consists of princes of the
blood who have attained their majority, and of an unlimited number of
senators above forty years of age, who are qualified under any one of
twenty-one specified categories--by having either held high office, or
attained celebrity in science, literature, &c. In 1908 there were 318
senators exclusive of five members of the royal family. Nomination is by
the king for life. Besides its legislative functions, the senate is the
highest court of justice in the case of political offences or the
impeachment of ministers. The deputies to the lower house are 508 in
number, i.e. one to every 64,893 of the population, and all the
constituencies are single-member constituencies. The party system is not
really strong. The suffrage is extended to all citizens over twenty-one
years of age who can read and write and have either attained a certain
standard of elementary education or are qualified by paying a rent which
varies from £6 in communes of 2500 inhabitants to £16 in communes of
150,000 inhabitants, or, if peasant farmers, 16s. of rent; or by being
sharers in the profits of farms on which not less than £3, 4s. of direct
(including provincial) taxation is paid; or by paying not less than £16
in direct (including provincial) taxation. Others, e.g. members of the
professional classes, are qualified to vote by their position. The
number of electors (2,541,327) at the general election in 1904 was 29%
of the male population over twenty-one years of age, and 7.6% of the
total population--exclusive of those temporarily disfranchised on
account of military service; and of these 62.7% voted. No candidate can
be returned unless he obtains more than half the votes given and more
than one-sixth of the total number on the register; otherwise a second
ballot must be held. Nor can he be returned under the age of thirty, and
he must be qualified as an elector. All salaried government officials
(except ministers, under-secretaries of state and other high
functionaries, and officers in the army or navy), and ecclesiastics, are
disqualified for election. Senators and deputies receive no salary but
have free passes on railways throughout Italy and on certain lines of
steamers. Parliaments are quinquennial, but the king may dissolve the
Chamber of Deputies at any time, being bound, however, to convoke a new
chamber within four months. The executive must call parliament together
annually. Each of the chambers has the right of introducing new bills,
as has also the government; but all money bills must originate in the
Chamber of Deputies. The consent of both chambers and the assent of the
king is necessary to their being passed. Ministers may attend the
debates of either house but can only vote in that of which they are
members. The sittings of both houses are public, and an absolute
majority of the members must be present to make a sitting valid. The
ministers are eleven in number and have salaries of about £1000 each;
the presidency of the council of ministers (created in 1889) may be held
by itself or (as is usual) in conjunction with any other portfolio. The
ministries are: interior (under whom are the prefects of the several
provinces), foreign affairs, treasury (separated from finance in 1889),
finance, public works, justice and ecclesiastical affairs, war, marine,
public instruction, commerce, industry and agriculture, posts and
telegraphs (separated from public works in 1889). Each minister is aided
by an under-secretary of state at a salary of £500. There is a council
of state with advisory functions, which can also decide certain
questions of administration, especially applications from local
authorities and conflicts between ministries, and a court of accounts,
which has the right of examining all details of state expenditure. In
every country the bureaucracy is abused, with more or less reason, for
unprogressiveness, timidity and "red-tape," and Italy is no exception to
the rule. The officials are not well paid, and are certainly numerous;
while the manifold checks and counterchecks have by no means always been
sufficient to prevent dishonesty.

_Titles of Honour._--The former existence of so many separate
sovereignties and "fountains of honour" gave rise to a great many
hereditary titles of nobility. Besides many hundreds of princes,
dukes, marquesses, counts, barons and viscounts, there are a large
number of persons of "patrician" rank, persons with a right to the
designation _nobile_ or _signori_, and certain hereditary knights or
cavalieri. In the "Golden Book of the Capitol" (_Libro d'Oro del
Campidoglio_) are inscribed 321 patrician families, and of these 28
have the title of prince and 8 that of duke, while the others are
marquesses, counts or simply patricians. For the Italian orders of
knighthood see KNIGHTHOOD AND CHIVALRY: _Orders of Knighthood_. The
king's uncle is duke of Aosta, his son is prince of Piedmont and his
cousin is duke of Genoa.

_Justice._--The judiciary system of Italy is mainly framed on the
French model. Italy has courts of cassation at Rome, Naples, Palermo,
Turin, Florence, 20 appeal court districts, 162 tribunal districts and
1535 _mandamenti_, each with its own magistracy (_pretura_). In 13 of
the principal towns there are also _pretori_ who have exclusively
penal jurisdiction. For minor civil cases involving sums up to 100
lire (£4), _giudici conciliatori_ have also jurisdiction, while they
may act as arbitrators up to any amount by request. The Roman court of
cassation is the highest, and in both penal and civil matters has a
right to decide questions of law and disputes between the lower
judicial authorities, and is the only one which has jurisdiction in
penal cases, while sharing with the others the right to revise civil
cases.

The _pretori_ have penal jurisdiction concerning all misdemeanours
(_contravvenzioni_) or offences (_delitti_) punishable by imprisonment
not exceeding three months or by fine not exceeding 1000 lire (£40).
The penal tribunals have jurisdiction in cases involving imprisonment
up to ten years, or a fine exceeding £40, while the assize courts,
with a jury, deal with offences involving imprisonment for life or
over ten years, and have exclusive jurisdiction (except that the
senate is on occasion a high court of justice) over all political
offences. Appeal may be made from the sentences of the _pretori_ to
the tribunals, and from the tribunals to the courts of appeal; from
the assize courts there is no appeal except on a point of form, which
appeal goes to the court of cassation at Rome. This court has the
supreme power in all questions of legality of a sentence, jurisdiction
or competency.

The penal code was unified and reformed in 1890. A reform of late
years is the _condanna condizionale_, equivalent to the English "being
bound over to appear for judgment if called upon," applied in 94,489
cases in 1907. In civil matters there is appeal from the _giudice
conciliatore_ to the _pretore_ (who has jurisdiction up to a sum of
1500 lire = £60) from the _pretore_ to the civil tribunal, from the
civil tribunal to the court of appeal, and from the court of appeal to
the court of cassation.

The judges of all kinds are very poorly paid. Even the first president
of the Rome court of cassation only receives £600 a year.

The statistics of civil proceedings vary considerably from province to
province. Lombardy, with 25 lawsuits per 1000 inhabitants, holds the
lowest place; Emilia comes next with 31 per 1000; Tuscany has 39;
Venetia, 42; Calabria, 144; Rome, 146; Apulia, 153; and Sardinia, 360
per 1000. The high average in Sardinia is chiefly due to cases within
the competence of the conciliation offices. The number of penal
proceedings, especially those within the competence of praetors, has
also increased, chiefly on account of the frequency of minor
contraventions of the law referred to in the section _Crime_. The
ratio of criminal proceedings to population is, as a rule, much higher
in the south than in the north.

A royal decree, dated February 1891, established three classes of
prisons: judiciary prisons, for persons awaiting examination or
persons sentenced to arrest, detention or seclusion for less than six
months; penitentiaries of various kinds (_ergastoli_, _case di
reclusione_, _detenzione_ or _custodia_), for criminals condemned to
long terms of imprisonment; and reformatories, for criminals under age
and vagabonds. Capital punishment was abolished in 1877, penal
servitude for life being substituted. This generally involves solitary
confinement of the most rigorous nature, and, as little is done to
occupy the mind, the criminal not infrequently becomes insane. Certain
types of dangerous individuals are relegated after serving a sentence
in the ordinary convict prisons, and by administrative, not by
judicial process, to special penal colonies known as _domicilii
coatti_ or "forced residences." These establishments are, however,
unsatisfactory, being mostly situated on small islands, where it is
often difficult to find work for the _coatti_, who are free by day,
being only confined at night. They receive a small and hardly
sufficient, allowance for food of 50 _centesimi_ a day, which they are
at liberty to supplement by work if they can find it or care to do it.

Notwithstanding the construction of new prisons and the transformation
of old ones, the number of cells for solitary confinement is still
insufficient for a complete application of the penal system
established by the code of 1890, and the moral effect of the
association of the prisoners is not good, though the system of
solitary confinement as practised in Italy is little better. The total
number of prisoners, including minors and inhabitants of enforced
residences, which from 76,066 (2.84 per 1000 inhabitants) on the 31st
of December 1871 rose to a maximum of 80,792 on the 31st of December
1879 (2.87 per 1000), decreased to a minimum of 60,621 in 1896 (1.94
per 1000), and on the 31st of December 1898 rose again to 75,470
(2.38 per 1000), of whom 7038, less than one-tenth, were women. The
lowness of the figures regarding women is to be noticed throughout. On
the 31st of December 1903 it had decreased to 65,819, of which 6044
were women. Of these, 31,219 were in lockups, 25,145 in penal
establishments, 1837 minors in government, and 4547 in private
reformatories, and 3071 (males) were inmates of forced residences.

_Crime._--Statistics of offences, including _contravvenzioni_ or
breaches of by-laws and regulations, exhibit a considerable increase
per 100,000 inhabitants since 1887, and only a slight diminution on
the figures of 1897. The figure was 1783.45 per 100,000 in 1887,
2164.46 in 1892, 2546.49 in 1897, 2497.90 in 1902. The increase is
partly covered by _contravvenzioni_, but almost every class of penal
offence shows a rise except homicide, and even in that the diminution
is slow, 5418 in 1880, 3966 in 1887, 4408 in 1892, 4005 in 1897, 3202
in 1902; and Italy remains, owing to the frequent use of the knife,
the European country in which it is most frequent. Libels, insults,
&c., resistance to public authority, offences against good customs,
thefts and frauds, have increased; assaults are nearly stationary.
There is also an increase in juvenile delinquency. From 1890 to 1900
the actual number rose by one-third (from 30,108 to 43,684), the
proportion to the rest of those sentenced from one-fifth to
one-fourth; while in 1905 the actual number rose to 67,944, being a
considerable proportionate rise also. In Naples, the Camorra and in
Sicily, the Mafia are secret societies whose power of resistance to
authority is still not inconsiderable.

Procedure, both civil and criminal, is somewhat slow, and the
preliminary proceedings before the _juge d'instruction_ occupy much
time; and recent murder trials, by the large number of witnesses
called (including experts) and the lengthy speeches of counsel, have
been dragged out to an unconscionable length. In this, as in the
intervention of the presiding judge, the French system has been
adopted; and it is said (e.g. by Nathan, _Vent' anni di vita
italiana_, p. 241) that the efforts of the _juge d'instruction_ are,
as a rule, in fact, though not in law, largely directed to prove that
the accused is guilty. In 1902 of 884,612 persons accused of penal
offences, 13.12% were acquitted during the period of the
_instruction_, 30.31 by the courts, 46.32 condemned and the rest
acquitted in some other way. This shows that charges, often involving
preliminary imprisonment, are brought against an excessive proportion
of persons who either are not or cannot be proved to be guilty. The
courts of appeal and cassation, too, often have more than they can do;
in the year 1907 the court of cassation at Rome decided 948 appeals on
points of law in civil cases, while no fewer than 460 remained to be
decided.

As in most civilized countries, the number of suicides in Italy has
increased from year to year.

The Italian suicide rate of 63.6 per 1,000,000 is, however, lower than
those of Denmark, Switzerland, Germany and France, while it
approximates to that of England. The Italian rate is highest in the
more enlightened and industrial north, and lowest in the south. Emilia
gives a maximum rate of 10.48 per 100,000, while that of Liguria and
Lazio is little lower. The minimum of 1.27 is found in the Basilicata,
though Calabria gives only 2.13. About 20% of the total are women, and
there is an increase of nearly 3% since 1882 in the proportion of
suicides under twenty years of age.

_Army._--The Italian army grew out of the old Piedmontese army with
which in the main the unification of Italy was brought about. This
unification meant for the army the absorption of contingents from all
parts of Italy and presenting serious differences in physical and moral
aptitudes, political opinions and education. Moreover the strategic
geography of the country required the greater part of the army to be
stationed permanently within reach of the north-eastern and
north-western frontiers. These conditions made a territorial system of
recruiting or organization, as understood in Germany, practically
impossible. To secure fairly uniform efficiency in the various corps,
and also as a means of unifying Italy, Piedmontese, Umbrians and
Neapolitans are mixed in the same corps and sleep in the same barrack
room. But on leaving the colours the men disperse to their homes, and
thus a regiment has, on mobilization, to draw largely on the nearest
reservists, irrespective of the corps to which they belong. The remedy
for this condition of affairs is sought in a most elaborate and
artificial system of transferring officers and men from one unit to
another at stated intervals in peace-time, but this is no more than a
palliative, and there are other difficulties of almost equal importance
to be surmounted. Thus in Italy the universal service system, though
probably the best organization both for the army and the nation, works
with a maximum of friction. "Army Reform," therefore, has been very much
in the forefront of late years owing to the estrangement of Austria
(which power can mobilize much more rapidly), but financial difficulties
have hitherto stood in the way of any radical and far-reaching reforms,
and even the proposals of the Commission of 1907, referred to below,
have only been partially accepted.

The law of 1875 therefore still regulates the principles of military
service in Italy, though an important modification was made in
1907-1908. By this law, every man liable and accepted for service
served for eight or nine years on the _Active Army_ and its _Reserve_
(of which three to five were spent with the colours), four or five in
the _Mobile Militia_, and the rest of the service period of nineteen
years in the _Territorial Militia_. Under present regulations the term
of liability is divided into nine years in the _Active Army and
Reserve_ (three or two years with the colours) four in the _Mobile
Militia_ and six in the _Territorial Militia_. But these figures do
not represent the actual service of every able-bodied Italian. Like
almost all "Universal Service" countries, Italy only drafts a small
proportion of the available recruits into the army.

The following table shows the operation of the law of 1875, with the
figures of 1871 for comparison:--

+----------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| | 30th Sept. | 30th June. |
| +----------+----------+----------+----------+
| | 1871. | 1881. | 1891. | 1901. |
+----------------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| Officers* | 14,070 | 22,482 | 36,739 | 36,718 |
| Men | 521,969 |1,833,554 |2,821,367 |3,330,202 |
| Acting Army & Reserve| 536,039 | 731,149 | 843,160 | 734,401 |
| Mobile Militia | .. | 294,714 | 445,315 | 320,170 |
| Territorial Militia | .. | 823,970 |1,553,784 |2,275,631 |
+----------------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+

* Including officers on special service or in the reserve.

Thus, on the 30th of September 1871 the various categories of the army
included only 2% of the population, but on the 30th of June 1898 they
included 10%. But in 1901 the strength of the active army and reserve
shows a marked diminution, which became accentuated in the year
following. The table below indicates that up to 1907 the army, though
always below its nominal strength, never absorbed more than a quarter
of the available contingent.

+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1906. |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Liable |441,171 |453,640 |469,860 |475,737 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Physically unfit | 91,176 | 98,065 |119,070 |122,559 |
| Struck off | 12,270 | 13,189 | 13,130 | 18,222 |
| Failed to appear | 33,634 | 34,711 | 39,219 | 40,226 |
| Put back for re-examination |108,835 |108,618 |107,173 |122,205 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Assigned to Territorial Militia| | | | |
| and excused peace service | 92,952 | 96,916 | 94,136 | 87,032 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Assigned to active army |102,204 |102,141 | 97,132 | 87,493 |
| Joined active army | 88,666 | 86,448 | 81,581 | 66,836 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+

The serious condition of recruiting was quickly noticed, and the
tabulation of each year's results was followed by a new draft law, but
no solution was achieved until a special commission assembled. The
inquiries made by this body revealed an unsatisfactory condition in
the national defences, traceable in the main to financial exigencies,
and as regards recruiting a new law was brought into force in
1907-1908.

One specially difficult point concerned the effectives of the
peace-strength army. Hitherto the actual time of training had been
less than the nominal. The recruits due to join in November were not
incorporated till the following March, and thus in the winter months
Italy was defenceless. The army is always maintained at a low peace
effective (about one-quarter of war establishment) and even this was
reduced, by the absence of the recruits, until there were often only
15 rank and file with a company, whose war strength is about 230. Even
in the summer and autumn a large proportion of the army consisted of
men with but a few months' service--a highly dangerous state of things
considering the peculiar mobilization conditions of the country.
Further--and this case no legislation can cover--the contingent, and
(what is more serious) the reserves, are being steadily weakened by
emigration. The increase in the numbers rejected as unfit is accounted
for by the fact that if only a small proportion of the contingent can
be taken for service, the medical standard of acceptance is high.

The new recruiting scheme of 1907 re-established three categories of
recruits,[4] the 2nd category corresponding practically to the German
_Ersatz-Reserve_. The men classed in it have to train for six months,
and they are called up in the late summer to bridge the gap above
mentioned. The new terms of service for the other categories have been
already stated. In consequence, in 1908, of 490,000 liable, some
110,000 actually joined for full training and 24,000 of the new 2nd
category for short training, which contrasts very forcibly with the
feeble embodiments of 1906 and 1907. These changes threw a
considerable strain on the finances, but the imminence of the danger
caused their acceptance.

The peace strength under the new scheme is nominally 300,000, but
actually (average throughout the year) about 240,000. The army is
organized in 12 army corps (each of 2 divisions), 6 of which are
quartered on the plain of Lombardy and Venetia and on the frontiers, and
2 more in northern Central Italy. Their headquarters are: I. Turin, II.
Alessandria, III. Milan, IV. Genoa, V. Verona, VI. Bologna, VII. Ancona,
VIII. Florence, IX. Rome, X. Naples, XI. Bari, XII. Palermo, Sardinian
division Cagliari. In addition there are 22 "Alpini" battalions and 15
mountain batteries stationed on the Alpine frontiers.

The war strength was estimated in 1901 as, _Active Army_ (incl. Reserve)
750,000, _Mobile Militia_ 320,000, _Territorial Militia_ 2,300,000 (more
than half of the last-named untrained). These figures are, with a
fractional increase in the Regular Army, applicable to-day. When the
1907 scheme takes full effect, however, the Active Army and the Mobile
Militia will each be augmented by about one-third. In 1915 the field
army should, including officers and permanent _cadres_, be about
1,012,000 strong. The Mobile Militia will not, however, at that date
have felt the effects of the scheme, and the Territorial Militia
(setting the drain of emigration against the increased population) will
probably remain at about the same figure as in 1901.

The army consists of 96 three-battalion regiments of infantry of the
line and 12 of _bersaglieri_ (riflemen), each of the latter having a
cyclist company (Bersaglieri cyclist battalions are being (1909)
provisionally formed); 26 regiments of cavalry, of which 10 are
lancers, each of 6 squadrons; 24 regiments of artillery, each of 8
batteries;[5] 1 regiment of horse artillery of 6 batteries; 1 of
mountain artillery of 12 batteries, and 3 independent mountain
batteries. The armament of the infantry is the Männlicher-Carcano
magazine rifle of 1891. The field and horse artillery was in 1909 in
process of rearmament with a Krupp quick-firer. The garrison artillery
consists of 3 coast and 3 fortress regiments, with a total of 72
companies. There are 4 regiments (11 battalions) of engineers. The
_carabinieri_ or gendarmerie, some 26,500 in number, are part of the
standing army; they are recruited from selected volunteers from the
army. In 1902 the special corps in Eritrea numbered about 4700 of all
ranks, including nearly 4000 natives.

Ordinary and extraordinary military expenditure for the financial year
1898-1899 amounted to nearly £10,000,000, an increase of £4,000,000 as
compared with 1871. The Italian Chamber decided that from the 1st of
July 1901 until the 30th of June 1907 Italian military expenditure
proper should not exceed the maximum of £9,560,000 per annum fixed by
the Army Bill of May 1897, and that military pensions should not
exceed £1,440,000. Italian military expenditure was thus until 1907
£11,000,000 per annum. In 1908 the ordinary and extraordinary
expenditure was £10,000,000. The demands of the Commission were only
partly complied with, but a large special grant was voted amounting to
at least £1,000,000 per annum for the next seven years. The amount
spent is slight compared with the military expenditure of other
countries.

The Alpine frontier is fortified strongly, although the condition of
the works was in many cases considered unsatisfactory by the 1907
Commission. The fortresses in the basin of the Po chiefly belong to
the era of divided Italy and are now out of date; the chief coast
fortresses are Vado, Genoa, Spezia, Monte Argentaro, Gaeta, Straits of
Messina, Taranto, Maddalena. Rome is protected by a circle of forts
from a _coup de main_ from the sea, the coast, only 12 m. off, being
flat and deserted.

_Navy._--For purposes of naval organization the Italian coast is divided
into three maritime departments, with headquarters at Spezia, Naples and
Venice; and into two _comandi militari_, with headquarters at Taranto
and at the island of Maddalena. The _personnel_ of the navy consists of
the following corps: (1) General staff; (2) naval engineers, chiefly
employed in building and repairing war vessels; (3) sanitary corps; (4)
commissariat corps, for supplies and account-keeping; (5) crews.

The _matériel_ of the Italian navy has been completely transformed,
especially in virtue of the bill of the 31st of March 1875. Old types of
vessels have been sold or demolished, and replaced by newer types.

In March 1907 the Italian navy contained, excluding ships of no
fighting value:--

+---------------------+----------+-----------+----------+
| |Effective.|Completing.|Projected.|
+---------------------+----------+-----------+----------+
| Modern battleships | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| Old battleships | 10 | .. | .. |
| Armoured cruisers | 6 | 2 | .. |
| Protected cruisers | 14 | .. | .. |
| Torpedo gunboats | 13 | .. | .. |
| Destroyers | 13 | 4 | 10 |
| Modern torpedo boats| 34 | .. | 15 |
| Submarines | 1 | 4 | 2 |
+---------------------+----------+-----------+----------+

The four modern ships--the "Vittorio Emanuele" class, laid down in
1897--have a tonnage of 12,625, two 12-in. and twelve 8-in. guns, an
I.H.P. of 19,000, and a designed speed of 22 knots, being intended to
avoid any battleship and to carry enough guns to destroy any cruiser.

The _personnel_ on active service consisted of 1799 officers and
25,000 men, the former being doubled and the latter trebled since
1882.

Naval expenditure has enormously increased since 1871, the total for
1871 having been about £900,000, and the total for 1905-1906 over
£5,100,000. Violent fluctuations have, however, taken place from year
to year, according to the state of Italian finances. To permit the
steady execution of a normal programme of shipbuilding, the Italian
Chamber, in May 1901, adopted a resolution limiting naval expenditure,
inclusive of naval pensions and of premiums on mercantile
shipbuilding, to the sum of £4,840,000 for the following six years,
i.e. from 1st July 1901 until 30th June 1907. This sum consists of
£4,240,000 of naval expenditure proper, £220,000 for naval pensions
and £380,000 for premiums upon mercantile shipbuilding. During the
financial year ending on the 30th of June 1901 these figures were
slightly exceeded.

_Finance._--The volume of the Italian budget has considerably increased
as regards both income and expenditure. The income of £60,741,418 in
1881 rose in 1899-1900 to £69,917,126; while the expenditure increased
from £58,705,929 in 1881 to £69,708,706 in 1899-1900, an increase of
£9,175,708 in income and £11,002,777 in expenditure, while there has
been a still further increase since, the figures for 1905-1906 showing
(excluding items which figure on both sides of the account) an increase
of £8,766,995 in income and £5,434,560 in expenditure over 1899-1900.
These figures include not only the categories of "income and
expenditure" proper, but also those known as "movement of capital,"
"railway constructions" and "_partite di giro_" which do not constitute
real income and expenditure.[6] Considering only income and expenditure
proper, the approximate totals are:--

+---------------+------------+------------+------------+
|Financial Year.| Revenue. |Expenditure.|Surpluses or|
| | | | Deficits. |
+---------------+------------+------------+------------+
| 1882 |£52,064,800 |£51,904,800 |£+ 160,000 |
| 1885-1886 | 56,364,000 | 57,304,400 | - 940,000 |
| 1890-1891 | 61,600,000 | 64,601,600 | -3,001,600 |
| 1895-1896 | 65,344,000 | 67,962,800 | -2,618,800 |
| 1898-1899 | 66,352,800 | 65,046,400 | +1,306,400 |
| 1899-1900 | 66,860,800 | 65,323,600 | +1,537,200 |
| 1900-1901 | 68,829,200 | 66,094,400 | +2,734,800 |
| 1905-1906 | 77,684,100 | 75,143,300 | +2,540,900 |
+---------------+------------+------------+------------+

The financial year 1862 closed with a deficit of more than
£16,000,000, which increased in 1866 to £28,840,000 on account of the
preparations for the war against Austria. Excepting the increases of
deficit in 1868 and 1870, the annual deficits tended thenceforward to
decrease, until in 1875 equilibrium between expenditure and revenue
was attained, and was maintained until 1881. Advantage was taken of
the equilibrium to abolish certain imposts, amongst them the grist
tax, which prior to its gradual repeal produced more than £3,200,000
a year. From 1885-1886 onwards, outlay on public works, military and
colonial expenditure, and especially the commercial and financial
crises, contributed to produce annual deficits; but owing to drastic
reforms introduced in 1894-1895 and to careful management the year
1898-1899 marked a return of surpluses (nearly £1,306,400).

The revenue in the Italian financial year 1905-1906 (July 1, 1905 to
June 30, 1906) was £102,486,108, and the expenditure £99,945,253, or,
subtracting the _partite di giro_, £99,684,121 and £97,143,266,
leaving a surplus of £2,540,855.[7] The surplus was made up by
contributions from every branch of the effective revenue, except the
"contributions and repayments from local authorities." The railways
showed an increase of £351,685; registration transfer and succession,
£295,560; direct taxation, £42,136 (mainly from income tax, which more
than made up for the remission of the house tax in the districts of
Calabria visited by the earthquake of 1906); customs and excise,
£1,036,742; government monopolies, £291,027; posts, £41,310;
telegraphs, £23,364; telephones, £65,771. Of the surplus £1,000,000
was allocated to the improvement of posts, telegraphs and telephones;
£1,000,000 to public works (£720,000 for harbour improvement and
£280,000 for internal navigation); £200,000 to the navy (£132,000 for
a second dry dock at Taranto and £68,000 for coal purchase); and
£200,000 as a nucleus of a fund for the purchase of valuable works of
art which are in danger of exportation.

Taxation.

The state therefore draws its principal revenues from the imposts, the
taxes and the monopolies. According to the Italian tributary system,
"imposts," properly so called are those upon land, buildings and
personal estate. The impost upon land is based upon the cadastral
survey independently of the vicissitudes of harvests. In 1869 the main
quota to the impost was increased by one-tenth, in addition to the
extra two-tenths previously imposed in 1866. Subsequently, it was
decided to repeal these additional tenths, the first being abolished
in 1886 and the rest in 1887. On account of the inequalities still
existing in the cadastral survey, in spite of the law of 1886 (see
_Agriculture_, above), great differences are found in the land tax
assessments in various parts of Italy. Land is not so heavily burdened
by the government quota as by the additional centimes imposed by the
provincial and communal authorities. On an average Italian landowners
pay nearly 25% of their revenues from land in government and local
land tax. The buildings impost has been assessed since 1866 upon the
basis of 12.50% of "taxable revenue." Taxable revenue corresponds to
two-thirds of actual income from factories and to three-fourths of
actual income from houses; it is ascertained by the agents of the
financial administration. In 1869, however, a third additional tenth
was added to the previously existing additional two-tenths, and,
unlike the tenths of the land tax, they have not been abolished. At
present the main quota with the additional three-tenths amounts to
16.25% of taxable income. The imposts on incomes from personal estate
(_ricchezza mobile_) were introduced in 1866; it applies to incomes
derived from investments, industry or personal enterprise, but not to
landed revenues. It is proportional, and is collected by deduction
from salaries and pensions paid to servants of the state, where it is
assessed on three-eighths of the income, and from interest on
consolidated stock, where it is assessed on the whole amount; and by
register in the cases of private individuals, who pay on three-fourths
of their income, professional men, capitalists or manufacturers, who
pay on one-half or nine-twentieths of their income. From 1871 to 1894
it was assessed at 13.20% of taxable income, this quota being formed
of 12% main quota and 1.20% as an additional tenth. In 1894 the quota,
including the additional tenth, was raised to the uniform level of
20%. One-tenth of the tax is paid to the communes as compensation for
revenues made over to the state.

Taxes proper are divided into (a) taxes on business transactions and
(b) taxes on articles of consumption. The former apply principally to
successions, stamps, registrations, mortgages, &c.; the latter to
distilleries, breweries, explosives, native sugar and matches, though
the customs revenue and octrois upon articles of general consumption,
such as corn, wine, spirits, meat, flour, petroleum, butter, tea,
coffee and sugar, may be considered as belonging to this class. The
monopolies are those of salt, tobacco and the lottery.

Since 1880, while income from the salt and lotto monopolies has
remained almost stationary, and that from land tax and octroi has
diminished, revenue derived from all other sources has notably
increased, especially that from the income tax on personal estate, and
the customs, the yield from which has been nearly doubled.

It will be seen that the revenue is swollen by a large number of taxes
which can only be justified by necessity; the reduction and, still
more, the readjustment of taxation (which now largely falls on
articles of primary necessity) is urgently needed. The government in
presenting the estimates for 1907-1908 proposed to set aside a sum of
nearly £800,000 every year for this express purpose. It must be
remembered that the sums realized by the octroi go in the main to the
various communes. It is only in Rome and Naples that the octroi is
collected directly by the government, which pays over a certain
proportion to the respective communes.

The external taxation is not only strongly protectionist, but is
applied to goods which cannot be made in Italy; hardly anything comes
in duty free, even such articles as second-hand furniture paying duty,
unless within six months of the date at which the importer has
declared domicile in Italy. The application, too, is somewhat
rigorous, e.g. the tax on electric light is applied to foreign ships
generating their own electricity while lying in Italian ports.

The annual consumption per inhabitant of certain kinds of food and
drink has considerably increased, e.g. grain from 270 lb. per head in
1884-1885 to 321 lb. in 1901-1902 (maize remains almost stationary at
158 lb.); wine from 73 to 125 litres per head; oil from 12 to 13 lb.
per head (sugar is almost stationary at 7¼ lb. per head, and coffee at
about 1 lb.); salt from 14 to 16 lb. per head. Tobacco slightly
diminished in weight at a little over 1 lb. per head, while the gross
receipts are considerably increased--by over 2¼ millions sterling
since 1884-1885--showing that the quality consumed is much better. The
annual expenditure on tobacco was 5s. per inhabitant in 1902-1903, and
is increasing.

The annual surpluses are largely accounted for by the heavy taxation
on almost everything imported into the country,[8] and by the
monopolies on tobacco and on salt; and are as a rule spent, and well
spent, in other ways. Thus, that of 1907-1908 was devoted mainly to
raising the salaries of government officials and university
professors; even then the maximum for both (in the former class, for
an under-secretary of state) was only £500 per annum. The case is
frequent, too, in which a project is sanctioned by law, but is then
not carried into execution, or only partly so, owing to the lack of
funds. Additional stamp duties and taxes were imposed in 1909 to meet
the expenditure necessitated by the disastrous earthquake at the end
of 1908.

The way in which the taxes press on the poor may be shown by the
number of small proprietors sold up owing to inability to pay the land
and other taxes. In 1882 the number of landed proprietors was 14.52%
of the population, in 1902 only 12.66, with an actual diminution of
some 30,000. Had the percentage of 1882 been kept up there would have
been in 1902 600,000 more proprietors than there were. Between 1884
and 1902 no fewer than 220,616 sales were effected for failure to pay
taxes, while, from 1886 to 1902, 79,208 expropriations were effected
for other debts not due to the state. In 1884 there were 20,422 sales,
of which 35.28% were for debts of 4s. or less, and 51.95 for debts
between 4s. and £2; in 1902 there were 4857 sales, but only 11.01% for
debts under 4s. (the treasury having given up proceeding in cases
where the property is a tiny piece of ground, sometimes hardly capable
of cultivation), and 55.69% for debts between 4s. and £2. The
expropriations deal as a rule with properties of higher value; of
these there were 3217 in 1886, 5993 in 1892 (a period of agricultural
depression), 3910 in 1902. About 22% of them are for debts under £40,
about 49% from £40 to £200, about 26% from £200 to £2000.

Expenditure.

Of the expenditure a large amount is absorbed by interest on debt.
Debt has continually increased with the development of the state. The
sum paid in interest on debt amounted to £17,640,000 in 1871,
£19,440,000 in 1881, £25,600,000 in 1891-1892 and £27,560,000 in
1899-1900; but had been reduced to £23,100,409 by the 30th of June
1906. The public debt at that date was composed as follows:--

Part I.--_Funded Debt._

Grand Livre-- Amount.

Consolidated 5% £316,141,802
" 3% 6,404,335
" 4½% net 28,872,511
" 4% " 7,875,592
" 3½% " 37,689,880
------------
Total £396,984,120
Debts to be transferred to the Grand Livre. 60,868
Perpetual annuity to the Holy See 2,580,000
Perpetual debts (Modena, Sicily, Naples) 2,591,807

Total £402,216,795

Part II.--_Unfunded Debt._

Debts separately inscribed in the Grand
Livre 10,042,027

Various railway obligations, redeemable, &c. 56,375,351

Sicilian indemnities 195,348

Capital value of annual payment to South
Austrian Company 37,102,908

Long date Treasury warrants, law of July 7,
1901 1,416,200

Railway certificates (3.65% net),
Art. 6 of law, June 25, 1905, No. 261 14,220,000
------------
Total £119,351,834
Part I. £402,216,795
------------
Grand Total £521,568,629

The debt per head of population was, in 1905, £14, 16s. 3d., and the
interest 13s. 5d.

In July 1906 the 5% gross (4% net), and 4% net rente were successfully
converted into 3¾% stock (to be reduced to 3½% after five years), to a
total amount of £324,017,393. The demands for reimbursement at par
represented a sum of only £187,588 and the market value of the stock
was hardly affected; while the saving to the Treasury was to be
£800,000 per annum for the first five years and about double the
amount afterwards.

_Currency._--The _lira_ (plural _lire_) of 100 _centesimi_ (centimes)
is equal in value to the French franc. The total coinage (exclusive of
Eritrean currency) from the 1st of January 1862 to the end of 1907 was
1,104,667,116 lire (exclusive of recoinage), divided as follows: gold,
427,516,970 lire; silver, 570,097,025 lire; nickel, 23,417,000 lire;
bronze, 83,636,121 lire. The forced paper currency, instituted in
1866, was abolished in 1881, in which year were dissolved the Union of
Banks of Issue created in 1874 to furnish to the state treasury a
milliard of lire in notes, guaranteed collectively by the banks. Part
of the Union notes were redeemed, part replaced by 10 lire and 5 lire
state notes, payable at sight in metallic legal tender by certain
state banks. Nevertheless the law of 1881 did not succeed in
maintaining the value of the state notes at a par with the metallic
currency, and from 1885 onwards there reappeared a gold premium, which
during 1899 and 1900 remained at about 7%, but subsequently fell to
about 3% and has since 1902 practically disappeared. The paper
circulation to the debit of the state and the paper currency issued by
the authorized state banks is shown below:--

+-------------------+----------------------------+---------------+---------------+
| | Direct Liability of State. | Notes issued | Aggregate |
| Date. +-------------+--------------+ by State | Paper |
| | State Notes.| Bons de | Banks. | Currency. |
| | | Caisse.* | | |
+-------------------+-------------+--------------+---------------+---------------+
| | Lire. | Lire. | Lire. | Lire. |
|31st December 1881 | 940,000,000 | .. | 735,579,197 | 1,675,579,197 |
| " 1886 | 446,665,535 | .. | 1,031,869,712 | 1,478,535,247 |
| " 1891 | 341,949,237 | .. | 1,121,601,079 | 1,463,550,316 |
| " 1896 | 400,000,000 | 110,000,000 | 1,069,233,376 | 1,579,233,376 |
| " 1899 | 451,431,780 | 42,138,152 | 1,180,110,330 | 1,673,680,262 |
| " 1905 | 441,304,780 | 1,874,184 | 1,406,474,800 | 1,848,657,764 |
+-------------------+-------------+--------------+---------------+---------------+

* These ceased to have legal currency at the end of 1901; they were
notes of 1 and 2 lire.

_Banks._--Until 1893 the juridical status of the Banks of Issue was
regulated by the laws of the 30th of April 1874 on paper currency and
of the 7th of April 1881 on the abolition of forced currency. At that
time four limited companies were authorized to issue bank notes,
namely, the National Bank, the National Bank of Tuscany, the Roman
Bank and the Tuscan Credit Bank; and two banking corporations, the
Bank of Naples and the Bank of Sicily. In 1893 the Roman Bank was put
into liquidation, and the other three limited companies were fused, so
as to create the Bank of Italy, the privilege of issuing bank notes
being thenceforward confined to the Bank of Italy, the Bank of Naples
and the Bank of Sicily. The gold reserve in the possession of the
Banca d'Italia on September 30th 1907 amounted to £32,240,984, and the
silver reserve to £4,767,861; the foreign treasury bonds, &c. amounted
to £3,324,074, making the total reserve £40,332,919; while the
circulation amounted to £54,612,234. The figures were on the 31st of
December 1906:

+------------------+--------------+--------------+
| | Paper | Reserve. |
| | Circulation. | |
+------------------+--------------+--------------+
| Banca d'Italia | £47,504,352 | £36,979,235 |
| Banca di Napoli | 13,893,152 | 9,756,284 |
| Banca di Sicilia | 2,813,692 | 2,060,481 |
+------------------+--------------+--------------+
| Total | £64,211,196 | £48,796,000 |
+------------------+--------------+--------------+

This is considerably in excess of the circulation, £40,404,000, fixed
by royal decree of 1900; but the issue of additional notes was
allowed, provided they were entirely covered by a metallic reserve,
whereas up to the fixed limit a 40% reserve only was necessary. These
notes are of 50, 100, 500 and 1000 lire; while the state issues notes
for 5, 10 and 25 lire, the currency of these at the end of October
1906 being £17,546,967; with a total guarantee of £15,636,000 held
against them. They were in January 1908 equal in value to the metallic
currency of gold and silver.

The price of Italian consolidated 5% (gross, 4% net, allowing for the
20% income tax) stock, which is the security most largely negotiated
abroad, and used in settling differences between large financial
institutions, has steadily risen during recent years. After being
depressed between 1885 and 1894, the prices in Italy and abroad
reached, in 1899, on the Rome Stock Exchange, the average of 100.83
and of 94.8 on the Paris Bourse. By the end of 1901 the price of
Italian stock on the Paris Bourse had, however, risen to par or
thereabouts. The average price of Italian 4% in 1905 was 105.29; since
the conversion to 3¾% net (to be further reduced to 3½ in five more
years), the price has been about 103.5. Rates of exchange, or, in
other words the gold premium, favoured Italy during the years
immediately following the abolition of the forced currency in 1881. In
1885, however, rates tended to rise, and though they fell in 1886 they
subsequently increased to such an extent as to reach 110% at the end
of August 1894. For the next four years they continued low, but rose
again in 1898 and 1899. In 1900 the maximum rate was 107.32, and the
minimum 105.40, but in 1901 rates fell considerably, and were at par
in 1902-1909.

There are in Italy six clearing houses, namely, the ancient one at
Leghorn, and those of Genoa, Milan, Rome, Florence and Turin, founded
since 1882.

The number of ordinary banks, which diminished between 1889 and 1894,
increased in the following years, and was 158 in 1898. At the same
time the capital employed in banking decreased by nearly one-half,
namely, from about £12,360,000 in 1880 to about £6,520,000 in 1898.
This decrease was due to the liquidation of a number of large and
small banks, amongst others the Bank of Genoa, the General Bank, and
the Società di Credito Mobiliare Italiano of Rome, and the Genoa
Discount Bank--establishments which alone represented £4,840,000 of
paid-up capital. Ordinary credit operations are also carried on by the
co-operative credit societies, of which there are some 700.

Agrarian Credit Banks.

Certain banks make a special business of lending money to owners of
land or buildings (_credito fondiario_). Loans are repayable by
instalments, and are guaranteed by first mortgages not greater in
amount than half the value of the hypothecated property. The banks may
buy up mortgages and advance money on current account on the security
of land or buildings. The development of the large cities has induced
these banks to turn their attention rather to building enterprise than
to mortgages on rural property. The value of their land certificates
or _cartelle fondiarie_ (representing capital in circulation) rose
from £10,420,000 in 1881 to £15,560,000 in 1886, and to £30,720,000 in
1891, but fell to £29,320,000 in 1896, to £27,360,000 in 1898, and to
£24,360,000 in 1907; the amount of money lent increased from
£10,440,000 in 1881 to £15,600,000 in 1886, and £30,800,000 in 1891,
but fell to £29,320,000 in 1896, to £27,360,000 in 1899, and to
£21,720,000 in 1907. The diminution was due to the law of the 10th of
April 1893 upon the banks of issue, by which they were obliged to
liquidate the loan and mortgage business they had previously carried
on.

Various laws have been passed to facilitate agrarian credit. The law
of the 23rd of January 1887 (still in force) extended the dispositions
of the Civil Code with regard to "privileges,"[9] and established
special "privileges" in regard to harvested produce, produce stored in
barns and farm buildings, and in regard to agricultural implements.
Loans on mortgage may also be granted to landowners and agricultural
unions, with a view to the introduction of agricultural improvements.
These loans are regulated by special disposition, and are guaranteed
by a share of the increased value of the land after the improvements
have been carried out. Agrarian credit banks may, with the permission
of the government, issue _cartelle agrarie_, or agrarian bonds,
repayable by instalments and bearing interest.

_Internal Administration._--It was not till 1865 that the
administrative unity of Italy was realized. Up to that year some of
the regions of the kingdom, such as Tuscany, continued to have a kind
of autonomy; but by the laws of the 20th of March the whole country
was divided into 69 provinces and 8545 communes. The extent to which
communal independence had been maintained in Italy through all the
centuries of its political disintegration was strongly in its favour.
The syndic (_sindaco_) or chief magistrate of the commune was
appointed by the king for three years, and he was assisted by a
"municipal junta."

Local government was modified by the law of the 10th of February 1889
and by posterior enactments. The syndics (or mayors) are now elected
by a secret ballot of the communal council, though they are still
government officials. In the provincial administrations the functions
of the prefects have been curtailed. Each province has a prefect,
responsible to and appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, while
each of the regions (called variously _circondarii_ and _distretti_)
has its sub-prefect. Whereas the prefect was formerly _ex-officio_
president of the provincial deputation or executive committee of the
provincial council, his duties under the present law are reduced to
mere participation in the management of provincial affairs, the
president of the provincial deputation being chosen among and elected
by the members of the deputation. The most important change introduced
by the new law has been the creation in every province of a provincial
administrative junta entrusted with the supervision of communal
administrations, a function previously discharged by the provincial
deputation. Each provincial administrative junta is composed, in part,
of government nominees, and in larger part of elective elements,
elected by the provincial council for four years, half of whom require
to be elected every two years. The acts of communal administration
requiring the sanction of the provincial administrative junta are
chiefly financial. Both communal councils and prefects may appeal to
the government against the decision of the provincial administrative
juntas, the government being guided by the opinion of the Council of
State. Besides possessing competence in regard to local government
elections, which previously came within the jurisdiction of the
provincial deputations, the provincial administrative juntas discharge
magisterial functions in administrative affairs, and deal with appeals
presented by private persons against acts of the communal and
provincial administrations. The juntas are in this respect organs of
the administrative jurisprudence created in Italy by the law of the
1st of May 1890, in order to provide juridical protection for those
rights and interests outside the competence of the ordinary tribunals.
The provincial council only meets once a year in ordinary session.

The former qualifications for electorship in local government
elections have been modified, and it is now sufficient to pay five
lire annually in direct taxes, five lire of certain communal taxes, or
a certain rental (which varies according to the population of a
commune), instead of being obliged to pay, as previously, at least
five lire annually of direct taxes to the state. In consequence of
this change the number of local electors increased by more than
one-third between 1887-1889; it decreased, however, as a result of an
extraordinary revision of the registers in 1894. The period for which
both communal and provincial councils are elected is six years,
one-half being renewed every three years.

The ratio of local electors to population is in Piedmont 79%, but in
Sicily less than 45%. The ratio of voters to qualified electors tends
to increase; it is highest in Campania, Basilicata and in the south
generally; the lowest percentages are given by Emilia and Liguria.

Local finance.

Local finance is regulated by the communal and provincial law of May
1898, which instituted provincial administrative juntas, empowered to
examine and sanction the acts of the communal financial
administrations. The sanction of the provincial administrative junta
is necessary for sales or purchases of property, alterations of rates
(although in case of increase the junta can only act upon request of
ratepayers paying an aggregate of one-twentieth of the local direct
taxation), and expenditure affecting the communal budget for more than
five years. The provincial administrative junta is, moreover,
empowered to order "obligatory" expenditure, such as the upkeep of
roads, sanitary works, lighting, police (i.e. the so-called "guardie
di pubblica sicurezza," the "carabinieri" being really a military
force; only the largest towns maintain a municipal police force),
charities, education, &c., in case such expenditure is neglected by
the communal authorities. The cost of fire brigades, infant asylums,
evening and holiday schools, is classed as "optional" expenditure.
Communal revenues are drawn from the proceeds of communal property,
interest upon capital, taxes and local dues. The most important of the
local dues is the gate tax, or _dazio di consumo_, which may be either
a surtax upon commodities (such as alcoholic drinks or meat), having
already paid customs duty at the frontier, in which case the local
surtax may not exceed 50% of the frontier duty, or an exclusively
communal duty limited to 10% on flour, bread and farinaceous
products,[10] and to 20% upon other commodities. The taxes thus vary
considerably in different towns.

In addition, the communes have a right to levy a surtax not exceeding
50% of the quota levied by the state upon lands and buildings; a
family tax, or _fuocatico_, upon the total incomes of families, which,
for fiscal purposes, are divided into various categories; a tax based
upon the rent-value of houses, and other taxes upon cattle, horses,
dogs, carriages and servants; also on licences for shopkeepers, hotel
and restaurant keepers, &c.; on the slaughter of animals, stamp
duties, one-half of the tax on bicycles, &c. Occasional sources of
interest are found in the sale of communal property, the realization
of communal credits, and the contraction of debt.

The provincial administrations are entrusted with the management of
the affairs of the provinces in general, as distinguished from those
of the communes. Their expenditure is likewise classed as "obligatory"
and "optional." The former category comprises the maintenance of
provincial roads, bridges and watercourse embankments; secondary
education, whenever this is not provided for by private institutions
or by the state (elementary education being maintained by the
communes), and the maintenance of foundlings and pauper lunatics.
"Optional" expenditure includes the cost of services of general public
interest, though not strictly indispensable. Provincial revenues are
drawn from provincial property, school taxes, tolls and surtaxes on
land and buildings. The provincial surtaxes may not exceed 50% of the
quotas levied by the state. In 1897 the total provincial revenue was
£3,732,253, of which £3,460,000 was obtained from the surtax upon
lands and buildings. Expenditure amounted to £3,768,888, of which the
principal items were £760,000 for roads and bridges, £520,000 for
lunatic asylums, £240,000 for foundling hospitals, £320,000 for
interest on debt and £200,000 for police. Like communal revenue,
provincial revenue has considerably increased since 1880, principally
on account of the increase in the land and building surtax.

The Italian local authorities, communes and provinces alike, have
considerably increased their indebtedness since 1882. The ratio of
communal and provincial debt per inhabitant has grown from 30.79 lire
(£1, 4s. 7½d.) to 43.70 lire (£1, 14s. 11d.), an increase due in great
part to the need for improved buildings, hygienic reforms and
education, but also attributable in part to the manner in which the
finances of many communes are administered. The total was in 1900,
£49,496,193 for the communes and £6,908,022 for the provinces. The
former total is more than double and the latter more than treble the
sum in 1873, while there is an increase of 62% in the former and 26%
in the latter over the totals for 1882.

See _Annuario statistico italiano_ (not, however, issued regularly
each year) for general statistics; and other official publications; W.
Deecke, _Italy; a Popular Account of the Country, its People and its
Institutions_ (translated by H. A. Nesbitt, London, 1904); B. King and
T. Okey, _Italy to-day_ (London, 1901); E. Nathan, _Vent' Anni di vita
italiana attraverso all' Annuario_ (Rome, 1906); G. Strafforello,
_Geografia dell' Italia_ (Turin, 1890-1902). (T. As.)

HISTORY

The difficulty of Italian history lies in the fact that until modern
times the Italians have had no political unity, no independence, no
organized existence as a nation. Split up into numerous and mutually
hostile communities, they never, through the fourteen centuries which
have elapsed since the end of the old Western empire, shook off the yoke
of foreigners completely; they never until lately learned to merge their
local and conflicting interests in the common good of undivided Italy.
Their history is therefore not the history of a single people,
centralizing and absorbing its constituent elements by a process of
continued evolution, but of a group of cognate populations, exemplifying
divers types of constitutional developments.

The early history of Italy will be found under ROME and allied headings.
The following account is therefore mainly concerned with the periods
succeeding A.D. 476, when Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer.
Prefixed to this are two sections dealing respectively with (A) the
ethnographical and philological divisions of ancient Italy, and (B) the
unification of the country under Augustus, the growth of the road system
and so forth. The subsequent history is divided into five periods: (C)
From 476 to 1796; (D) From 1796 to 1814; (E) From 1815 to 1870; (F) From
1870 to 1902; (G) From 1902 to 1910.

A. ANCIENT LANGUAGES AND PEOPLES

The ethnography of ancient Italy is a very complicated and difficult
subject, and notwithstanding the researches of modern scholars is still
involved in some obscurity. The great beauty and fertility of the
country, as well as the charm of its climate, undoubtedly attracted,
even in early ages, successive swarms of invaders from the north, who
sometimes drove out the previous occupants of the most favoured
districts, at others reduced them to a state of serfdom, or settled down
in the midst of them, until the two races gradually coalesced. Ancient
writers are agreed as to the composite character of the population of
Italy, and the diversity of races that were found within the limits of
the peninsula. But unfortunately the traditions they have transmitted to
us are often various and conflicting, while the only safe test of the
affinities of nations, derived from the comparison of their languages,
is to a great extent inapplicable, from the fact that the idioms that
prevailed in Italy in and before the 5th century B.C. are preserved, if
at all, only in a few scanty and fragmentary inscriptions, though from
that date onwards we have now a very fair record of many of them (see,
e.g. LATIN LANGUAGE, OSCA LINGUA, IGUVIUM, VOLSCI, ETRURIA: section
_Language_, and below). These materials, imperfect as they are, when
combined with the notices derived from ancient writers and the evidence
of archaeological excavations, may be considered as having furnished
some results of reasonable certainty.

It must be observed that the name "Italians" was at one time confined to
the Oenotrians; indeed, according to Antiochus of Syracuse (_apud_ Dion.
Hal. _Ant. Rom._ ii. 1), the name of Italy was first still more limited,
being applied only to the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula
(now known as Calabria). But in the time of that historian, as well as
of Thucydides, the names of Oenotria and Italia, which appear to have
been at that period regarded as synonymous, had been extended to include
the shore of the Tarentine Gulf as far as Metapontum and from thence
across to the gulfs of Laus and Posidonia on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It
thus still comprised only the two provinces subsequently known as
Lucania and Bruttium (see references s.v. "Italia" in R. S. Conway's
_Italic Dialects_, p. 5). The name seems to be a Graecized form of an
Italic _Vitelia_, from the stem _vitlo_-, "calf" (Lat. _vitulus_, Gr.
[Greek: italos]), and perhaps to have meant "calf-land," "grazing-land";
but the origin is more certain than the meaning; the calf may be one of
the many animals connected with Italian tribes (see HIRPINI, SAMNITES).

Taking the term Italy to comprise the whole peninsula with the northern
region as far as the Alps, we must first distinguish the tribe or tribes
which spoke Indo-European languages from those who did not. To the
latter category it is now possible to refer with certainty only the
Etruscans (for the chronology and limits of their occupation of Italian
soil see ETRURIA: section _Language_). Of all the other tribes that
inhabited Italy down to the classical period, of whose speech there is
any record (whether explicit or in the form of names and glosses), it is
impossible to maintain that any one does not belong to the Indo-European
group. Putting aside the Etruscan, and also the different Greek dialects
of the Greek colonies, like Cumae, Neapolis, Tarentum, and proceeding
from the south to the north, the different languages or dialects, of
whose separate existence at some time between, say, 600 and 200 B.C., we
can be sure, may be enumerated as follows: (1) Sicel, (2) South Oscan
and Oscan, (3) Messapian, (4) North Oscan, (5) Volscian, (6) East Italic
or "Sabellic," (7) Latinian, (8) Sabine, (9) Iguvine or "Umbrian," (10)
Gallic, (11) Ligurian and (12) Venetic.

Between several of these dialects it is probable that closer affinities
exist. (1) It is probable, though not very clearly demonstrated, that
Venetic, East Italic and Messapian are connected together and with the
ancient dialects spoken in Illyria (q.v.), so that these might be
provisionally entitled the Adriatic group, to which the language spoken
by the Eteocretes of the city of Praesos in Crete down to the 4th
century B.C. was perhaps akin. (2) Too little is known of the Sicel
language to make clear more than its Indo-European character. But it
must be reckoned among the languages of Italy because of the
well-supported tradition of the early existence of the Sicels in Latium
(see SICULI). Their possible place in the earlier stratum of
Indo-European population is discussed under SABINI. How far also the
language or languages spoken in Bruttium and at certain points of
Lucania, such as Anxia, differed from the Oscan of Samnium and Campania
there is not enough evidence to show (see BRUTTII). (3) It is doubtful
whether there are any actual inscriptions which can be referred with
certainty to the language of the Ligures, but some other evidence seems
to link them with the -_CO_- peoples, whose early distribution is
discussed under VOLSCI and LIGURIA. (4) It is difficult to point to any
definite evidence by which we may determine the dates of the earliest
appearance of Gallic tribes in the north of Italy. No satisfactory
collection has been made of the Celtic inscriptions of Cisalpine Gaul,
though many are scattered about in different museums. For our present
purpose it is important to note that the archaeological stratification
in deposits like those of Bologna shows that the Gallic period
supervened upon the Etruscan. Until a scientific collection of the local
and personal names of this district has been made, and until the
archaeological evidence is clearly interpreted, it is impossible to go
beyond the region of conjecture as to the tribe or tribes occupying the
valley of the Po before the two invasions. It is clear, however, that
the Celtic and Etruscan elements together occupied the greater part of
the district between the Apennines and the Alps down to its
Romanization, which took place gradually in the course of the 2nd
century B.C. Their linguistic neighbours were Ligurian in the south and
south-west, and the Veneti on the east.

We know from the Roman historians that a large force of Gauls came as
far south as Rome in the year 390 B.C., and that some part of this horde
settled in what was henceforward known as the _Ager Gallicus_, the
easternmost strip of coast in what was later known as Umbria, including
the towns of Caesena, Ravenna and Ariminum. A bilingual inscription
(Gallic and Latin) of the 2nd century B.C. was found as far south as
Tuder, the modern Todi (_Italic Dialects_, ii. 528; Stokes,
_Bezzenberger's Beiträge_, 11, p. 113).

(5) Turning now to the languages which constitute the Italic group in
the narrower sense, (a) Oscan; (b) the dialect of Velitrae, commonly
called Volscian; (c) Latinian (i.e. Latin and its nearest congeners,
like Faliscan); and (d) Umbrian (or, as it may more safely be called,
Iguvine), two principles of classification offer themselves, of which
the first is purely linguistic, the second linguistic and topographical.
Writers on the ethnology of Italy have been hitherto content with the
first, namely, the broad distinction between the dialects which
preserved the Indo-European velars (especially the breathed plosive _q_)
as velars or back-palatals (gutturals), with or without the addition of
a _w_-sound, and the dialects which converted the velars wholly into
labials, for example, Latinian _quis_ contrasted with Oscan, Volscian
and Umbrian _pis_ (see further LATIN LANGUAGE).

This distinction, however, takes us but a little way towards an
historical grouping of the tribes, since the only Latinian dialects of
which, besides Latin, we have inscriptions are Faliscan and Marsian (see
FALISCI, MARSI); although the place-names of the Aequi (q.v.) suggest
that they belong to the same group in this respect. Except, therefore,
for a very small and apparently isolated area in the north of Latium and
south of Etruria, all the tribes of Italy, though their idioms differed
in certain particulars, are left undiscriminated. This presents a strong
contrast to the evidence of tradition, which asserts very strongly (1)
the identity of the Sabines and Samnites; (2) the conquest of an earlier
population by this tribe; and which affords (3) clear evidence of the
identity of the Sabines with the ruling class, i.e. the patricians, at
Rome itself (see SABINI; and ROME: _Early History and Ethnology_).

Some clue to this enigma may perhaps be found in the second principle of
classification proposed by the present writer at the Congresso
Internationale di Scienze Storiche at Rome (_Atti del Congresso_, ii) in
1903. It was on that occasion pointed out that the ethnica or tribal and
oppidan names of communities belonging to the Sabine stock were marked
by the use of the suffix -_NO_- as in _Sabini_; and that there was some
linguistic evidence that this stratum of population overcame an earlier
population, which used, generally, ethnica in -_CO_- or -_TI_- (as in
_Marruci_, _Ardeates_, transformed later into _Marrucini_, _Ardeatini_).

The validity of this distinction and its results are discussed under
SABINI and VOLSCI, but it is well to state here its chief consequences.

1. Latin will be counted the language of the earlier plebeian stratum of
the population of Rome and Latium, probably once spread over a large
area of the peninsula, and akin in some degree to the language or
languages spoken in north Italy before either the Etruscan or the Gallic
invasions began.

2. It would follow, on the other hand, that what is called Oscan
represented the language of the invading Sabines (more correctly
Safines), whose racial affinities would seem to be of a distinctly more
northern cast, and to mark them, like the Dorians or Achaeans in Greece,
as an early wave of the invaders who more than once in later history
have vitally influenced the fortunes of the tempting southern land into
which they forced their way.

3. What is called Volscian, known only from the important inscription of
the town of Velitrae, and what is called Umbrian, known from the famous
Iguvine Tables with a few other records, would be regarded as Safine
dialects, spoken by Safine communities who had become more or less
isolated in the midst of the earlier and possibly partly Etruscanized
populations, the result being that as early as the 4th century B.C.
their language had suffered corruptions which it escaped both in the
Samnite mountains and in the independent and self-contained community of
Rome.

For fuller details the reader must be referred to the separate
articles already mentioned, and to IGUVIUM, PICENUM, OSCA LINGUA,
MARSI, AEQUI, SICULI and LIGURIA. Such archaeological evidence as can
be connected with the linguistic data will there be discussed.
(R. S. C.)

B. CONSOLIDATION OF ITALY

We have seen that the name of Italy was originally applied only to the
southernmost part of the peninsula, and was only gradually extended so
as to comprise the central regions, such as Latium and Campania, which
were designated by writers as late as Thucydides and Aristotle as in
Opicia. The progress of this change cannot be followed in detail, but
there can be little doubt that the extension of the Roman arms, and the
gradual union of the nations of the peninsula under one dominant power,
would contribute to the introduction, or rather would make the necessity
felt, for the use of one general appellation. At first, indeed, the term
was apparently confined to the regions of the central and southern
districts, exclusive of Cisalpine Gaul and the whole tract north of the
Apennines, and this continued to be the official or definite
signification of the name down to the end of the republic. But the
natural limits of Italy are so clearly marked that the name came to be
generally employed as a geographical term at a much earlier period. Thus
we already find Polybius repeatedly applying it in this wider
signification to the whole country, as far as the foot of the Alps; and
it is evident from many passages in the Latin writers that this was the
familiar use of the term in the days of Cicero and Caesar. The official
distinction was, however, still retained. Cisalpine Gaul, including the
whole of northern Italy, still constituted a "province," an appellation
never applied to Italy itself. As such it was assigned to Julius Caesar,
together with Transalpine Gaul, and it was not till he crossed the
Rubicon that he entered Italy in the strict sense of the term.

Augustus was the first who gave a definite administrative organization
to Italy as a whole, and at the same time gave official sanction to that
wider acceptation of the name which had already established itself in
familiar usage, and which has continued to prevail ever since.

The division of Italy into eleven regions, instituted by Augustus for
administrative purposes, which continued in official use till the reign
of Constantine, was based mainly on the territorial divisions previously
existing, and preserved with few exceptions the ancient limits.

The first region comprised Latium (in the more extended sense of the
term, as including the land of the Volsci, Hernici and Aurunci),
together with Campania and the district of the Picentini. It thus
extended from the mouth of the Tiber to that of the Silarus (see
LATIUM).

The second region included Apulia and Calabria (the name by which the
Romans usually designated the district known to the Greeks as Messapia
or Iapygia), together with the land of the Hirpini, which had usually
been considered as a part of Samnium.

The third region contained Lucania and Bruttium; it was bounded on the
west coast by the Silarus, on the east by the Bradanus.

The fourth region comprised all the Samnites (except the Hirpini),
together with the Sabines and the cognate tribes of the Frentani,
Marrucini, Marsi, Peligni, Vestini and Aequiculi. It was separated from
Apulia on the south by the river Tifernus, and from Picenum on the north
by the Matrinus.

The fifth region was composed solely of Picenum, extending along the
coast of the Adriatic from the mouth of the Matrinus to that of the
Aesis, beyond Ancona.

The sixth region was formed by Umbria, in the more extended sense of the
term, as including the Ager Gallicus, along the coast of the Adriatic
from the Aesis to the Ariminus, and separated from Etruria on the west
by the Tiber.

The seventh region consisted of Etruria, which preserved its ancient
limits, extending from the Tiber to the Tyrrhenian Sea, and separated
from Liguria on the north by the river Macra.

The eighth region, termed Gallia Cispadana, comprised the southern
portion of Cisalpine Gaul, and was bounded on the north (as its name
implied) by the river Padus or Po, from above Placentia to its mouth. It
was separated from Etruria and Umbria by the main chain of the
Apennines; and the river Ariminus was substituted for the far-famed
Rubicon as its limit on the Adriatic.

[Illustration: Map of Italy (Ancient)]

The ninth region comprised Liguria, extending along the sea-coast from
the Varus to the Macra, and inland as far as the river Padus, which
constituted its northern boundary from its source in Mount Vesulus to
its confluence with the Trebia just above Placentia.

The tenth region included Venetia from the Padus and Adriatic to the
Alps, to which was annexed the neighbouring peninsula of Istria, and to
the west the territory of the Cenomani, a Gaulish tribe, extending from
the Athesis to the Addua, which had previously been regarded as a part
of Gallia Cisalpina.

The eleventh region, known as Gallia Transpadana, included all the rest
of Cisalpine Gaul from the Padus on the south and the Addua on the east
to the foot of the Alps.

The arrangements thus established by Augustus continued almost unchanged
till the time of Constantine, and formed the basis of all subsequent
administrative divisions until the fall of the Western empire.

Roads.

The mainstay of the Roman military control of Italy first, and of the
whole empire afterwards, was the splendid system of roads. As the
supremacy of Rome extended itself over Italy, the Roman road system grew
step by step, each fresh conquest being marked by the pushing forward of
roads through the heart of the newly-won territory, and the
establishment of fortresses in connexion with them. It was in Italy that
the military value of a network of roads was first appreciated by the
Romans, and the lesson stood them in good stead in the provinces. And it
was for military reasons that from mere cart-tracks they were developed
into permanent highways (T. Ashby, in _Papers of the British School at
Rome_, i. 129). From Rome itself roads radiated in all directions.
Communications with the south-east were mainly provided by the Via Appia
(the "queen of Roman roads," as Statius called it) and the Via Latina,
which met close to Casilinum, at the crossing of the Volturnus, 3 m.
N.W. of Capua, the second city in Italy in the 3rd century B.C., and the
centre of the road system of Campania. Here the Via Appia turned
eastward towards Beneventum, while the Via Popilia continued in a
south-easterly direction through the Campanian plain and thence
southwards through the mountains of Lucania and Bruttii as far as
Rhegium. Coast roads of minor importance as means of through
communication also existed on both sides of the "toe" of the boot. Other
roads ran south from Capua to Cumae, Puteoli (the most important harbour
of Campania), and Neapolis, which could also be reached by a coast road
from Minturnae on the Via Appia. From Beneventum, another important road
centre, the Via Appia itself ran south-east through the mountains past
Venusia to Tarentum on the south-west coast of the "heel," and thence
across Calabria to Brundusium, while Trajan's correction of it,
following an older mule-track, ran north-east through the mountains and
then through the lower ground of Apulia, reaching the coast at Barium.
Both met at Brundusium, the principal port for the East. From Aequum
Tuticum, on the Via Traiana, the Via Herculia ran to the south-east,
crossing the older Via Appia, then south to Potentia and so on to join
the Via Popilia in the centre of Lucania.

The only highroad of importance which left Rome and ran eastwards, the
Via Valeria, was not completed as far as the Adriatic before the time of
Claudius; but on the north and north-west started the main highways
which communicated with central and northern Italy, and with all that
part of the Roman empire which was accessible by land. The Via Salaria,
a very ancient road, with its branch, the Via Caecilia, ran
north-eastwards to the Adriatic coast and so also did the Via Flaminia,
which reached the coast at Fanum Fortunae, and thence followed it to
Ariminum. The road along the east coast from Fanum Fortunae down to
Barium, which connected the terminations of the Via Salaria and Via
Valeria, and of other roads farther south crossing from Campania, had no
special name in ancient times, as far as we know. The Via Flaminia was
the earliest and most important road to the north; and it was soon
extended (in 187 B.C.) by the Via Aemilia running through Bononia as
far as Placentia, in an almost absolutely straight line between the
plain of the Po and the foot of the Apennines. In the same year a road
was constructed over the Apennines from Bononia to Arretium, but it is
difficult to suppose that it was not until later that the Via Cassia was
made, giving a direct communication between Arretium and Rome. The Via
Clodia was an alternative route to the Cassia for the first portion out
of Rome, a branch having been built at the same time from Florentia to
Lucca and Luna. Along the west coast the Via Aurelia ran up to Pisa and
was continued by another Via Aemilia to Genoa. Thence the Via Postumia
led to Dertona, Placentia and Cremona, while the Via Aemilia and the Via
Julia Augusta continued along the coast into Gallia Narbonensis.

The road system of Cisalpine Gaul was mainly conditioned by the rivers
which had to be crossed, and the Alpine passes which had to be
approached.

Cremona, on the north bank of the Po, was an important meeting point of
roads and Postilia (Ostiglia) another; so also was Patavium, farther
east, and Altinum and Aquileia farther east still. Roads, indeed, were
almost as plentiful as railways at the present day in the basin of the
Po.

As to the roads leading out of Italy, from Aquileia roads diverged
northward into Raetia, eastward to Noricum and Pannonia, and southwards
to the Istrian and Dalmatian coasts. Farther west came the roads over
the higher Alpine passes--the Brenner from Verona, the Septimer and the
Splügen from Clavenna (Chiavenna), the Great and the Little St Bernard
from Augusta Praetoria (Aosta), and the Mont Genèvre from Augusta
Taurinorum (Turin).

Westward two short but important roads led on each side of the Tiber to
the great harbour at its mouth; while the coast of Latium was supplied
with a coast road by Septimius Severus. To the south-west the roads were
short and of little importance.

On ancient Italian geography in general see articles in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Realencyclopädie_ (1899, sqq.); _Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum_
(Berlin, 1862 sqq.); G. Strafforello, _Geografia dell' Italia_ (Turin,
1890-1892); H. Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_ (Berlin, 1883-1902);
also references in articles ROME, LATIUM, &c. (T. As.)

C. FROM 476 to 1796

The year 476 opened a new age for the Italian people. Odoacer, a chief
of the Herulians, deposed Romulus, the last Augustus of the West, and
placed the peninsula beneath the titular sway of the Byzantine emperors.
At Pavia the barbarian conquerors of Italy proclaimed him king, and he
received from Zeno the dignity of Roman patrician. Thus began that
system of mixed government, Teutonic and Roman, which, in the absence of
a national monarch, impressed the institutions of new Italy from the
earliest date with dualism. The same revolution vested supreme authority
in a non-resident and inefficient autocrat, whose title gave him the
right to interfere in Italian affairs, but who lacked the power and will
to rule the people for his own or their advantage. Odoacer inaugurated
that long series of foreign rulers--Greeks, Franks, Germans, Spaniards
and Austrians--who have successively contributed to the misgovernment of
Italy from distant seats of empire.

I. _Gothic and Lombard Kingdoms._--In 488 Theodoric, king of the East
Goths, received commission from the Greek emperor, Zeno, to undertake
the affairs of Italy. He defeated Odoacer, drove him to Ravenna,
besieged him there, and in 493 completed the conquest of the country by
murdering the Herulian chief with his own hand. Theodoric respected the
Roman institutions which he found in Italy, held the Eternal City
sacred, and governed by ministers chosen from the Roman population. He
settled at Ravenna, which had been the capital of Italy since the days
of Honorius, and which still testifies by its monuments to the Gothic
chieftain's Romanizing policy. Those who believe that the Italians would
have gained strength by unification in a single monarchy must regret
that this Gothic kingdom lacked the elements of stability. The Goths,
except in the valley of the Po, resembled an army of occupation rather
than a people numerous enough to blend with the Italic stock. Though
their rule was favourable to the Romans, they were Arians; and
religious differences, combined with the pride and jealousies of a
nation accustomed to imperial honours, rendered the inhabitants of Italy
eager to throw off their yoke. When, therefore, Justinian undertook the
reconquest of Italy, his generals, Belisarius and Narses, were supported
by the south. The struggle of the Greeks and the Goths was carried on
for fourteen years, between 539 and 553, when Teias, the last Gothic
king, was finally defeated in a bloody battle near Vesuvius. At its
close the provinces of Italy were placed beneath Greek dukes, controlled
by a governor-general, entitled exarch, who ruled in the Byzantine
emperor's name at Ravenna.

The Lombards.

This new settlement lasted but a few years. Narses had employed Lombard
auxiliaries in his campaigns against the Goths; and when he was recalled
by an insulting message from the empress in 565, he is said to have
invited this fiercest and rudest of the Teutonic clans to seize the
spoils of Italy. Be this as it may, the Lombards, their ranks swelled by
the Gepidae, whom they had lately conquered, and by the wrecks of other
barbarian tribes, passed southward under their king Alboin in 568. The
Herulian invaders had been but a band of adventurers; the Goths were an
army; the Lombards, far more formidable, were a nation in movement.
Pavia offered stubborn resistance; but after a three years' siege it was
taken, and Alboin made it the capital of his new kingdom.

In order to understand the future history of Italy, it is necessary to
form a clear conception of the method pursued by the Lombards in their
conquest. Penetrating the peninsula, and advancing like a glacier or
half-liquid stream of mud, they occupied the valley of the Po, and moved
slowly downward through the centre of the country. Numerous as they were
compared with their Gothic predecessors, they had not strength or
multitude enough to occupy the whole peninsula. Venice, which since the
days of Attila had offered an asylum to Roman refugees from the northern
cities, was left untouched. So was Genoa with its Riviera. Ravenna,
entrenched within her lagoons, remained a Greek city. Rome, protected by
invincible prestige, escaped. The sea-coast cities of the south, and the
islands, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, preserved their independence.
Thus the Lombards neither occupied the extremities nor subjugated the
brain-centre of the country. The strength of Alboin's kingdom was in the
north; his capital, Pavia. As his people pressed southward, they omitted
to possess themselves of the coasts; and what was worse for the future
of these conquerors, the original impetus of the invasion was checked by
the untimely murder of Alboin in 573. After this event, the
semi-independent chiefs of the Lombard tribe, who borrowed the title of
dukes from their Roman predecessors, seem to have been contented with
consolidating their power in the districts each had occupied. The
duchies of Spoleto in the centre, and of Benevento in the south,
inserted wedge-like into the middle of the peninsula, and enclosing
independent Rome, were but loosely united to the kingdom at Pavia. Italy
was broken up into districts, each offering points for attack from
without, and fostering the seeds of internal revolution. Three separate
capitals must be discriminated--Pavia, the seat of the new Lombard
kingdom; Ravenna, the garrison city of the Byzantine emperor; and Rome,
the rallying point of the old nation, where the successor of St Peter
was already beginning to assume that national protectorate which proved
so influential in the future.

It is not necessary to write the history of the Lombard kingdom in
detail. Suffice it to say that the rule of the Lombards proved at first
far more oppressive to the native population, and was less intelligent
of their old customs, than that of the Goths had been. Wherever the
Lombards had the upper hand, they placed the country under military
rule, resembling in its general character what we now know as the feudal
system. Though there is reason to suppose that the Roman laws were still
administered within the cities, yet the Lombard code was that of the
kingdom; and the Lombards being Arians, they added the oppression of
religious intolerance to that of martial despotism and barbarous
cupidity. The Italians were reduced to the last extremity when Gregory
the Great (590-604), having strengthened his position by diplomatic
relations with the duchy of Spoleto, and brought about the conversion of
the Lombards to orthodoxy, raised the cause of the remaining Roman
population throughout Italy. The fruit of his policy, which made of Rome
a counterpoise against the effete empire of the Greeks upon the one hand
and against the pressure of the feudal kingdom on the other, was seen in
the succeeding century. When Leo the Isaurian published his decrees
against the worship of images in 726, Gregory II. allied himself with
Liudprand, the Lombard king, threw off allegiance to Byzantium, and
established the autonomy of Rome. This pope initiated the dangerous
policy of playing one hostile force off against another with a view to
securing independence. He used the Lombards in his struggle with the
Greeks, leaving to his successors the duty of checking these unnatural
allies. This was accomplished by calling the Franks in against the
Lombards. Liudprand pressed hard, not only upon the Greek dominions of
the exarchate, but also upon Rome. His successors, Rachis and Aistolf,
attempted to follow the same game of conquest. But the popes, Gregory
III., Zachary and Stephen II., determining at any cost to espouse the
national cause and to aggrandize their own office, continued to rely
upon the Franks. Pippin twice crossed the Alps, and forced Aistolf to
relinquish his acquisitions, including Ravenna, Pentapolis, the coast
towns of Romagna and some cities in the duchy of Spoleto. These he
handed over to the pope of Rome. This donation of Pippin in 756
confirmed the papal see in the protectorate of the Italic party, and
conferred upon it sovereign rights. The virtual outcome of the contest
carried on by Rome since the year 726 with Byzantium and Pavia was to
place the popes in the position held by the Greek exarch, and to confirm
the limitation of the Lombard kingdom. We must, however, be cautious to
remember that the south of Italy was comparatively unaffected. The dukes
of the Greek empire and the Lombard dukes of Benevento, together with a
few autonomous commercial cities, still divided Italy below the Campagna
of Rome (see LOMBARDS).

Charles the Great and the Carolingians.

II. _Frankish Emperors._--The Franko-Papal alliance, which conferred a
crown on Pippin and sovereign rights upon the see of Rome, held within
itself that ideal of mutually supporting papacy and empire which
exercised so powerful an influence in medieval history. When Charles the
Great (Charlemagne) deposed his father-in-law Desiderius, the last
Lombard king, in 774, and when he received the circlet of the empire
from Leo III. at Rome in 800, he did but complete and ratify the compact
offered to his grandfather, Charles Martel, by Gregory III. The
relations between the new emperor and the pope were ill defined; and
this proved the source of infinite disasters to Italy and Europe in the
sequel. But for the moment each seemed necessary to the other; and that
sufficed. Charles took possession of the kingdom of Italy, as limited by
Pippin's settlement. The pope was confirmed in his rectorship of the
cities ceded by Aistolf, with the further understanding, tacit rather
than expressed, that, even as he had wrung these provinces for the
Italic people from both Greeks and Lombards, so in the future he might
claim the protectorate of such portions of Italy, external to the
kingdom, as he should be able to acquire. This, at any rate, seems to be
the meaning of that obscure re-settlement of the peninsula which Charles
effected. The kingdom of Italy, transmitted on his death by Charles the
Great, and afterwards confirmed to his grandson Lothar by the peace of
Verdun in 843, stretched from the Alps to Terracina. The duchy of
Benevento remained tributary, but independent. The cities of Gaeta and
Naples, Sicily and the so-called Theme of Lombardy in South Apulia and
Calabria, still recognized the Byzantine emperor. Venice stood aloof,
professing a nominal allegiance to the East. The parcels into which the
Lombards had divided the peninsula remained thus virtually unaltered,
except for the new authority acquired by the see of Rome.

Internally Charles left the affairs of the Italian kingdom much as he
found them, except that he appears to have pursued the policy of
breaking up the larger fiefs of the Lombards, substituting counts for
their dukes, and adding to the privileges of the bishops. We may reckon
these measures among the earliest advantages extended to the cities,
which still contained the bulk of the old Roman population, and which
were destined to intervene with decisive effect two centuries later in
Italian history. It should also here be noticed that the changes
introduced into the holding of the fiefs, whether by altering their
boundaries or substituting Frankish for Lombard vassals, were chief
among the causes why the feudal system took no permanent hold in Italy.
Feudalism was not at any time a national institution. The hierarchy of
dukes and marquises and counts consisted of foreign soldiers imposed on
the indigenous inhabitants; and the rapid succession of conquerors,
Lombards, Franks and Germans following each other at no long interval,
and each endeavouring to weaken the remaining strength of his
predecessor, prevented this alien hierarchy from acquiring fixity by
permanence of tenure. Among the many miseries inflicted upon Italy by
the frequent changes of her northern rulers, this at least may be
reckoned a blessing.

Frankish and Italian kings.

The Italians acknowledged eight kings of the house of Charles the Great,
ending in Charles the Fat, who was deposed in 888. After them followed
ten sovereigns, some of whom have been misnamed Italians by writers too
eager to catch at any resemblance of national glory for a people passive
in the hands of foreign masters. The truth is that no period in Italian
history was less really glorious than that which came to a close in 961
by Berengar II.'s cession of his rights to Otto the Great. It was a
period marked in the first place by the conquests of the Saracens, who
began to occupy Sicily early in the 9th century, overran Calabria and
Apulia, took Bari and threatened Rome. In the second place it was marked
by a restoration of the Greeks to power. In 890 they established
themselves again at Bari, and ruled the Theme of Lombardy by means of an
officer entitled Catapan. In the third place it was marked by a decline
of good government in Rome. Early in the 10th century the papacy fell
into the hands of a noble family, known eventually as the counts of
Tusculum, who almost succeeded in rendering the office hereditary, and
in uniting the civil and ecclesiastical functions of the city under a
single member of their house. It is not necessary to relate the scandals
of Marozia's and Theodora's female reign, the infamies of John XII. or
the intrigues which tended to convert Rome into a duchy. The most
important fact for the historian of Italy to notice is that during this
time the popes abandoned, not only their high duties as chiefs of
Christendom, but also their protectorate of Italian liberties. A fourth
humiliating episode in this period was the invasion of the Magyar
barbarians, who overran the north of Italy, and reduced its fairest
provinces to the condition of a wilderness. Anarchy and misery are
indeed the main features of that long space of time which elapsed
between the death of Charles the Great and the descent of Otto. Through
the almost impenetrable darkness and confusion we only discern this
much, that Italy was powerless to constitute herself a nation.

The discords which followed on the break-up of the Carolingian power,
and the weakness of the so-called Italian emperors, who were unable to
control the feudatories (marquises of Ivrea and Tuscany, dukes of Friuli
and Spoleto), from whose ranks they sprang, exposed Italy to
ever-increasing misrule. The country by this time had become thickly
covered over with castles, the seats of greater or lesser nobles, all of
whom were eager to detach themselves from strict allegiance to the
"Regno." The cities, exposed to pillage by Huns in the north and
Saracens in the south, and ravaged on the coast by Norse pirates,
asserted their right to enclose themselves with walls, and taught their
burghers the use of arms. Within the circuit of their ramparts, the
bishops already began to exercise authority in rivalry with the counts,
to whom, since the days of Theodoric, had been entrusted the government
of the Italian burghs. Agreeably to feudal customs, these nobles, as
they grew in power, retired from the town, and built themselves
fortresses on points of vantage in the neighbourhood. Thus the titular
king of Italy found himself simultaneously at war with those great
vassals who had chosen him from their own class, with the turbulent
factions of the Roman aristocracy, with unruly bishops in the growing
cities and with the multitude of minor counts and barons who occupied
the open lands, and who changed sides according to the interests of the
moment. The last king of the quasi-Italian succession, Berengar II.,
marquis of Ivrea (951-961), made a vigorous effort to restore the
authority of the regno; and had he succeeded, it is not impossible that
now at the last moment Italy might have become an independent nation.
But this attempt at unification was reckoned to Berengar for a crime. He
only won the hatred of all classes, and was represented by the obscure
annalists of that period as an oppressor of the church and a remorseless
tyrant. In Italy, divided between feudal nobles and almost hereditary
ecclesiastics, of foreign blood and alien sympathies, there was no
national feeling. Berengar stood alone against a multitude, unanimous in
their intolerance of discipline. His predecessor in the kingdom, Lothar,
had left a young and beautiful widow, Adelheid. Berengar imprisoned her
upon the Lake of Como, and threatened her with a forced marriage to his
son Adalbert. She escaped to the castle of Canossa, where the great
count of Tuscany espoused her cause, and appealed in her behalf to Otto
the Saxon. The king of Germany descended into Italy, and took Adelheid
in marriage. After this episode Berengar was more discredited and
impotent than ever. In the extremity of his fortunes he had recourse
himself to Otto, making a formal cession of the Italian kingdom, in his
own name and that of his son Adalbert, to the Saxon as his overlord. By
this slender tie the crown of Italy was joined to that of Germany; and
the formal right of the elected king of Germany to be considered king of
Italy and emperor may be held to have accrued from this epoch.

Saxon and Franconian emperors.

III. _The German Emperors._--Berengar gained nothing by his act of
obedience to Otto. The great Italian nobles, in their turn, appealed to
Germany. Otto entered Lombardy in 961, deposed Berengar, assumed the
crown in San Ambrogio at Milan, and in 962 was proclaimed emperor by
John XII. at Rome. Henceforward Italy changed masters according as one
or other of the German families assumed supremacy beyond the Alps. It is
one of the strongest instances furnished by history of the fascination
exercised by an idea that the Italians themselves should have grown to
glory in this dependence of their nation upon Caesars who had nothing
but a name in common with the Roman Imperator of the past.

The first thing we have to notice in this revolution which placed Otto
the Great upon the imperial throne is that the Italian kingdom, founded
by the Lombards, recognized by the Franks and recently claimed by
eminent Italian feudatories, virtually ceased to exist. It was merged in
the German kingdom; and, since for the German princes Germany was of
necessity their first care, Italy from this time forward began to be
left more and more to herself. The central authority of Pavia had always
been weak; the regno had proved insufficient to combine the nation. But
now even that shadow of union disappeared, and the Italians were
abandoned to the slowly working influences which tended to divide them
into separate states. The most brilliant period of their chequered
history, the period which includes the rise of communes, the exchange of
municipal liberty for despotism and the gradual discrimination of the
five great powers (Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papacy and the kingdom
of Naples), now begins. Among the centrifugal forces which determined
the future of the Italian race must be reckoned, first and foremost, the
new spirit of municipal independence. We have seen how the cities
enclosed themselves with walls, and how the bishops defined their
authority against that of the counts. Otto encouraged this revolution by
placing the enclosures of the chief burghs beyond the jurisdiction of
the counts. Within those precincts the bishops and the citizens were
independent of all feudal masters but the emperor. He further broke the
power of the great vassals by redivisions of their feuds, and by the
creation of new marches which he assigned to his German followers. In
this way, owing to the dislocation of the ancient aristocracy, to the
enlarged jurisdiction of a power so democratic as the episcopate, and to
the increased privileges of the burghs, feudalism received a powerful
check in Italy. The Italian people, that people which gave to the world
the commerce and the arts of Florence, was not indeed as yet apparent.
But the conditions under which it could arise, casting from itself all
foreign and feudal trammels, recognizing its true past in ancient Rome,
and reconstructing a civility out of the ruins of those glorious
memories, were now at last granted. The nobles from this time forward
retired into the country and the mountains, fortified themselves in
strong places outside the cities, and gave their best attention to
fostering the rural population. Within the cities and upon the open
lands the Italians, in this and the next century, doubled, trebled and
quadrupled their numbers. A race was formed strong enough to keep the
empire itself in check, strong enough, except for its own internecine
contests, to have formed a nation equal to its happier neighbours.

The recent scandals of the papacy induced Otto to deprive the Romans of
their right to elect popes. But when he died in 973, his son Otto II.
(married to Theophano of the imperial Byzantine house) and his grandson,
Otto III., who descended into Italy in 996, found that the affairs of
Rome and of the southern provinces were more than even their imperial
powers could cope with. The faction of the counts of Tusculum raised its
head from time to time in the Eternal City, and Rome still claimed to be
a commonwealth. Otto III.'s untimely death in 1002 introduced new
discords. Rome fell once more into the hands of her nobles. The Lombards
chose Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, for king, and Pavia supported his claims
against those of Henry of Bavaria, who had been elected in Germany.
Milan sided with Henry; and this is perhaps the first eminent instance
of cities being reckoned powerful allies in the Italian disputes of
sovereigns. It is also the first instance of that bitter feud between
the two great capitals of Lombardy, a feud rooted in ancient antipathies
between the Roman population of Mediolanum and the Lombard garrison of
Alboin's successors, which proved so disastrous to the national cause.
Ardoin retired to a monastery, where he died in 1015. Henry nearly
destroyed Pavia, was crowned in Rome and died in 1024. After this event
Heribert, the archbishop of Milan, invited Conrad, the Franconian king
of Germany, into Italy, and crowned him with the iron crown of the
kingdom.

Heribert and the Lombard burghs.

The intervention of this man, Heribert, compels us to turn a closer
glance upon the cities of North Italy. It is here, at the present epoch
and for the next two centuries, that the pith and nerve of the Italian
nation must be sought; and among the burghs of Lombardy, Milan, the
eldest daughter of ancient Rome, assumes the lead. In Milan we hear for
the first time the word _Comune_. In Milan the citizens first form
themselves into a _Parlamento_. In Milan the archbishop organizes the
hitherto voiceless, defenceless population into a community capable of
expressing its needs, and an army ready to maintain its rights. To
Heribert is attributed the invention of the _Carroccio_, which played so
singular and important a part in the warfare of Italian cities. A huge
car drawn by oxen, bearing the standard of the burgh, and carrying an
altar with the host, this carroccio, like the ark of the Israelites,
formed a rallying point in battle, and reminded the armed artisans that
they had a city and a church to fight for. That Heribert's device proved
effectual in raising the spirit of his burghers, and consolidating them
into a formidable band of warriors, is shown by the fact that it was
speedily adopted in all the free cities. It must not, however, be
supposed that at this epoch the liberties of the burghs were fully
developed. The mass of the people remained unrepresented in the
government; and even if the consuls existed in the days of Heribert,
they were but humble legal officers, transacting business for their
constituents in the courts of the bishop and his viscount. It still
needed nearly a century of struggle to render the burghers independent
of lordship, with a fully organized commune, self-governed in its
several assemblies. While making these reservations, it is at the same
time right to observe that certain Italian communities were more
advanced upon the path of independence than others. This is specially
the case with the maritime ports. Not to mention Venice, which has not
yet entered the Italian community, and remains a Greek free city, Genoa
and Pisa were rapidly rising into ill-defined autonomy. Their command of
fleets gave them incontestable advantages, as when, for instance, Otto
II. employed the Pisans in 980 against the Greeks in Lower Italy, and
the Pisans and Genoese together attacked the Saracens of Sardinia in
1017. Still, speaking generally, the age of independence for the burghs
had only begun when Heribert from Milan undertook the earliest
organization of a force that was to become paramount in peace and war.

Rome.

Next to Milan, and from the point of view of general politics even more
than Milan, Rome now claims attention. The destinies of Italy depended
upon the character which the see of St Peter should assume. Even the
liberties of her republics in the north hung on the issue of a contest
which in the 11th and 12th centuries shook Europe to its farthest
boundaries. So fatally were the internal affairs of that magnificent but
unhappy country bound up with concerns which brought the forces of the
civilized world into play. Her ancient prestige, her geographical
position and the intellectual primacy of her most noble children
rendered Italy the battleground of principles that set all Christendom
in motion, and by the clash of which she found herself for ever
afterwards divided. During the reign of Conrad II., the party of the
counts of Tusculum revived in Rome; and Crescentius, claiming the title
of consul in the imperial city, sought once more to control the election
of the popes. When Henry III., the son of Conrad, entered Italy in 1046,
he found three popes in Rome. These he abolished, and, taking the
appointment into his own hands, gave German bishops to the see. The
policy thus initiated upon the precedent laid down by Otto the Great was
a remedy for pressing evils. It saved Rome from becoming a duchy in the
hands of the Tusculum house. But it neither raised the prestige of the
papacy, nor could it satisfy the Italians, who rightly regarded the
Roman see as theirs. These German popes were short-lived and
inefficient. Their appointment, according to notions which defined
themselves within the church at this epoch, was simoniacal; and during
the long minority of Henry IV., who succeeded his father in 1056, the
terrible Tuscan monk, Hildebrand of Soana, forged weapons which he used
with deadly effect against the presumption of the empire. The condition
of the church seemed desperate, unless it could be purged of crying
scandals--of the subjection of the papacy to the great Roman nobles, of
its subordination to the German emperor and of its internal
demoralization. It was Hildebrand's policy throughout three papacies,
during which he controlled the counsels of the Vatican, and before he
himself assumed the tiara, to prepare the mind of Italy and Europe for a
mighty change. His programme included these three points: (1) the
celibacy of the clergy; (2) the abolition of ecclesiastical appointments
made by the secular authority; (3) the vesting of the papal election in
the hands of the Roman clergy and people, presided over by the curia of
cardinals. How Hildebrand paved the way for these reforms during the
pontificates of Nicholas II. and Alexander II., how he succeeded in
raising the papal office from the depths of degradation and subjection
to illimitable sway over the minds of men in Europe, and how his warfare
with the empire established on a solid basis the still doubtful
independence of the Italian burghs, renewing the long neglected
protectorate of the Italian race, and bequeathing to his successors a
national policy which had been forgotten by the popes since his great
predecessor Gregory II., forms a chapter in European history which must
now be interrupted. We have to follow the fortunes of unexpected allies,
upon whom in no small measure his success depended.

Norman conquest of the Two Sicilies.

In order to maintain some thread of continuity through the perplexed and
tangled vicissitudes of the Italian race, it has been necessary to
disregard those provinces which did not immediately contribute to the
formation of its history. For this reason we have left the whole of the
south up to the present point unnoticed. Sicily in the hands of the
Mussulmans, the Theme of Lombardy abandoned to the weak suzerainty of
the Greek catapans, the Lombard duchy of Benevento slowly falling to
pieces and the maritime republics of Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi extending
their influence by commerce in the Mediterranean, were in effect
detached from the Italian regno, beyond the jurisidiction of Rome,
included in no parcel of Italy proper. But now the moment had arrived
when this vast group of provinces, forming the future kingdom of the Two
Sicilies, was about to enter definitely and decisively within the bounds
of the Italian community. Some Norman adventurers, on pilgrimage to St
Michael's shrine on Monte Gargano, lent their swords in 1017 to the
Lombard cities of Apulia against the Greeks. Twelve years later we find
the Normans settled at Aversa under their Count Rainulf. From this
station as a centre the little band of adventurers, playing the Greeks
off against the Lombards, and the Lombards against the Greeks, spread
their power in all directions, until they made themselves the most
considerable force in southern Italy. William of Hauteville was
proclaimed count of Apulia. His half-brother, Robert Wiskard or
Guiscard, after defeating the papal troops at Civitella in 1053,
received from Leo IX. the investiture of all present and future
conquests in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, which he agreed to hold as
fiefs of the Holy See. Nicholas II. ratified this grant, and confirmed
the title of count. Having consolidated their possessions on the
mainland, the Normans, under Robert Guiscard's brother, the great Count
Roger, undertook the conquest of Sicily in 1060. After a prolonged
struggle of thirty years, they wrested the whole island from the
Saracens; and Roger, dying in 1101, bequeathed to his son Roger a
kingdom in Calabria and Sicily second to none in Europe for wealth and
magnificence. This, while the elder branch of the Hauteville family
still held the title and domains of the Apulian duchy; but in 1127, upon
the death of his cousin Duke William, Roger united the whole of the
future realm. In 1130 he assumed the style of king of Sicily, inscribing
upon his sword the famous hexameter--

"Appulus et Calaber Siculus mihi servit et Afer."

This Norman conquest of the two Sicilies forms the most romantic episode
in medieval Italian history. By the consolidation of Apulia, Calabria
and Sicily into a powerful kingdom, by checking the growth of the
maritime republics and by recognizing the over-lordship of the papal
see, the house of Hauteville influenced the destinies of Italy with more
effect than any of the princes who had previously dealt with any portion
of the peninsula. Their kingdom, though Naples was from time to time
separated from Sicily, never quite lost the cohesion they had given it;
and all the disturbances of equilibrium in Italy were due in after days
to papal manipulation of the rights acquired by Robert Guiscard's act of
homage. The southern regno, in the hands of the popes, proved an
insurmountable obstacle to the unification of Italy, led to French
interference in Italian affairs, introduced the Spaniard and maintained
in those rich southern provinces the reality of feudal sovereignty long
after this alien element had been eliminated from the rest of Italy (see
NORMANS; SICILY: _History_).

War of investitures.

For the sake of clearness, we have anticipated the course of events by
nearly a century. We must now return to the date of Hildebrand's
elevation to the papacy in 1073, when he chose the memorable name of
Gregory VII. In the next year after his election Hildebrand convened a
council, and passed measures enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. In
1075 he caused the investiture of ecclesiastical dignitaries by secular
potentates of any degree to be condemned. These two reforms, striking at
the most cherished privileges and most deeply-rooted self-indulgences of
the aristocratic caste in Europe, inflamed the bitterest hostility.
Henry IV., king of Germany, but not crowned emperor, convened a diet in
the following year at Worms, where Gregory was deposed and
excommunicated. The pope followed with a counter excommunication, far
more formidable, releasing the king's subjects from their oaths of
allegiance. War was thus declared between the two chiefs of western
Christendom, that war of investitures which out-lasted the lives of both
Gregory and Henry, and was not terminated till the year 1122. The
dramatic episodes of this struggle are too well known to be enlarged
upon. In his single-handed duel with the strength of Germany, Gregory
received material assistance from the Countess Matilda of Tuscany. She
was the last heiress of the great house of Canossa, whose fiefs
stretched from Mantua across Lombardy, passed the Apennines, included
the Tuscan plains, and embraced a portion of the duchy of Spoleto. It
was in her castle of Canossa that Henry IV. performed his three days'
penance in the winter of 1077; and there she made the cession of her
vast domains to the church. That cession, renewed after the death of
Gregory to his successors, conferred upon the popes indefinite rights,
of which they afterwards availed themselves in the consolidation of
their temporal power. Matilda died in the year 1115. Gregory had passed
before her from the scene of his contest, an exile at Salerno, whither
Robert Guiscard carried him in 1084 from the anarchy of rebellious Rome.
With unbroken spirit, though the objects of his life were unattained,
though Italy and Europe had been thrown into confusion, and the issue of
the conflict was still doubtful, Gregory expired in 1085 with these
words on his lips: "I loved justice, I hated iniquity, therefore in
banishment I die."

The greatest of the popes thus breathed his last; but the new spirit he
had communicated to the papacy was not destined to expire with him.
Gregory's immediate successors, Victor III., Urban II. and Paschal II.,
carried on his struggle with Henry IV. and his imperial antipopes,
encouraging the emperor's son to rebel against him, and stirring up
Europe for the first crusade. When Henry IV. died, his own son's
prisoner, in 1106, Henry V. crossed the Alps, entered Rome, wrung the
imperial coronation from Paschal II. and compelled the pope to grant his
claims on the investitures. Scarcely had he returned to Germany when the
Lateran disavowed all that the pope had done, on the score that it had
been extorted by force. France sided with the church. Germany rejected
the bull of investiture. A new descent into Italy, a new seizure of
Rome, proved of no avail. The emperor's real weakness was in Germany,
where his subjects openly expressed their discontent. He at last
abandoned the contest which had distracted Europe. By the concordat of
Worms, 1122, the emperor surrendered the right of investiture by ring
and staff, and granted the right of election to the clergy. The popes
were henceforth to be chosen by the cardinals, the bishops by the
chapters subject to the pope's approval. On the other hand the pope
ceded to the emperor the right of investiture by the sceptre. But the
main issue of the struggle was not in these details of ecclesiastical
government; principles had been at stake far deeper and more widely
reaching. The respective relations of pope and emperor, ill-defined in
the compact between Charles the Great and Leo III., were brought in
question, and the two chief potentates of Christendom, no longer tacitly
concordant, stood against each other in irreconcilable rivalry. Upon
this point, though the battle seemed to be a drawn one, the popes were
really victors. They remained independent of the emperor, but the
emperor had still to seek the crown at their hands. The pretensions of
Otto the Great and Henry III. to make popes were gone for ever (see
PAPACY; INVESTITURE).

Rise of free cities.

IV. _Age of the Communes._--The final gainers, however, by the war of
investitures were the Italians. In the first place, from this time
forward, owing to the election of popes by the Roman curia, the Holy See
remained in the hands of Italians; and this, though it was by no means
an unmixed good, was a great glory to the nation. In the next place, the
antagonism of the popes to the emperors, which became hereditary in the
Holy College, forced the former to assume the protectorate of the
national cause. But by far the greatest profit the Italians reaped was
the emancipation of their burghs. During the forty-seven years' war,
when pope and emperor were respectively bidding for their alliance, and
offering concessions to secure their support, the communes grew in
self-reliance, strength and liberty. As the bishops had helped to free
them from subservience to their feudal masters, so the war of
investitures relieved them of dependence on their bishops. The age of
real autonomy, signalized by the supremacy of consuls in the cities, had
arrived.

In the republics, as we begin to know them after the war of
investitures, government was carried on by officers called consuls,
varying in number according to custom and according to the division of
the town into districts. These magistrates, as we have already seen,
were originally appointed to control and protect the humbler classes.
But, in proportion as the people gained more power in the field the
consuls rose into importance, superseded the bishops and began to
represent the city in transactions with its neighbours. Popes and
emperors who needed the assistance of a city, had to seek it from the
consuls, and thus these officers gradually converted an obscure and
indefinite authority into what resembles the presidency of a
commonwealth. They were supported by a deliberative assembly, called
_credenza_, chosen from the more distinguished citizens. In addition to
this privy council, we find a _gran consiglio_, consisting of the
burghers who had established the right to interfere immediately in
public affairs, and a still larger assembly called _parlamento_, which
included the whole adult population. Though the institutions of the
communes varied in different localities, this is the type to which they
all approximated. It will be perceived that the type was rather
oligarchical than strictly democratic. Between the parlamento and the
consuls with their privy council, or credenza, was interposed the gran
consiglio of privileged burghers. These formed the aristocracy of the
town, who by their wealth and birth held its affairs within their
custody. There is good reason to believe that, when the term _popolo_
occurs, it refers to this body and not to the whole mass of the
population. The _comune_ included the entire city--bishop, consuls,
oligarchy, councils, handicraftsmen, proletariate. The _popolo_ was the
governing or upper class. It was almost inevitable in the transition
from feudalism to democracy that this intermediate ground should be
traversed; and the peculiar Italian phrases, _primo popolo_, _secondo
popolo_, _terzo popolo_, and so forth, indicate successive changes,
whereby the oligarchy passed from one stage to another in its progress
toward absorption in democracy or tyranny.

Under their consuls the Italian burghs rose to a great height of
prosperity and splendour. Pisa built her Duomo. Milan undertook the
irrigation works which enriched the soil of Lombardy for ever. Massive
walls, substantial edifices, commodious seaports, good roads, were the
benefits conferred by this new government on Italy. It is also to be
noticed that the people now began to be conscious of their past. They
recognized the fact that their blood was Latin as distinguished from
Teutonic, and that they must look to ancient Rome for those memories
which constitute a people's nationality. At this epoch the study of
Roman law received a new impulse, and this is the real meaning of the
legend that Pisa, glorious through her consuls, brought the pandects in
a single codex from Amalfi. The very name consul, no less than the
Romanizing character of the best architecture of the time, points to the
same revival of antiquity.

Republic in Rome.

The rise of the Lombard communes produced a sympathetic revolution in
Rome, which deserves to be mentioned in this place. A monk, named Arnold
of Brescia, animated with the spirit of the Milanese, stirred up the
Romans to shake off the temporal sway of their bishop. He attempted, in
fact, upon a grand scale what was being slowly and quietly effected in
the northern cities. Rome, ever mindful of her unique past, listened to
Arnold's preaching. A senate was established, and the republic was
proclaimed. The title of patrician was revived and offered to Conrad,
king of Italy, but not crowned emperor. Conrad refused it, and the
Romans conferred it upon one of their own nobles. Though these
institutions borrowed high-sounding titles from antiquity, they were in
reality imitations of the Lombard civic system. The patrician stood for
the consuls. The senate, composed of nobles, represented the credenza
and the gran consiglio. The pope was unable to check this revolution,
which is now chiefly interesting as further proof of the insurgence of
the Latin as against the feudal elements in Italy at this period (see
ROME: _History_).

Municipal wars.

Though the communes gained so much by the war of investitures, the
division of the country between the pope's and emperor's parties was no
small price to pay for independence. It inflicted upon Italy the
ineradicable curse of party-warfare, setting city against city, house
against house, and rendering concordant action for a national end
impossible. No sooner had the compromise of the investitures been
concluded than it was manifest that the burghers of the new enfranchised
communes were resolved to turn their arms against each other. We seek in
vain an obvious motive for each separate quarrel. All we know for
certain is that, at this epoch, Rome attempts to ruin Tivoli, and Venice
Pisa; Milan fights with Cremona, Cremona with Crema, Pavia with Verona,
Verona with Padua, Piacenza with Parma, Modena and Reggio with Bologna,
Bologna and Faenza with Ravenna and Imola, Florence and Pisa with Lucca
and Siena, and so on through the whole list of cities. The nearer the
neighbours, the more rancorous and internecine is the strife; and, as in
all cases where animosity is deadly and no grave local causes of dispute
are apparent, we are bound to conclude that some deeply-seated permanent
uneasiness goaded these fast growing communities into rivalry. Italy
was, in fact, too small for her children. As the towns expanded, they
perceived that they must mutually exclude each other. They fought for
bare existence, for primacy in commerce, for the command of seaports,
for the keys of mountain passes, for rivers, roads and all the avenues
of wealth and plenty. The pope's cause and the emperor's cause were of
comparatively little moment to Italian burghers; and the names of Guelph
and Ghibelline, which before long began to be heard in every street, on
every market-place, had no meaning for them. These watchwords are said
to have arisen in Germany during the disputed succession of the empire
between 1135 and 1152, when the Welfs of Bavaria opposed the Swabian
princes of Waiblingen origin. But in Italy, although they were severally
identified with the papal and imperial parties, they really served as
symbols for jealousies which altered in complexion from time to time and
place to place, expressing more than antagonistic political principles,
and involving differences vital enough to split the social fabric to its
foundation.

Swabian emperors.

Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard cities.

Under the imperial rule of Lothar the Saxon (1125-1137) and Conrad the
Swabian (1138-1152), these civil wars increased in violence owing to the
absence of authority. Neither Lothar nor Conrad was strong at home; the
former had no influence in Italy, and the latter never entered Italy at
all. But when Conrad died, the electors chose his nephew Frederick,
surnamed Barbarossa, who united the rival honours of Welf and
Waiblingen, to succeed him; and it was soon obvious that the empire had
a master powerful of brain and firm of will. Frederick immediately
determined to reassert the imperial rights in his southern provinces,
and to check the warfare of the burghs. When he first crossed the Alps
in 1154, Lombardy was, roughly speaking, divided between two parties,
the one headed by Pavia professing loyalty to the empire, the other
headed by Milan ready to oppose its claims. The municipal animosities of
the last quarter of a century gave substance to these factions; yet
neither the imperial nor the anti-imperial party had any real community
of interest with Frederick. He came to supersede self-government by
consuls, to deprive the cities of the privilege of making war on their
own account and to extort his regalian rights of forage, food and
lodging for his armies. It was only the habit of inter-urban jealousy
which prevented the communes from at once combining to resist demands
which threatened their liberty of action, and would leave them passive
at the pleasure of a foreign master. The diet was opened at Roncaglia
near Piacenza, where Frederick listened to the complaints of Como and
Lodi against Milan, of Pavia against Tortona and of the marquis of
Montferrat against Asti and Chieri. The plaintiffs in each case were
imperialists; and Frederick's first action was to redress their supposed
grievances. He laid waste Chieri, Asti and Tortona, then took the
Lombard crown at Pavia, and, reserving Milan for a future day, passed
southward to Rome. Outside the gates of Rome he was met by a deputation
from the senate he had come to supersede, who addressed him in words
memorable for expressing the republican spirit of new Italy face to face
with autocratic feudalism: "Thou wast a stranger, I have made thee a
citizen"; it is Rome who speaks: "Thou earnest as an alien from beyond
the Alps, I have conferred on thee the principality." Moved only to
scorn and indignation by the rhetoric of these presumptuous enthusiasts,
Frederick marched into the Leonine city, and took the imperial crown
from the hands of Adrian IV. In return for this compliance, the emperor
delivered over to the pope his troublesome rival Arnold of Brescia, who
was burned alive by Nicholas Breakspear, the only English successor of
St Peter. The gates of Rome itself were shut against Frederick; and even
on this first occasion his good understanding with Adrian began to
suffer. The points of dispute between them related mainly to Matilda's
bequest, and to the kingdom of Sicily, which the pope had rendered
independent of the empire by renewing its investiture in the name of the
Holy See. In truth, the papacy and the empire had become irreconcilable.
Each claimed illimitable authority, and neither was content to abide
within such limits as would have secured a mutual tolerance. Having
obtained his coronation, Frederick withdrew to Germany, while Milan
prepared herself against the storm which threatened. In the ensuing
struggle with the empire, that great city rose to the altitude of
patriotic heroism. By their sufferings no less than by their deeds of
daring, her citizens showed themselves to be sublime, devoted and
disinterested, winning the purest laurels which give lustre to Italian
story. Almost in Frederick's presence, they rebuilt Tortona, punished
Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and the marquis of Montferrat. Then they fortified
the Adda and Ticino, and waited for the emperor's next descent. He came
in 1158 with a large army, overran Lombardy, raised his imperial allies,
and sat down before the walls of Milan. Famine forced the burghers to
partial obedience, and Frederick held a victorious diet at Roncaglia.
Here the jurists of Bologna appeared, armed with their new lore of Roman
law, and expounded Justinian's code in the interests of the German
empire. It was now seen how the absolutist doctrines of autocracy
developed in Justinian's age at Byzantium would bear fruits in the
development of an imperial idea, which was destined to be the fatal
mirage of medieval Italy. Frederick placed judges of his own
appointment, with the title of podestà, in all the Lombard communes; and
this stretch of his authority, while it exacerbated his foes, forced
even his friends to join their ranks against him. The war, meanwhile,
dragged on. Crema yielded after an heroic siege in 1160, and was
abandoned to the cruelty of its fierce rival Cremona. Milan was invested
in 1161, starved into capitulation after nine months' resistance, and
given up to total destruction by the Italian imperialists of Frederick's
army, so stained and tarnished with the vindictive passions of municipal
rivalry was even this, the one great glorious strife of Italian annals.
Having ruined his rebellious city, but not tamed her spirit, Frederick
withdrew across the Alps. But, in the interval between his second and
third visit, a league was formed against him in north-eastern Lombardy.
Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Venice entered into a compact to defend
their liberties; and when he came again in 1163 with a brilliant staff
of German knights, the imperial cities refused to join his standards.
This was the first and ominous sign of a coming change.

Lombard League.

Meanwhile the election of Alexander III. to the papacy in 1159 added a
powerful ally to the republican party. Opposed by an anti-pope whom the
emperor favoured, Alexander found it was his truest policy to rely for
support upon the anti-imperialist communes. They in return gladly
accepted a champion who lent them the prestige and influence of the
church. When Frederick once more crossed the Alps in 1166, he advanced
on Rome, and besieged Alexander in the Coliseum. But the affairs of
Lombardy left him no leisure to persecute a recalcitrant pontiff. In
April 1167 a new league was formed between Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia,
Mantua and Ferrara. In December of the same year this league allied
itself with the elder Veronese league, and received the addition of
Milan, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, Modena and Bologna. The famous league of
Lombard cities, styled Concordia in its acts of settlement, was now
established. Novara, Vercelli, Asti and Tortona swelled its ranks; only
Pavia and Montferrat remained imperialist between the Alps and
Apennines. Frederick fled for his life by the Mont Cenis, and in 1168
the town of Alessandria was erected to keep Pavia and the marquisate in
check. In the emperor's absence, Ravenna, Rimini, Imola and Forli joined
the league, which now called itself the "Society of Venice, Lombardy,
the March, Romagna and Alessandria." For the fifth time, in 1174,
Frederick entered his rebellious dominions. The fortress town of
Alessandria stopped his progress with those mud walls contemptuously
named "of straw," while the forces of the league assembled at Modena and
obliged him to raise the siege. In the spring of 1176 Frederick
threatened Milan. His army found itself a little to the north of the
town near the village of Legnano, when the troops of the city, assisted
only by a few allies from Piacenza, Verona, Brescia, Novara and
Vercelli, met and overwhelmed it. The victory was complete. Frederick
escaped alone to Pavia, whence he opened negotiations with Alexander. In
consequence of these transactions, he was suffered to betake himself
unharmed to Venice. Here, as upon neutral ground, the emperor met the
pope, and a truce for six years was concluded with the Lombard burghs.
Looking back from the vantage-ground of history upon the issue of this
long struggle, we are struck with the small results which satisfied the
Lombard communes. They had humbled and utterly defeated their foreign
lord. They had proved their strength in combination. Yet neither the
acts by which their league was ratified nor the terms negotiated for
them by their patron Alexander evince the smallest desire of what we now
understand as national independence. The name of Italy is never
mentioned. The supremacy of the emperor is not called in question. The
conception of a permanent confederation, bound together in Offensive and
defensive alliance for common objects, has not occurred to these hard
fighters and stubborn asserters of their civic privileges. All they
claim is municipal autonomy; the right to manage their own affairs
within the city walls, to fight their battles as they choose, and to
follow their several ends unchecked. It is vain to lament that, when
they might have now established Italian independence upon a secure
basis, they chose local and municipal privileges. Their mutual
jealousies, combined with the prestige of the empire, and possibly with
the selfishness of the pope, who had secured his own position, and was
not likely to foster a national spirit that would have threatened the
ecclesiastical supremacy, deprived the Italians of the only great
opportunity they ever had of forming themselves into a powerful nation.

Peace of Constance.

When the truce expired in 1183, a permanent peace was ratified at
Constance. The intervening years had been spent by the Lombards, not in
consolidating their union, but in attempting to secure special
privileges for their several cities. Alessandria della Paglia, glorious
by her resistance to the emperor in 1174, had even changed her name to
Cesarea! The signatories of the peace of Constance were divided between
leaguers and imperialists. On the one side we find Vercelli, Novara,
Milan, Lodi, Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso,
Bologna, Faenza, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Piacenza; on the other, Pavia,
Genoa, Alba, Cremona, Como, Tortona, Asti, Cesarea. Venice, who had not
yet entered the Italian community, is conspicuous by her absence.
According to the terms of this treaty, the communes were confirmed in
their right of self-government by consuls, and their right of warfare.
The emperor retained the supreme courts of appeal within the cities, and
his claim for sustenance at their expense when he came into Italy.

War of cities against nobles.

The privileges confirmed to the Lombard cities by the peace of Constance
were extended to Tuscany, where Florence, having ruined Fiesole, had
begun her career of freedom and prosperity. The next great chapter in
the history of Italian evolution is the war of the burghs against the
nobles. The consular cities were everywhere surrounded by castles; and,
though the feudal lords had been weakened by the events of the preceding
centuries, they continued to be formidable enemies. It was, for
instance, necessary to the well-being of the towns that they should
possess territory round their walls, and this had to be wrested from the
nobles. We cannot linger over the details of this warfare. It must
suffice to say that, partly by mortgaging their property to rich
burghers, partly by entering the service of the cities as _condottieri_
(mercenary leaders), partly by espousing the cause of one town against
another, and partly by forced submission after the siege of their strong
places, the counts were gradually brought into connexion of dependence
on the communes. These, in their turn, forced the nobles to leave their
castles, and to reside for at least a portion of each year within the
walls. By these measures the counts became citizens, the rural
population ceased to rank as serfs, and the Italo-Roman population of
the towns absorbed into itself the remnants of Franks, Germans and other
foreign stocks. It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of
this revolution, which ended by destroying the last vestige of
feudality, and prepared that common Italian people which afterwards
distinguished itself by the creation of European culture. But, like all
the vicissitudes, of the Italian race, while it was a decided step
forward in one direction, it introduced a new source of discord. The
associated nobles proved ill neighbours to the peaceable citizens. They
fortified their houses, retained their military habits, defied the
consuls, and carried on feuds in the streets and squares. The war
against the castles became a war against the palaces; and the system of
government by consuls proved inefficient to control the clashing
elements within the state. This led to the establishment of podestàs,
who represented a compromise between two radically hostile parties in
the city, and whose business it was to arbitrate and keep the peace
between them. Invariably a foreigner, elected for a year with power of
life and death and control of the armed force, but subject to a strict
account at the expiration of his office, the podestà might be compared
to a dictator invested with limited authority. His title was derived
from that of Frederick Barbarossa's judges; but he had no dependence on
the empire. The citizens chose him, and voluntarily submitted to his
rule. The podestà marks an essentially transitional state in civic
government, and his intervention paved the way for despotism.

Innocent III.

The thirty years which elapsed between Frederick Barbarossa's death in
1190 and the coronation of his grandson Frederick II. in 1220 form one
of the most momentous epochs in Italian history. Barbarossa, perceiving
the advantage that would accrue to his house if he could join the crown
of Sicily to that of Germany, and thus deprive the popes of their allies
in Lower Italy, procured the marriage of his son Henry VI. to Constance,
daughter of King Roger, and heiress of the Hauteville dynasty. When
William II., the last monarch of the Norman race, died, Henry VI.
claimed that kingdom in his wife's right, and was recognized in 1194.
Three years afterwards he died, leaving a son, Frederick, to the care of
Constance, who in her turn died in 1198, bequeathing the young prince,
already crowned king of Germany, to the guardianship of Innocent III. It
was bold policy to confide Frederick to his greatest enemy and rival;
but the pope honourably discharged his duty, until his ward outgrew the
years of tutelage, and became a fair mark for ecclesiastical hostility.
Frederick's long minority was occupied by Innocent's pontificate. Among
the principal events of that reign must be reckoned the foundation of
the two orders, Franciscan and Dominican, who were destined to form a
militia for the holy see in conflict with the empire and the heretics of
Lombardy. A second great event was the fourth crusade, undertaken in
1198, which established the naval and commercial supremacy of the
Italians in the Mediterranean. The Venetians, who contracted for the
transport of the crusaders, and whose blind doge Dandolo was first to
land in Constantinople, received one-half and one-fourth of the divided
Greek empire for their spoils. The Venetian ascendancy in the Levant
dates from this epoch; for, though the republic had no power to occupy
all the domains ceded to it, Candia was taken, together with several
small islands and stations on the mainland. The formation of a Latin
empire in the East increased the pope's prestige; while at home it was
his policy to organize Countess Matilda's heritage by the formation of
Guelph leagues, over which he presided. This is the meaning of the three
leagues, in the March, in the duchy of Spoleto and in Tuscany, which now
combined the chief cities of the papal territory into allies of the holy
see. From the Tuscan league Pisa, consistently Ghibelline, stood aloof.
Rome itself again at this epoch established a republic, with which
Innocent would not or could not interfere. The thirteen districts in
their council nominated four _caporioni_, who acted in concert with a
_senator_, appointed, like the podestà of other cities, for supreme
judicial functions. Meanwhile the Guelph and Ghibelline factions were
beginning to divide Italy into minute parcels. Not only did commune
range itself against commune under the two rival flags, but party rose
up against party within the city walls. The introduction of the factions
into Florence in 1215, owing to a private quarrel between the
Buondelmonti, Amidei and Donati, is a celebrated instance of what was
happening in every burgh.

Frederick II. Emperor.

Frederick II. was left without a rival for the imperial throne in 1218
by the death of Otto IV., and on the 22nd of November 1220, Honorius
III., Innocent's successor, crowned him in Rome. It was impossible for
any section of the Italians to mistake the gravity of his access to
power. In his single person he combined the prestige of empire with the
Crowns of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Germany and Burgundy; and in 1225, by
marriage with Yolande de Brienne, he added that of Jerusalem. There was
no prince greater or more formidable in the habitable globe. The
communes, no less than the popes, felt that they must prepare themselves
for contest to the death with a power which threatened their existence.
Already in 1218, the Guelphs of Lombardy had resuscitated their old
league, and had been defeated by the Ghibellines in a battle near
Ghibello. Italy seemed to lie prostrate before the emperor, who
commanded her for the first time from the south as well as from the
north. In 1227 Frederick, who had promised to lead a crusade, was
excommunicated by Gregory IX. because he was obliged by illness to defer
his undertaking; and thus the spiritual power declared war upon its
rival. The Guelph towns of Lombardy again raised their levies. Frederick
enlisted his Saracen troops at Nocera and Luceria, and appointed the
terrible Ezzelino da Romano his vicar in the Marches of Verona to quell
their insurrection. It was 1236, however, before he was able to take the
field himself against the Lombards. Having established Ezzelino in
Verona, Vicenza and Padua, he defeated the Milanese and their allies at
Cortenuova in 1237, and sent their carroccio as a trophy of his victory
to Rome. Gregory IX. feared lest the Guelph party would be ruined by
this check. He therefore made alliance with Venice and Genoa, fulminated
a new excommunication against Frederick, and convoked a council at Rome
to ratify his ban in 1241. The Genoese undertook to bring the French
bishops to this council. Their fleet was attacked at Meloria by the
Pisans, and utterly defeated. The French prelates went in silver chains
to prison in the Ghibelline capital of Tuscany. So far Frederick had
been successful at all points. In 1243 a new pope, Innocent IV., was
elected, who prosecuted the war with still bitterer spirit. Forced to
fly to France, he there, at Lyons, in 1245, convened a council, which
enforced his condemnation of the emperor. Frederick's subjects were
freed from their allegiance, and he was declared dethroned and deprived
of all rights. Five times king and emperor as he was, Frederick, placed
under the ban of the church, led henceforth a doomed existence. The
mendicant monks stirred up the populace to acts of fanatical enmity. To
plot against him, to attempt his life by poison or the sword, was
accounted virtuous. His secretary, Piero delle Vigne, was wrongly
suspected of conspiring. The crimes of his vicar Ezzelino, who laid
whole provinces waste and murdered men by thousands in his Paduan
prisons, increased the horror with which he was regarded. Parma revolted
from him, and he spent months in 1247-1248 vainly trying to reduce this
one time faithful city. The only gleam of success which shone on his ill
fortune was the revolution which placed Florence in the hands of the
Ghibellines in 1248. Next year Bologna rose against him, defeated his
troops and took his son Enzio, king of Sardinia, prisoner at Fossalta.
Hunted to the ground and broken-hearted, Frederick expired at the end of
1250 in his Apulian castle of Fiorentino. It is difficult to judge his
career with fairness. The only prince who could, with any probability of
success, have established the German rule in Italy, his ruin proved the
impossibility of that long-cherished scheme. The nation had outgrown
dependence upon foreigners, and after his death no German emperor
interfered with anything but miserable failure in Italian affairs. Yet
from many points of view it might be regretted that Frederick was not
suffered to rule Italy. By birth and breeding an Italian, highly gifted
and widely cultivated, liberal in his opinions, a patron of literature,
a founder of universities, he anticipated the spirit of the Renaissance.
At his court Italian started into being as a language. His laws were
wise. He was capable of giving to Italy a large and noble culture. But
the commanding greatness of his position proved his ruin. Emperor and
king of Sicily, he was the natural enemy of popes, who could not
tolerate so overwhelming a rival.

Papal war against Frederick's successors.

After Frederick's death, the popes carried on their war for eighteen
years against his descendants. The cause of his son Conrad was sustained
in Lower Italy by Manfred, one of Frederick's many natural children;
and, when Conrad died in 1254, Manfred still acted as vicegerent for the
Swabians, who were now represented by a boy Conradin. Innocent IV. and
Alexander IV. continued to make head against the Ghibelline party. The
most dramatic incident in this struggle was the crusade preached against
Ezzelino. This tyrant had made himself justly odious; and when he was
hunted to death in 1259, the triumph was less for the Guelph cause than
for humanity outraged by the iniquities of such a monster. The battle
between Guelph and Ghibelline raged with unintermitting fury. While the
former faction gained in Lombardy by the massacre of Ezzelino, the
latter revived in Tuscany after the battle of Montaperti, which in 1260
placed Florence at the discretion of the Ghibellines. Manfred, now
called king of Sicily, headed the Ghibellines, and there was no strong
counterpoise against him. In this necessity Urban IV. and Clement IV.
invited Charles of Anjou to enter Italy and take the Guelph command.
They made him senator of Rome and vicar of Tuscany, and promised him the
investiture of the regno provided he stipulated that it should not be
held in combination with the empire. Charles accepted these terms, and
was welcomed by the Guelph party as their chief throughout Italy. He
defeated Manfred in a battle at Grandella near Benevento in 1266.
Manfred was killed; and, when Conradin, a lad of sixteen, descended from
Germany to make good his claims to the kingdom, he too was defeated at
Tagliacozzo in 1267. Less lucky than his uncle, Conradin escaped with
his life, to die upon a scaffold at Naples. His glove was carried to his
cousin Constance, wife of Peter of Aragon, the last of the great
Norman-Swabian family. Enzio died in his prison four years later. The
popes had been successful; but they had purchased their bloody victory
at a great cost. This first invitation to French princes brought with it
incalculable evils.

Civil War of Guelphs and Ghibellines.

Charles of Anjou, supported by Rome, and recognized as chief in Tuscany,
was by far the most formidable of the Italian potentates. In his turn he
now excited the jealousy of the popes, who began, though cautiously, to
cast their weight into the Ghibelline scale. Gregory initiated the
policy of establishing an equilibrium between the parties, which was
carried out by his successor Nicholas III. Charles was forced to resign
the senatorship of Rome and the signoria of Lombardy and Tuscany. In
1282 he received a more decided check, when Sicily rose against him in
the famous rebellion of the Vespers. He lost the island, which gave
itself to Aragon; and thus the kingdom of Sicily was severed from that
of Naples, the dynasty in the one being Spanish and Ghibelline, in the
other French and Guelph. Meanwhile a new emperor had been elected, the
prudent Rudolf of Habsburg, who abstained from interference with Italy,
and who confirmed the territorial pretensions of the popes by solemn
charter in 1278. Henceforth Emilia, Romagna, the March of Ancona, the
patrimony of St Peter and the Campagna of Rome held of the Holy See, and
not of the empire. The imperial chancery, without inquiring closely into
the deeds furnished by the papal curia, made a deed of gift, which
placed the pope in the position of a temporal sovereign. While Nicholas
III. thus bettered the position of the church in Italy, the Guelph party
grew stronger than ever, through the crushing defeat of the Pisans by
the Genoese at Meloria in 1284. Pisa, who had ruined Amalfi, was now
ruined by Genoa. She never held her head so high again after this
victory, which sent her best and bravest citizens to die in the Ligurian
dungeons. The Mediterranean was left to be fought for by Genoa and
Venice, while Guelph Florence grew still more powerful in Tuscany. Not
long after the battle of Meloria Charles of Anjou died, and was
succeeded by his son Charles II. of Naples, who played no prominent part
in Italian affairs. The Guelph party was held together with a less tight
hand even in cities so consistent as Florence. Here in the year 1300 new
factions, subdividing the old Guelphs and Ghibellines under the names of
Neri and Bianchi, had acquired such force that Boniface VIII., a
violently Guelph pope, called in Charles of Valois to pacify the
republic and undertake the charge of Italian affairs. Boniface was a
passionate and unwise man. After quarrelling with the French king,
Philip le Bel, he fell into the hands of the Colonna family at Anagni,
and died, either of the violence he there received or of mortification,
in October 1303.

Translation of the Papacy to Avignon.

After the short papacy of Benedict XI. a Frenchman, Clement V., was
elected, and the seat of the papacy was transferred to Avignon. Thus
began that Babylonian exile of the popes which placed them in subjection
to the French crown and ruined their prestige in Italy. Lasting seventy
years, and joining on to the sixty years of the Great Schism, this
enfeeblement of the papal authority, coinciding as it did with the
practical elimination of the empire from Italian affairs, gave a long
period of comparative independence to the nation. Nor must it be
forgotten that this exile was due to the policy which induced the
pontiffs, in their detestation of Ghibellinism, to rely successively
upon the houses of Anjou and of Valois. This policy it was which
justified Dante's fierce epigram--the _puttaneggiar co regi_.

The period we have briefly traversed was immortalized by Dante in an
epic which from one point of view might be called the poem of the
Guelphs and Ghibellines. From the foregoing bare narration of events it
is impossible to estimate the importance of these parties, or to
understand their bearing on subsequent Italian history. We are therefore
forced to pause awhile, and probe beneath the surface. The civil wars
may be regarded as a continuation of the previous municipal struggle,
intensified by recent hostilities between the burghers and the nobles.
The quarrels of the church and empire lend pretexts and furnish
war-cries; but the real question at issue is not the supremacy of pope
or emperor. The conflict is a social one, between civic and feudal
institutions, between commercial and military interests, between
progress and conservatism. Guelph democracy and industry idealize the
pope. The banner of the church waves above the camp of those who aim at
positive prosperity and republican equality. Ghibelline aristocracy and
immobility idealize the emperor. The prestige of the empire, based upon
Roman law and feudal tradition, attracts imaginative patriots and
systematic thinkers. The two ideals are counterposed and mutually
exclusive. No city calls itself either Guelph or Ghibelline till it has
expelled one-half of its inhabitants; for each party is resolved to
constitute the state according to its own conception, and the
affirmation of the one programme is the negation of the other. The
Ghibelline honestly believes that the Guelphs will reduce society to
chaos. The Guelph is persuaded that the Ghibellines will annihilate
freedom and strangle commerce. The struggle is waged by two sets of men
who equally love their city, but who would fain rule it upon
diametrically opposite principles, and who fight to the death for its
possession. This contradiction enters into the minutest details of
life--armorial bearings, clothes, habits at table, symbolize and
accentuate the difference. Meanwhile each party forms its own
organization of chiefs, finance-officers and registrars at home, and
sends ambassadors to foreign cities of the same complexion. A network of
party policy embraces and dominates the burghs of Italy, bringing the
most distant centres into relation, and by the very division of the
country augmenting the sense of nationality. The Italians learn through
their discords at this epoch that they form one community. The victory
in the conflict practically falls to the hitherto unenfranchised
plebeians. The elder noble families die out or lose their preponderance.
In some cities, as notably in Florence after the date 1292, it becomes
criminal to be _scioperato_, or unemployed in industry. New houses rise
into importance; a new commercial aristocracy is formed. Burghers of all
denominations are enrolled in one or other of the arts or gilds, and
these trading companies furnish the material from which the government
or signoria of the city is composed. Plebeian handicrafts assert their
right to be represented on an equality with learned professions and
wealthy corporations. The ancient classes are confounded and obliterated
in a population more homogeneous, more adapted for democracy and
despotism.

New constitution of the free cities.

In addition to the parliament and the councils which have been already
enumerated, we now find a _council of the party_ established within the
city. This body tends to become a little state within the state, and, by
controlling the victorious majority, disposes of the government as it
thinks best. The consuls are merged in _ancients_ or _priors_, chosen
from the arts. A new magistrate, the _gonfalonier of justice_, appears
in some of the Guelph cities, with the special duty of keeping the
insolence of the nobility in check. Meanwhile the podestà still
subsists; but he is no longer equal to the task of maintaining an
equilibrium of forces. He sinks more and more into a judge, loses more
and more the character of dictator. His ancient place is now occupied by
a new functionary, no longer acting as arbiter, but concentrating the
forces of the triumphant party. The _captain of the people_, acting as
head of the ascendant Guelphs or Ghibellines, undertakes the
responsibility of proscriptions, decides on questions of policy, forms
alliances, declares war. Like all officers created to meet an emergency,
the limitations to his power are ill-defined, and he is often little
better than an autocrat.

Origin of Tyrannies.

V. _Age of the Despots._--Thus the Italians, during the heat of the
civil wars, were ostensibly divided between partisans of the empire and
partisans of the church. After the death of Frederick II. their affairs
were managed by Manfred and by Charles of Anjou, the supreme captains of
the parties, under whose orders acted the captains of the people in each
city. The contest being carried on by warfare, it followed that these
captains in the burghs were chosen on account of military skill; and,
since the nobles were men of arms by profession, members of ancient
houses took the lead again in towns where they had been absorbed into
the bourgeoisie. In this way, after the downfall of the Ezzelini of
Romano, the Della Scala dynasty arose in Verona, and the Carraresi in
Padua. The Estensi made themselves lords of Ferrara; the Torriani headed
the Guelphs of Milan. At Ravenna we find the Polenta family, at Rimini
the Malatestas, at Parma the Rossi, at Piacenza the Scotti, at Faenza
the Manfredi. There is not a burgh of northern Italy but can trace the
rise of a dynastic house to the vicissitudes of this period. In Tuscany,
where the Guelph party was very strongly organized, and the commercial
constitution of Florence kept the nobility in check, the communes
remained as yet free from hereditary masters. Yet generals from time to
time arose, the Conte Ugolino della Gheradesca at Pisa, Uguccione della
Faggiuola at Lucca, the Conte Guido di Montefeltro at Florence, who
threatened the liberties of Tuscan cities with military despotism.

Left to themselves by absentee emperors and exiled popes, the Italians
pursued their own course of development unchecked. After the
commencement of the 14th century, the civil wars decreased in fury, and
at the same time it was perceived that their effect had been to confirm
tyrants in their grasp upon free cities. Growing up out of the captain
of the people or signore of the commune, the tyrant annihilated both
parties for his own profit and for the peace of the state. He used the
dictatorial powers with which he was invested to place himself above the
law, resuming in his person the state-machinery which had preceded him.
In him, for the first time, the city attained self-consciousness; the
blindly working forces of previous revolutions were combined in the will
of a ruler. The tyrant's general policy was to favour the multitude at
the expense of his own caste. He won favour by these means, and
completed the levelling down of classes, which had been proceeding ever
since the emergence of the communes.

Decline of civil wars. Advent of the bourgeoisie.

In 1309 Robert, grandson of Charles, the first Angevine sovereign,
succeeded to the throne of Naples, and became the leader of the Guelphs
in Italy. In the next year Henry VII. of Luxembourg crossed the Alps
soon after his election to the empire, and raised the hopes of the
Ghibellines. Dante from his mountain solitudes passionately called upon
him to play the part of a Messiah. But it was now impossible for any
German to control the "Garden of the Empire." Italy had entered on a new
phase of her existence, and the great poet's _De monarchia_ represented
a dream of the past which could not be realized. Henry established
imperial vicars in the Lombard towns, confirming the tyrants, but
gaining nothing for the empire in exchange for the titles he conferred.
After receiving the crown in Rome, he died at Buonconvento, a little
walled town south of Siena, on his backward journey in 1313. The profits
of his inroad were reaped by despots, who used the Ghibelline prestige
for the consolidation of their own power. It is from this epoch that the
supremacy of the Visconti, hitherto the unsuccessful rivals of the
Guelphic Torriani for the signory of Milan, dates. The Scaligers in
Verona and the Carraresi in Padua were strengthened; and in Tuscany
Castruccio Castracane, Uguccione's successor at Lucca, became
formidable. In 1325 he defeated the Florentines at Alto Pascio, and
carried home their carroccio as a trophy of his victory over the
Guelphs. Louis of Bavaria, the next emperor, made a similar excursion in
the year 1327, with even greater loss of imperial prestige. He deposed
Galeazzo Visconti on his downward journey, and offered Milan for a sum
of money to his son Azzo upon his return. Castruccio Castracane was
nominated by him duke of Lucca; and this is the first instance of a
dynastic title conferred upon an Italian adventurer by the emperor.
Castruccio dominated Tuscany, where the Guelph cause, in the weakness of
King Robert, languished. But the adventurer's death in 1328 saved the
stronghold of republican institutions, and Florence breathed freely for
a while again. Can Grande della Scala's death in the next year inflicted
on the Lombard Ghibellines a loss hardly inferior to that of
Castruccio's on their Tuscan allies. Equally contemptible in its
political results and void of historical interest was the brief visit of
John of Bohemia, son of Henry VII., whom the Ghibellines next invited to
assume their leadership. He sold a few privileges, conferred a few
titles, and recrossed the Alps in 1333. It is clear that at this time
the fury of the civil wars was spent. In spite of repeated efforts on
the part of the Ghibellines, in spite of King Robert's supine
incapacity, the imperialists gained no permanent advantage. The Italians
were tired of fighting, and the leaders of both factions looked
exclusively to their own interests. Each city which had been the cradle
of freedom thankfully accepted a master, to quench the conflagration of
party strife, encourage trade, and make the handicraftsmen comfortable.
Even the Florentines in 1342 submitted for a few months to the despotism
of the duke of Athens. They conferred the signory upon him for life;
and, had he not mismanaged matters, he might have held the city in his
grasp. Italy was settling down and turning her attention to home
comforts, arts and literature. Boccaccio, the contented bourgeois,
succeeded to Dante, the fierce aristocrat.

The most marked proof of the change which came over Italy towards the
middle of the 14th century is furnished by the companies of adventure.
It was with their own militia that the burghers won freedom in the war
of independence, subdued the nobles, and fought the battles of the
parties. But from this time forward they laid down their arms, and
played the game of warfare by the aid of mercenaries. Ecclesiastical
overlords, interfering from a distance in Italian politics; prosperous
republics, with plenty of money to spend but no leisure or inclination
for camp-life; cautious tyrants, glad of every pretext to emasculate
their subjects, and courting popularity by exchanging conscription for
taxation--all combined to favour the new system. Mercenary troops are
said to have been first levied from disbanded Germans, together with
Breton and English adventurers, whom the Visconti and Castruccio took
into their pay. They soon appeared under their own captains, who hired
them out to the highest bidder, or marched them on marauding expeditions
up and down the less protected districts. The names of some of these
earliest captains of adventure, Fra Moriale, Count Lando and Duke
Werner, who styled himself the "Enemy of God and Mercy," have been
preserved to us. As the companies grew in size and improved their
discipline, it was seen by the Italian nobles that this kind of service
offered a good career for men of spirit, who had learned the use of
arms. To leave so powerful and profitable a calling in the hands of
foreigners seemed both dangerous and uneconomical. Therefore, after the
middle of the century, this profession fell into the hands of natives.
The first Italian who formed an exclusively Italian company was Alberico
da Barbiano, a nobleman of Romagna, and founder of the Milanese house of
Belgiojoso. In his school the great condottieri Braccio da Montone and
Sforza Attendolo were formed; and henceforth the battles of Italy were
fought by Italian generals commanding native troops. This was better in
some respects than if the mercenaries had been foreigners. Yet it must
not be forgotten that the new companies of adventure, who decided
Italian affairs for the next century, were in no sense patriotic. They
sold themselves for money, irrespective of the cause which they upheld;
and, while changing masters, they had no care for any interests but
their own. The name condottiero, derived from _condotta_, a paid
contract to supply so many fighting men in serviceable order,
sufficiently indicates the nature of the business. In the hands of able
captains, like Francesco Sforza or Piccinino, these mercenary troops
became moving despotisms, draining the country of its wealth, and always
eager to fasten and found tyrannies upon the provinces they had been
summoned to defend. Their generals substituted heavy-armed cavalry for
the old militia, and introduced systems of campaigning which reduced the
art of war to a game of skill. Battles became all but bloodless;
diplomacy and tactics superseded feats of arms and hard blows in pitched
fields. In this way the Italians lost their military vigour, and wars
were waged by despots from their cabinets, who pulled the strings of
puppet captains in their pay. Nor were the people only enfeebled for
resistance to a real foe; the whole political spirit of the race was
demoralized. The purely selfish bond between condottieri and their
employers, whether princes or republics, involved intrigues and
treachery, checks and counterchecks, secret terror on the one hand and
treasonable practice on the other, which ended by making statecraft in
Italy synonymous with perfidy.

Change in type of despotism.

It must further be noticed that the rise of mercenaries was synchronous
with a change in the nature of Italian despotism. The tyrants, as we
have already seen, established themselves as captains of the people,
vicars of the empire, vicars for the church, leaders of the Guelph and
Ghibelline parties. They were accepted by a population eager for
repose, who had merged old class distinctions in the conflicts of
preceding centuries. They rested in large measure on the favour of the
multitude, and pursued a policy of sacrificing to their interests the
nobles. It was natural that these self-made princes should seek to
secure the peace which they had promised in their cities, by freeing the
people from military service and disarming the aristocracy. As their
tenure of power grew firmer, they advanced dynastic claims, assumed
titles, and took the style of petty sovereigns. Their government became
paternal; and, though there was no limit to their cruelty when stung by
terror, they used the purse rather than the sword, bribery at home and
treasonable intrigue abroad in preference to coercive measures or open
war. Thus was elaborated the type of despot which attained completeness
in Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Lorenzo de' Medici. No longer a tyrant of
Ezzelino's stamp, he reigned by intelligence and terrorism masked
beneath a smile. He substituted cunning and corruption for violence. The
lesser people tolerated him because he extended the power of their city
and made it beautiful with public buildings. The bourgeoisie, protected
in their trade, found it convenient to support him. The nobles, turned
into courtiers, placemen, diplomatists and men of affairs, ended by
preferring his authority to the alternative of democratic institutions.
A lethargy of well-being, broken only by the pinch of taxation for
war-costs, or by outbursts of frantic ferocity and lust in the less
calculating tyrants, descended on the population of cities which had
boasted of their freedom. Only Florence and Venice, at the close of the
period upon which we are now entering, maintained their republican
independence. And Venice was ruled by a close oligarchy; Florence was
passing from the hands of her oligarchs into the power of the Medicean
merchants.

Discrimination of the five great powers.

Between the year 1305, when Clement V. settled at Avignon, and the year
1447, when Nicholas V. re-established the papacy upon a solid basis at
Rome, the Italians approximated more nearly to self-government than at
any other epoch of their history. The conditions which have been
described, of despotism, mercenary warfare and bourgeois prosperity,
determined the character of this epoch, which was also the period when
the great achievements of the Renaissance were prepared. At the end of
this century and a half, five principal powers divided the peninsula;
and their confederated action during the next forty-five years
(1447-1492) secured for Italy a season of peace and brilliant
prosperity. These five powers were the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of
Milan, the republic of Florence, the republic of Venice and the papacy.
The subsequent events of Italian history will be rendered most
intelligible if at this point we trace the development of these five
constituents of Italian greatness separately.

The Two Sicilies.

When Robert of Anjou died in 1343, he was succeeded by his
grand-daughter Joan, the childless wife of four successive husbands,
Andrew of Hungary, Louis of Taranto, James of Aragon and Otto of
Brunswick. Charles of Durazzo, the last male scion of the Angevine house
in Lower Italy, murdered Joan in 1382, and held the kingdom for five
years. Dying in 1387, he transmitted Naples to his son Ladislaus, who
had no children, and was followed in 1414 by his sister Joan II. She
too, though twice married, died without issue, having at one time
adopted Louis III. of Provence and his brother René, at another Alfonso
V. of Aragon, who inherited the crown of Sicily. After her death in
February 1435 the kingdom was fought for between René of Anjou and
Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous. René found supporters among the
Italian princes, especially the Milanese Visconti, who helped him to
assert his claims with arms. During the war of succession which ensued,
Alfonso was taken prisoner by the Genoese fleet in August 1435, and was
sent a prisoner to Filippo Maria at Milan. Here he pleaded his own cause
so powerfully, and proved so incontestably the advantage which might
ensue to the Visconti from his alliance, if he held the regno, that he
obtained his release and recognition as king. From the end of the year
1435 Alfonso reigned alone and undisturbed in Lower Italy, combining
for the first time since the year 1282 the crowns of Sicily and Naples.
The former he held by inheritance, together with that of Aragon. The
latter he considered to be his by conquest. Therefore, when he died in
1458, he bequeathed Naples to his natural son Ferdinand, while Sicily
and Aragon passed together to his brother John, and so on to Ferdinand
the Catholic. The twenty-three years of Alfonso's reign were the most
prosperous and splendid period of South Italian history. He became an
Italian in taste and sympathy, entering with enthusiasm into the
humanistic ardour of the earlier Renaissance, encouraging men of letters
at his court, administering his kingdom on the principles of an
enlightened despotism, and lending his authority to establish that
equilibrium in the peninsula upon which the politicians of his age
believed, not without reason, that Italian independence might be
secured.

Duchy of Milan.

The last member of the Visconti family of whom we had occasion to speak
was Azzo, who bought the city in 1328 from Louis of Bavaria. His uncle
Lucchino succeeded, but was murdered in 1349 by a wife against whose
life he had been plotting. Lucchino's brother John, archbishop of Milan,
now assumed the lordship of the city, and extended the power of the
Visconti over Genoa and the whole of north Italy, with the exception of
Piedmont, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Venice. The greatness of the
family dates from the reign of this masterful prelate. He died in 1354,
and his heritage was divided between three members of his house, Matteo,
Bernabò and Galeazzo. In the next year Matteo, being judged incompetent
to rule, was assassinated by order of his brothers, who made an equal
partition of their subject cities--Bernabò residing in Milan, Galeazzo
in Pavia. Galeazzo was the wealthiest and most magnificent Italian of
his epoch. He married his daughter Violante to our duke of Clarence, and
his son Gian Galeazzo to a daughter of King John of France. When he died
in 1378, this son resolved to reunite the domains of the Visconti; and,
with this object in view, he plotted and executed the murder of his
uncle Bernabò. Gian Galeazzo thus became by one stroke the most
formidable of Italian despots. Immured in his castle at Pavia,
accumulating wealth by systematic taxation and methodical economy, he
organized the mercenary troops who eagerly took service under so good a
paymaster; and, by directing their operations from his cabinet, he
threatened the whole of Italy with conquest. The last scions of the
Della Scala family still reigned in Verona, the last Carraresi in Padua;
the Estensi were powerful in Ferrara, the Gonzaghi in Mantua. Gian
Galeazzo, partly by force and partly by intrigue, discredited these
minor despots, pushed his dominion to the very verge of Venice, and,
having subjected Lombardy to his sway, proceeded to attack Tuscany. Pisa
and Perugia were threatened with extinction, and Florence dreaded the
advance of the Visconti arms, when the plague suddenly cut short his
career of treachery and conquest in the year 1402. Seven years before
his death Gian Galeazzo bought the title of duke of Milan and count of
Pavia from the emperor Wenceslaus, and there is no doubt that he was
aiming at the sovereignty of Italy. But no sooner was he dead than the
essential weakness of an artificial state, built up by cunning and
perfidious policy, with the aid of bought troops, dignified by no
dynastic title, and consolidated by no sense of loyalty, became
apparent. Gian Galeazzo's duchy was a masterpiece of mechanical
contrivance, the creation of a scheming intellect and lawless will. When
the mind which had planned it was withdrawn, it fell to pieces, and the
very hands which had been used to build it helped to scatter its
fragments. The Visconti's own generals, Facino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta,
Jacopo dal Verme, Gabrino Fondulo, Ottobon Terzo, seized upon the
tyranny of several Lombard cities. In others the petty tyrants whom the
Visconti had uprooted reappeared. The Estensi recovered their grasp upon
Ferrara, and the Gonzaghi upon Mantua. Venice strengthened herself
between the Adriatic and the Alps. Florence reassumed her Tuscan
hegemony. Other communes which still preserved the shadow of
independence, like Perugia and Bologna, began once more to dream of
republican freedom under their own leading families. Meanwhile Gian
Galeazzo had left two sons, Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria. Giovanni,
a monster of cruelty and lust, was assassinated by some Milanese nobles
in 1412; and now Filippo set about rebuilding his father's duchy. Herein
he was aided by the troops of Facino Cane, who, dying opportunely at
this period, left considerable wealth, a well-trained band of
mercenaries, and a widow, Beatrice di Tenda. Filippo married and then
beheaded Beatrice after a mock trial for adultery, having used her money
and her influence in reuniting several subject cities to the crown of
Milan. He subsequently spent a long, suspicious, secret and
incomprehensible career in the attempt to piece together Gian Galeazzo's
Lombard state, and to carry out his schemes of Italian conquest. In this
endeavour he met with vigorous opponents. Venice and Florence, strong in
the strength of their resentful oligarchies, offered a determined
resistance; nor was Filippo equal in ability to his father. His infernal
cunning often defeated its own aims, checkmating him at the point of
achievement by suggestions of duplicity or terror. In the course of
Filippo's wars with Florence and Venice, the greatest generals of this
age were formed--Francesco Carmagnola, who was beheaded between the
columns at Venice in 1432; Niccolò Piccinino, who died at Milan in 1444;
and Francesco Sforza, who survived to seize his master's heritage in
1450. Son of Attendolo Sforza, this Francesco received the hand of
Filippo's natural daughter, Bianca, as a reward for past service and a
pledge of future support. When the Visconti dynasty ended by the duke's
death in 1447, he pretended to espouse the cause of the Milanese
republic, which was then re-established; but he played his cards so
subtly as to make himself, by the help of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence,
duke _de facto_ if not _de jure_. Francesco Sforza was the only
condottiero among many aspiring to be tyrants who planted themselves
firmly on a throne of first-rate importance. Once seated in the duchy of
Milan, he displayed rare qualities as a ruler; for he not only entered
into the spirit of the age, which required humanity and culture from a
despot, but he also knew how to curb his desire for territory. The
conception of confederated Italy found in him a vigorous supporter. Thus
the limitation of the Milanese duchy under Filippo Maria Visconti, and
its consolidation under Francesco Sforza, were equally effectual in
preparing the balance of power to which Italian politics now tended.

[Illustration: Map of the Unification of Italy 1859-1870.]

This balance could not have been established without the concurrent aid
of Florence. After the expulsion of the duke of Athens in 1343, and the
great plague of 1348, the Florentine proletariate rose up against the
merchant princes. This insurgence of the artisans, in a republic which
had been remodelled upon economical principles by Giano della Bella's
constitution of 1292, reached a climax in 1378, when the Ciompi
rebellion placed the city for a few years in the hands of the Lesser
Arts. The revolution was but temporary, and was rather a symptom of
democratic tendencies in the state than the sign of any capacity for
government on the part of the working classes. The necessities of war
and foreign affairs soon placed Florence in the power of an oligarchy
headed by the great Albizzi family. They fought the battles of the
republic with success against the Visconti, and widely extended the
Florentine domain over the Tuscan cities. During their season of
ascendancy Pisa was enslaved, and Florence gained the access to the sea.
But throughout this period a powerful opposition was gathering strength.
It was led by the Medici, who sided with the common people, and
increased their political importance by the accumulation and wise
employment of vast commercial wealth. In 1433 the Albizzi and the Medici
came to open strife. Cosimo de' Medici, the chief of the opposition, was
exiled to Venice. In the next year he returned, assumed the presidency
of the democratic party, and by a system of corruption and
popularity-hunting, combined with the patronage of arts and letters,
established himself as the real but unacknowledged dictator of the
commonwealth. Cosimo abandoned the policy of his predecessors. Instead
of opposing Francesco Sforza in Milan, he lent him his prestige and
influence, foreseeing that the dynastic future of his own family and the
pacification of Italy might be secured by a balance of power in which
Florence should rank on equal terms with Milan and Naples.

Venice.

The republic of Venice differed essentially from any other state in
Italy; and her history was so separate that, up to this point, it would
have been needless to interrupt the narrative by tracing it. Venice,
however, in the 14th century took her place at last as an Italian power
on an equality at least with the very greatest. The constitution of the
commonwealth had slowly matured itself through a series of revolutions,
which confirmed and defined a type of singular stability. During the
earlier days of the republic the doge had been a prince elected by the
people, and answerable only to the popular assemblies. In 1032 he was
obliged to act in concert with a senate, called _pregadi_; and in 1172
the grand council, which became the real sovereign of the state, was
formed. The several steps whereby the members of the grand council
succeeded in eliminating the people from a share in the government, and
reducing the doge to the position of their ornamental representative,
cannot here be described. It must suffice to say that these changes
culminated in 1297, when an act was passed for closing the grand
council, or in other words for confining it to a fixed number of
privileged families, in whom the government was henceforth vested by
hereditary right. This ratification of the oligarchical principle,
together with the establishment in 1311 of the Council of Ten, completed
that famous constitution which endured till the extinction of the
republic in 1797. Meanwhile, throughout the middle ages, it had been the
policy of Venice to refrain from conquests on the Italian mainland, and
to confine her energies to commerce in the East. The first entry of any
moment made by the Venetians into strictly Italian affairs was in 1336,
when the republics of Florence and St Mark allied themselves against
Mastino della Scala, and the latter took possession of Treviso. After
this, for thirty years, between 1352 and 1381, Venice and Genoa
contested the supremacy of the Mediterranean. Pisa's maritime power
having been extinguished in the battle of Meloria (1284), the two
surviving republics had no rivals. They fought their duel out upon the
Bosporus, off Sardinia, and in the Morea, with various success. From the
first great encounter, in 1355, Venice retired well-nigh exhausted, and
Genoa was so crippled that she placed herself under the protection of
the Visconti. The second and decisive battle was fought upon the
Adriatic. The Genoese fleet under Luciano Doria defeated the Venetians
off Pola in 1379, and sailed without opposition to Chioggia, which was
stormed and taken. Thus the Venetians found themselves blockaded in
their own lagoons. Meanwhile a fleet was raised for their relief by
Carlo Zeno in the Levant, and the admiral Vittore Pisani, who had been
imprisoned after the defeat at Pola, was released to lead their forlorn
hope from the city side. The Genoese in their turn were now blockaded in
Chioggia, and forced by famine to surrender. The losses of men and money
which the war of Chioggia, as it was called, entailed, though they did
not immediately depress the spirit of the Genoese republic, signed her
naval ruin. During this second struggle to the death with Genoa, the
Venetians had been also at strife with the Carraresi of Padua and the
Scaligers of Verona. In 1406, after the extinction of these princely
houses they added Verona, Vicenza and Padua to the territories they
claimed on _terra firma_. Their career of conquest, and their new policy
of forming Italian alliances and entering into the management of Italian
affairs were confirmed by the long dogeship of Francesco Foscari
(1423-1457), who must rank with Alfonso, Cosimo de' Medici, Francesco
Sforza and Nicholas V., as a joint-founder of confederated Italy. When
Constantinople fell in 1453, the old ties between Venice and the Eastern
empire were broken, and she now entered on a wholly new phase of her
history. Ranking as one of the five Italian powers, she was also
destined to defend Western Christendom against the encroachments of the
Turk in Europe. (See VENICE: _History_.)

The Papacy.

By their settlement in Avignon, the popes relinquished their
protectorate of Italian liberties, and lost their position as Italian
potentates. Rienzi's revolution in Rome (1347-1354), and his
establishment of a republic upon a fantastic basis, half classical,
half feudal, proved the temper of the times; while the rise of dynastic
families in the cities of the church, claiming the title of papal
vicars, but acting in their own interests, weakened the authority of the
Holy See. The predatory expeditions of Bertrand du Poiet and Robert of
Geneva were as ineffective as the descents of the emperors; and, though
the cardinal Albornoz conquered Romagna and the March in 1364, the
legates who resided in those districts were not long able to hold them
against their despots. At last Gregory XI. returned to Rome; and Urban
VI., elected in 1378, put a final end to the Avignonian exile. Still the
Great Schism, which now distracted Western Christendom, so enfeebled the
papacy, and kept the Roman pontiffs so engaged in ecclesiastical
disputes, that they had neither power nor leisure to occupy themselves
seriously with their temporal affairs. The threatening presence of the
two princely houses of Orsini and Colonna, alike dangerous as friends or
foes, rendered Rome an unsafe residence. Even when the schism was
nominally terminated in 1415 by the council of Constance, the next two
popes held but a precarious grasp upon their Italian domains. Martin V.
(1417-1431) resided principally at Florence. Eugenius IV. (1431-1447)
followed his example. And what Martin managed to regain Eugenius lost.
At the same time, the change which had now come over Italian politics,
the desire on all sides for a settlement, and the growing conviction
that a federation was necessary, proved advantageous to the popes as
sovereigns. They gradually entered into the spirit of their age, assumed
the style of despots and made use of the humanistic movement, then at
its height, to place themselves in a new relation to Italy. The election
of Nicholas V. in 1447 determined this revolution in the papacy, and
opened a period of temporal splendour, which ended with the
establishment of the popes as sovereigns. Thomas of Sarzana was a
distinguished humanist. Humbly born, he had been tutor in the house of
the Albizzi, and afterwards librarian of the Medici at Florence, where
he imbibed the politics together with the culture of the Renaissance.
Soon after assuming the tiara, he found himself without a rival in the
church; for the schism ended by Felix V.'s resignation in 1449. Nicholas
fixed his residence in Rome, which he began to rebuild and to fortify,
determining to render the Eternal City once more a capital worthy of its
high place in Europe. The Romans were flattered; and, though his reign
was disturbed by republican conspiracy, Nicholas V. was able before his
death in 1455 to secure the modern status of the pontiff as a splendid
patron and a wealthy temporal potentate.

Confederated Italy.

Italy was now for a brief space independent. The humanistic movement had
created a common culture, a common language and sense of common
nationality. The five great powers, with their satellites--dukes of
Savoy and Urbino, marquesses of Ferrara and Mantua, republics of
Bologna, Perugia, Siena--were constituted. All political institutions
tended toward despotism. The Medici became yearly more indispensable to
Florence, the Bentivogli more autocratic in Bologna, the Baglioni in
Perugia; and even Siena was ruled by the Petrucci. But this despotism
was of a mild type. The princes were Italians; they shared the common
enthusiasms of the nation for art, learning, literature and science;
they studied how to mask their tyranny with arts agreeable to the
multitude. When Italy had reached this point, Constantinople was taken
by the Turks. On all sides it was felt that the Italian alliance must be
tightened; and one of the last, best acts of Nicholas V.'s pontificate
was the appeal in 1453 to the five great powers in federation. As
regards their common opposition to the Turk, this appeal led to nothing;
but it marked the growth of a new Italian consciousness.

Between 1453 and 1492 Italy continued to be prosperous and tranquil.
Nearly all wars during this period were undertaken either to check the
growing power of Venice or to further the ambition of the papacy. Having
become despots, the popes sought to establish their relatives in
principalities. The word nepotism acquired new significance in the
reigns of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. Though the country was convulsed
by no great struggle, these forty years witnessed a truly appalling
increase of political crime. To be a prince was tantamount to being the
mark of secret conspiracy and assassination. Among the most noteworthy
examples of such attempts may be mentioned the revolt of the barons
against Ferdinand I. of Naples (1464), the murder of Galeazzo Maria
Sforza at Milan (1476) and the plot of the Pazzi to destroy the Medici
(1478). After Cosimo de' Medici's death in 1464, the presidency of the
Florentine republic passed to his son Piero, who left it in 1469 to his
sons Lorenzo and Giuliano. These youths assumed the style of princes,
and it was against their lives that the Pazzi, with the sanction of
Sixtus IV., aimed their blow. Giuliano was murdered, Lorenzo escaped, to
tighten his grasp upon the city, which now loved him and was proud of
him. During the following fourteen years of his brilliant career he made
himself absolute master of Florence, and so modified her institutions
that the Medici were henceforth necessary to the state. Apprehending the
importance of Italian federation, Lorenzo, by his personal tact and
prudent leadership of the republic, secured peace and a common
intelligence between the five powers. His own family was fortified by
the marriage of his daughter to a son of Innocent VIII., which procured
his son Giovanni's elevation to the cardinalate, and involved two
Medicean papacies and the future dependence of Florence upon Rome.

Invasion of Charles VIII.

VI. _Age of Invasions._--The year 1492 opened a new age for Italy. In
this year Lorenzo died, and was succeeded by his son, the vain and weak
Piero; France passed beneath the personal control of the inexperienced
Charles VIII.; the fall of Granada freed Spain from her embarrassments;
Columbus discovered America, destroying the commercial supremacy of
Venice; last, but not least, Roderigo Borgia assumed the tiara with the
famous title of Alexander VI. In this year the short-lived federation of
the five powers was shaken, and Italy was once more drawn into the
vortex of European affairs. The events which led to this disaster may be
briefly told. After Galeazzo Maria's assassination, his crown passed to
a boy, Gian Galeazzo, who was in due course married to a grand-daughter
of Ferdinand I. of Naples. But the government of Milan remained in the
hands of this youth's uncle, Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro. Lodovico
resolved to become duke of Milan. The king of Naples was his natural
enemy, and he had cause to suspect that Piero de' Medici might abandon
his alliance. Feeling himself alone, with no right to the title he was
bent on seizing, he had recourse to Charles VIII. of France, whom he
urged to make good his claim to the kingdom of Naples. This claim, it
may be said in passing, rested on the will of King René of Anjou. After
some hesitation, Charles agreed to invade Italy. He crossed the Alps in
1495, passed through Lombardy, entered Tuscany, freed Pisa from the yoke
of Florence, witnessed the expulsion of the Medici, marched to Naples
and was crowned there--all this without striking a blow. Meanwhile
Lodovico procured his nephew's death, and raised a league against the
French in Lombardy. Charles hurried back from Naples, and narrowly
escaped destruction at Fornovo in the passes of the Apennines. He made
good his retreat, however, and returned to France in 1495. Little
remained to him of his light acquisitions; but he had convulsed Italy by
this invasion, destroyed her equilibrium, exposed her military weakness
and political disunion, and revealed her wealth to greedy and more
powerful nations.

Louis XII.

The princes of the house of Aragon, now represented by Frederick, a son
of Ferdinand I., returned to Naples. Florence made herself a republic,
adopting a form of constitution analogous to that of Venice. At this
crisis she was ruled by the monk Girolamo Savonarola, who inspired the
people with a thirst for freedom, preached the necessity of reformation,
and placed himself in direct antagonism to Rome. After a short but
eventful career, the influence of which was long effective, he lost his
hold upon the citizens. Alexander VI. procured a mock trial, and his
enemies burned him upon the Piazza in 1498. In this year Louis XII.
succeeded Charles VIII. upon the throne of France. As duke of Orleans he
had certain claims to Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter
of Gian Galeazzo, the first duke. They were not valid, for the
investiture of the duchy had been granted only to male heirs. But they
served as a sufficient pretext, and in 1499 Louis entered and subdued
the Milanese. Lodovico escaped to Germany, returned the next year, was
betrayed by his Swiss mercenaries and sent to die at Loches in France.
In 1500 Louis made the blunder of calling Ferdinand the Catholic to help
him in the conquest of Naples. By a treaty signed at Granada, the French
and Spanish kings were to divide the spoil. The conquest was easy; but,
when it came to a partition, Ferdinand played his ally false. He made
himself supreme over the Two Sicilies, which he now reunited under a
single crown. Three years later, unlessoned by this experience, Louis
signed the treaty of Blois (1504), whereby he invited the emperor
Maximilian to aid him in the subjugation of Venice. No policy could have
been less far-sighted; for Charles V., joint heir to Austria, Burgundy,
Castile and Aragon, the future overwhelming rival of France, was already
born.

The stage was now prepared, and all the actors who were destined to
accomplish the ruin of Italy trod it with their armies. Spain, France,
Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon various
pretexts to partake her provinces. Then, too late, patriots like
Machiavelli perceived the suicidal self-indulgence of the past, which,
by substituting mercenary troops for national militias, left the
Italians at the absolute discretion of their neighbours. Whatever parts
the Italians themselves played in the succeeding quarter of a century,
the game was in the hands of French, Spanish and German invaders.
Meanwhile, no scheme for combination against common foes arose in the
peninsula. Each petty potentate strove for his own private advantage in
the confusion; and at this epoch the chief gains accrued to the papacy.
Aided by his terrible son, Cesare Borgia, Alexander VI. chastised the
Roman nobles, subdued Romagna and the March, threatened Tuscany, and
seemed to be upon the point of creating a Central Italian state in
favour of his progeny, when he died suddenly in 1503. His conquests
reverted to the Holy See. Julius II., his bitterest enemy and powerful
successor, continued Alexander's policy, but no longer in the interest
of his own relatives. It became the nobler ambition of Julius to
aggrandize the church, and to reassume the protectorate of the Italian
people. With this object, he secured Emilia, carried his victorious arms
against Ferrara, and curbed the tyranny of the Baglioni in Perugia.
Julius II. played a perilous game; but the stakes were high, and he
fancied himself strong enough to guide the tempest he evoked.
Quarrelling with the Venetians in 1508, he combined the forces of all
Europe by the league of Cambray against them; and, when he had succeeded
in his first purpose of humbling them even to the dust, he turned round
in 1510, uttered his famous resolve to expel the barbarians from Italy,
and pitted the Spaniards against the French. It was with the Swiss that
he hoped to effect this revolution; but the Swiss, now interfering for
the first time as principals in Italian affairs, were incapable of more
than adding to the already maddening distractions of the people. Formed
for mercenary warfare, they proved a perilous instrument in the hands of
those who used them, and were hardly less injurious to their friends
than to their foes. In 1512 the battle of Ravenna between the French
troops and the allies of Julius--Spaniards, Venetians and Swiss--was
fought. Gaston de Foix bought a doubtful victory dearly with his death;
and the allies, though beaten on the banks of the Ronco, immediately
afterwards expelled the French from Lombardy. Yet Julius II. had failed,
as might have been foreseen. He only exchanged one set of foreign
masters for another, and taught a new barbarian race how pleasant were
the plains of Italy. As a consequence of the battle of Ravenna, the
Medici returned in 1512 to Florence.

When Leo X. was elected in 1513, Rome and Florence rejoiced; but Italy
had no repose. Louis XII. had lost the game, and the Spaniards were
triumphant. But new actors appeared upon the scene, and the same old
struggle was resumed with fiercer energy. By the victory of Marignano in
1515 Francis I., having now succeeded to the throne of France, regained
the Milanese, and broke the power of the Swiss, who held it for
Massimiliano Sforza, the titular duke. Leo for a while relied on
Francis; for the vast power of Charles V., who succeeded to the empire
in 1519, as in 1516 he had succeeded to the crowns of Spain and Lower
Italy, threatened the whole of Europe. It was Leo's nature, however, to
be inconstant. In 1521 he changed sides, allied himself to Charles, and
died after hearing that the imperial troops had again expelled the
French from Milan. During the next four years the Franco-Spanish war
dragged on in Lombardy until the decisive battle of Pavia in 1525, when
Francis was taken prisoner, and Italy lay open to the Spanish armies.
Meanwhile Leo X. had been followed by Adrian VI., and Adrian by Clement
VII., of the house of Medici, who had long ruled Florence. In the reign
of this pope Francis was released from his prison in Madrid (1526), and
Clement hoped that he might still be used in the Italian interest as a
counterpoise to Charles. It is impossible in this place to follow the
tangled intrigues of that period. The year 1527 was signalized by the
famous sack of Rome. An army of mixed German and Spanish troops,
pretending to act for the emperor, but which may rather be regarded as a
vast marauding party, entered Italy under their leader Frundsberg. After
his death, the Constable de Bourbon took command of them; they marched
slowly down, aided by the marquis of Ferrara, and unopposed by the duke
of Urbino, reached Rome, and took it by assault. The constable was
killed in the first onslaught; Clement was imprisoned in the castle of
St Angelo; Rome was abandoned to the rage of 30,000 ruffians. As an
immediate result of this catastrophe, Florence shook off the Medici, and
established a republic. But Clement, having made peace with the emperor,
turned the remnants of the army which had sacked Rome against his native
city. After a desperate resistance, Florence fell in 1530. Alessandro
de' Medici was placed there with the title of duke of Cività di Penna;
and, on his murder in 1537, Cosimo de' Medici, of the younger branch of
the ruling house, was made duke. Acting as lieutenant for the Spaniards,
he subsequently (1555) subdued Siena, and bequeathed to his descendants
the grand-duchy of Tuscany.

Settlement of Italy by Spain.

VII. _Spanish-Austrian Ascendancy._--It was high time, after the sack of
Rome in 1527, that Charles V. should undertake Italian affairs. The
country was exposed to anarchy, of which this had been the last and most
disgraceful example. The Turks were threatening western Europe, and
Luther was inflaming Germany. By the treaty of Barcelona in 1529 the
pope and emperor made terms. By that of Cambray in the same year France
relinquished Italy to Spain. Charles then entered the port of Genoa, and
on the 5th of November met Clement VII. at Bologna. He there received
the imperial crown, and summoned the Italian princes for a settlement of
all disputed claims. Francesco Sforza, the last and childless heir of
the ducal house, was left in Milan till his death, which happened in
1535. The republic of Venice was respected in her liberties and Lombard
territories. The Este family received a confirmation of their duchy of
Modena and Reggio, and were invested in their fief of Ferrara by the
pope. The marquessate of Mantua was made a duchy; and Florence was
secured, as we have seen, to the Medici. The great gainer by this
settlement was the papacy, which held the most substantial Italian
province, together with a prestige that raised it far above all rivalry.
The rest of Italy, however parcelled, henceforth became but a dependence
upon Spain. Charles V., it must be remembered, achieved his conquest and
confirmed his authority far less as emperor than as the heir of Castile
and Aragon. A Spanish viceroy in Milan and another in Naples, supported
by Rome and by the minor princes who followed the policy dictated to
them from Madrid, were sufficient to preserve the whole peninsula in a
state of somnolent inglorious servitude.

From 1530 until 1796, that is, for a period of nearly three centuries,
the Italians had no history of their own. Their annals are filled with
records of dynastic changes and redistributions of territory, consequent
upon treaties signed by foreign powers, in the settlement of quarrels
which no wise concerned the people. Italy only too often became the
theatre of desolating and distracting wars. But these wars were fought
for the most part by alien armies; the points at issue were decided
beyond the Alps; the gains accrued to royal families whose names were
unpronounceable by southern tongues. The affairs of Europe during the
years when Habsburg and Bourbon fought their domestic battles with the
blood of noble races may teach grave lessons to all thoughtful men of
our days, but none bitterer, none fraught with more insulting
recollections, than to the Italian people, who were haggled over like
dumb driven cattle in the mart of chaffering kings. We cannot wholly
acquit the Italians of their share of blame. When they might have won
national independence, after their warfare with the Swabian emperors,
they let the golden opportunity slip. Pampered with commercial
prosperity, eaten to the core with inter-urban rivalries, they submitted
to despots, renounced the use of arms, and offered themselves in the
hour of need, defenceless and disunited to the shock of puissant
nations. That they had created modern civilization for Europe availed
them nothing. Italy, intellectually first among the peoples, was now
politically and practically last; and nothing to her historian is more
heart-rending than to watch the gradual extinction of her spirit in this
age of slavery.

Pontificate of Paul III.

In 1534 Alessandro Farnese, who owed his elevation to his sister Giulia,
one of Alexander VI.'s mistresses, took the tiara with the title of Paul
III. It was his ambition to create a duchy for his family; and with this
object he gave Parma and Piacenza to his son Pier Luigi. After much
wrangling between the French and Spanish parties, the duchy was
confirmed in 1586 to Ottaviano Farnese and his son Alessandro, better
known as Philip II.'s general, the prince of Parma. Alessandro's
descendants reigned in Parma and Piacenza till the year 1731. Paul
III.'s pontificate was further marked by important changes in the
church, all of which confirmed the spiritual autocracy of Rome. In 1540
this pope approved of Loyola's foundation, and secured the powerful
militia of the Jesuit order. The Inquisition was established with almost
unlimited powers in Italy, and the press was placed under its
jurisdiction. Thus free thought received a check, by which not only
ecclesiastical but political tyrants knew how to profit. Henceforth it
was impossible to publish or to utter a word which might offend the
despots of church or state; and the Italians had to amuse their leisure
with the polite triflings of academics. In 1545 a council was opened at
Trent for the reformation of church discipline and the promulgation of
orthodox doctrine. The decrees of this council defined Roman Catholicism
against the Reformation; and, while failing to regenerate morality, they
enforced a hypocritical observance of public decency. Italy to outer
view put forth blossoms of hectic and hysterical piety, though at the
core her clergy and her aristocracy were more corrupt than ever.

Reign of Philip II.

In 1556 Philip II., by the abdication of his father Charles V., became
king of Spain. He already wore the crown of the Two Sicilies, and ruled
the duchy of Milan. In the next year Ferdinand, brother of Charles, was
elected emperor. The French, meanwhile, had not entirely abandoned their
claims on Italy. Gian Pietro Caraffa, who was made pope in 1555 with the
name of Paul IV., endeavoured to revive the ancient papal policy of
leaning upon France. He encouraged the duke of Guise to undertake the
conquest of Naples, as Charles of Anjou had been summoned by his
predecessors. But such schemes were now obsolete and anachronistic. They
led to a languid lingering Italian campaign, which was settled far
beyond the Alps by Philip's victories over the French at St Quentin and
Gravelines. The peace of Câteau Cambresis, signed in 1559, left the
Spanish monarch undisputed lord of Italy. Of free commonwealths there
now survived only Venice, which, together with Spain, achieved for
Europe the victory of Lepanto in 1573; Genoa, which, after the
ineffectual Fieschi revolution in 1547, abode beneath the rule of the
great Doria family, and held a feeble sway in Corsica; and the two
insignificant republics of Lucca and San Marino.

The future hope of Italy, however, was growing in a remote and hitherto
neglected corner. Emmanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, represented the
oldest and not the least illustrious reigning house in Europe, and his
descendants were destined to achieve for Italy the independence which no
other power or prince had given her since the fall of ancient Rome. (See
SAVOY, HOUSE OF.)

When Emmanuel Philibert succeeded to his father Charles III. in 1553, he
was a duke without a duchy. But the princes of the house of Savoy were a
race of warriors; and what Emmanuel Philibert lost as sovereign he
regained as captain of adventure in the service of his cousin Philip II.
The treaty of Câteau Cambresis in 1559, and the evacuation of the
Piedmontese cities held by French and Spanish troops in 1574, restored
his state. By removing the capital from Chambéry to Turin, he completed
the transformation of the dukes of Savoy from Burgundian into Italian
sovereigns. They still owned Savoy beyond the Alps, the plains of
Bresse, and the maritime province of Nice.

Emmanuel Philibert was succeeded by his son Charles Emmanuel I., who
married Catherine, a daughter of Philip II. He seized the first
opportunity of annexing Saluzzo, which had been lost to Savoy in the
last two reigns, and renewed the disastrous policy of his grandfather
Charles III. by invading Geneva and threatening Provence. Henry IV. of
France forced him in 1601 to relinquish Bresse and his Burgundian
possessions. In return he was allowed to keep Saluzzo. All hopes of
conquest on the transalpine side were now quenched; but the keys of
Italy had been given to the dukes of Savoy; and their attention was
still further concentrated upon Lombard conquests. Charles Emmanuel now
attempted the acquisition of Montferrat, which was soon to become vacant
by the death of Francesco Gonzaga, who held it together with Mantua. In
order to secure this territory, he went to war with Philip III. of
Spain, and allied himself with Venice and the Grisons to expel the
Spaniards from the Valtelline. When the male line of the Gonzaga family
expired in 1627, Charles, duke of Nevers, claimed Mantua and Montferrat
in right of his wife, the only daughter of the last duke. Charles
Emmanuel was now checkmated by France, as he had formerly been by Spain.
The total gains of all his strenuous endeavours amounted to the
acquisition of a few places on the borders of Montferrat.

Extinction of old ducal families.

Not only the Gonzagas, but several other ancient ducal families, died
out about the date which we have reached. The legitimate line of the
Estensi ended in 1597 by the death of Alfonso II., the last duke of
Ferrara. He left his domains to a natural relative, Cesare d'Este, who
would in earlier days have inherited without dispute, for bastardy had
been no bar on more than one occasion in the Este pedigree. Urban VIII.,
however, put in a claim to Ferrara, which, it will be remembered, had
been recognized a papal fief in 1530. Cesare d'Este had to content
himself with Modena and Reggio, where his descendants reigned as dukes
till 1794. Under the same pontiff, the Holy See absorbed the duchy of
Urbino on the death of Francesco Maria II., the last representative of
Montefeltro and Della Rovere. The popes were now masters of a fine and
compact territory, embracing no inconsiderable portion of Countess
Matilda's legacy, in addition to Pippin's donation, and the patrimony of
St Peter. Meanwhile Spanish fanaticism, the suppression of the Huguenots
in France and the Catholic policy of Austria combined to strengthen
their authority as pontiffs. Urban's predecessor, Paul V., advanced so
far as to extend his spiritual jurisdiction over Venice, which, up to
the date of his election (1605), had resisted all encroachments of the
Holy See. Venice offered the single instance in Italy of a national
church. The republic managed the tithes, and the clergy acknowledged no
chief above their own patriarch. Paul V. now forced the Venetians to
admit his ecclesiastical supremacy; but they refused to readmit the
Jesuits, who had been expelled in 1606. This, if we do not count the
proclamation of James I. of England (1604), was the earliest instance of
the order's banishment from a state where it had proved disloyal to the
commonwealth.

Decline of Venice and Spain.

Venice rapidly declined throughout the 17th century. The loss of trade
consequent upon the closing of Egypt and the Levant, together with the
discovery of America and the sea-route to the Indies, had dried up her
chief source of wealth. Prolonged warfare with the Ottomans, who forced
her to abandon Candia in 1669, as they had robbed her of Cyprus in 1570,
still further crippled her resources. Yet she kept the Adriatic free of
pirates, notably by suppressing the sea-robbers called Uscocchi
(1601-1617), maintained herself in the Ionian Islands, and in 1684 added
one more to the series of victorious episodes which render her annals so
romantic. In that year Francesco Morosini, upon whose tomb we still may
read the title Peloponnesiacus, wrested the whole of the Morea from the
Turks. But after his death in 1715 the republic relaxed her hold upon
his conquests. The Venetian nobles abandoned themselves to indolence and
vice. Many of them fell into the slough of pauperism, and were saved
from starvation by public doles. Though the signory still made a brave
show upon occasions of parade, it was clear that the state was rotten to
the core, and sinking into the decrepitude of dotage. The Spanish
monarchy at the same epoch dwindled with apparently less reason.
Philip's Austrian successors reduced it to the rank of a secondary
European power. This decline of vigour was felt, with the customary
effects of discord and bad government, in Lower Italy. The revolt of
Masaniello in Naples (1647), followed by rebellions at Palermo and
Messina, which placed Sicily for a while in the hands of Louis XIV.
(1676-1678) were symptoms of progressive anarchy. The population, ground
down by preposterous taxes, ill-used as only the subjects of Spaniards,
Turks or Bourbons are handled, rose in blind exasperation against their
oppressors. It is impossible to attach political importance to these
revolutions; nor did they bring the people any appreciable good. The
destinies of Italy were decided in the cabinets and on the battlefields
of northern Europe. A Bourbon at Versailles, a Habsburg at Vienna, or a
thick-lipped Lorrainer, with a stroke of his pen, wrote off province
against province, regarding not the populations who had bled for him or
thrown themselves upon his mercy.

Wars of Succession.

This inglorious and passive chapter of Italian history is continued to
the date of the French Revolution with the records of three dynastic
wars, the war of the Spanish succession, the war of the Polish
succession, the war of the Austrian succession, followed by three
European treaties, which brought them respectively to diplomatic
terminations. Italy, handled and rehandled, settled and resettled, upon
each of these occasions, changed masters without caring or knowing what
befell the principals in any one of the disputes. Humiliating to human
nature in general as are the annals of the 18th-century campaigns in
Europe, there is no point of view from which they appear in a light so
tragi-comic as from that afforded by Italian history. The system of
setting nations by the ears with the view of settling the quarrels of a
few reigning houses was reduced to absurdity when the people, as in
these cases, came to be partitioned and exchanged without the assertion
or negation of a single principle affecting their interests or rousing
their emotions.

Spanish Succession.

In 1700 Charles II. died, and with him ended the Austrian family in
Spain. Louis XIV. claimed the throne for Philip, duke of Anjou. Charles,
archduke of Austria, opposed him. The dispute was fought out in
Flanders; but Lombardy felt the shock, as usual, of the French and
Austrian dynasties. The French armies were more than once defeated by
Prince Eugene of Savoy, who drove them out of Italy in 1707. Therefore,
in the peace of Utrecht (1713), the services of the house of Savoy had
to be duly recognized. Victor Amadeus II. received Sicily with the title
of king. Montferrat and Alessandria were added to his northern
provinces, and his state was recognized as independent. Charles of
Austria, now emperor, took Milan, Mantua, Naples and Sardinia for his
portion of the Italian spoil. Philip founded the Bourbon line of Spanish
kings, renouncing in Italy all that his Habsburg predecessors had
gained. Discontented with this diminution of the Spanish heritage,
Philip V. married Elisabetta Farnese, heiress to the last duke of Parma,
in 1714. He hoped to secure this duchy for his son, Don Carlos; and
Elisabetta further brought with her a claim to the grand-duchy of
Tuscany, which would soon become vacant by the death of Gian Gastone de'
Medici. After this marriage Philip broke the peace of Europe by invading
Sardinia. The Quadruple Alliance was formed, and the new king of Sicily
was punished for his supposed adherence to Philip V. by the forced
exchange of Sicily for the island of Sardinia. It was thus that in 1720
the house of Savoy assumed the regal title which it bore until the
declaration of the Italian kingdom in the last century. Victor Amadeus
II.'s reign was of great importance in the history of his state. Though
a despot, as all monarchs were obliged to be at that date, he reigned
with prudence, probity and zeal for the welfare of his subjects. He took
public education out of the hands of the Jesuits, which, for the future
development of manliness in his dominions, was a measure of incalculable
value. The duchy of Savoy in his days became a kingdom, and Sardinia,
though it seemed a poor exchange for Sicily, was a far less perilous
possession than the larger and wealthier island would have been. In 1730
Victor Amadeus abdicated in favour of his son Charles Emmanuel III.
Repenting of this step, he subsequently attempted to regain Turin, but
was imprisoned in the castle of Rivoli, where he ended his days in 1732.

Polish Succession.

The War of the Polish Succession which now disturbed Europe is only
important in Italian history because the treaty of Vienna in 1738
settled the disputed affairs of the duchies of Parma and Tuscany. The
duke Antonio Farnese died in 1731; the grand-duke Gian Gastone de'
Medici died in 1737. In the duchy of Parma Don Carlos had already been
proclaimed. But he was now transferred to the Two Sicilies, while
Francis of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, took Tuscany and
Parma. Milan and Mantua remained in the hands of the Austrians. On this
occasion Charles Emmanuel acquired Tortona and Novara.

Austrian Succession.

Worse complications ensued for the Italians when the emperor Charles
VI., father of Maria Theresa, died in 1740. The three branches of the
Bourbon house, ruling in France, Spain and the Sicilies, joined with
Prussia, Bavaria and the kingdom of Sardinia to despoil Maria Theresa of
her heritage. Lombardy was made the seat of war; and here the king of
Sardinia acted as in some sense the arbiter of the situation. After war
broke out, he changed sides and supported the Habsburg-Lorraine party.
At first, in 1745, the Sardinians were defeated by the French and
Spanish troops. But Francis of Lorraine, elected emperor in that year,
sent an army to the king's support, which in 1746 obtained a signal
victory over the Bourbons at Piacenza. Charles Emmanuel now threatened
Genoa. The Austrian soldiers already held the town. But the citizens
expelled them, and the republic kept her independence. In 1748 the
treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which put an end to the War of the Austrian
Succession, once more redivided Italy. Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla
were formed into a duchy for Don Philip, brother of Charles III. of the
Two Sicilies, and son of Philip V. of Spain. Charles III. was confirmed
in his kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Austrians kept Milan and
Tuscany. The duchy of Modena was placed under the protection of the
French. So was Genoa, which in 1755, after Paoli's insurrection against
the misgovernment of the republic, ceded her old domain of Corsica to
France.

Forty-four years' peace.

From the date of this settlement until 1792, Italy enjoyed a period of
repose and internal amelioration under her numerous paternal despots. It
became the fashion during these forty-four years of peace to encourage
the industrial population and to experimentalize in economical reforms.
The Austrian government in Lombardy under Maria Theresa was
characterized by improved agriculture, regular administration, order,
reformed taxation and increased education. A considerable amount of
local autonomy was allowed, and dependence on Vienna was very slight and
not irksome. The nobles and the clergy were rich and influential, but
kept in order by the civil power. There was no feeling of nationality,
but the people were prosperous, enjoyed profound peace and were placidly
content with the existing order of things. On the death of Maria Theresa
in 1780, the emperor Joseph II. instituted much wider reforms. Feudal
privileges were done away with, clerical influence diminished and many
monasteries and convents suppressed, the criminal law rendered more
humane and torture abolished largely as a result of G. Beccaria's famous
pamphlet _Dei delitti e delle pene_. At the same time Joseph's
administration was more arbitrary, and local autonomy was to some extent
curtailed. His anti-clerical laws produced some ill-feeling among the
more devout part of the population. On the whole the Austrian rule in
pre-revolutionary days was beneficial and far from oppressive, and
helped Lombardy to recover from the ill-effects of the Spanish
domination. It did little for the moral education of the people, but the
same criticism applies more or less to all the European governments of
the day. The emperor Francis I. ruled the grand-duchy of Tuscany by
lieutenants until his death in 1765, when it was given, as an
independent state, to his second son, Peter Leopold. The reign of this
duke was long remembered as a period of internal prosperity, wise
legislation and important public enterprise. Leopold, among other useful
works, drained the Val di Chiana, and restored those fertile upland
plains to agriculture. In 1790 he succeeded to the empire, and left
Tuscany to his son Ferdinand. The kingdom of Sardinia was administered
upon similar principles, but with less of geniality. Charles Emmanuel
made his will law, and erased the remnants of free institutions from his
state. At the same time he wisely followed his father's policy with
regard to education and the church. This is perhaps the best that can be
said of a king who incarnated the stolid absolutism of the period. From
this date, however, we are able to trace the revival of independent
thought among the Italians. The European ferment of ideas which preceded
the French Revolution expressed itself in men like Alfieri, the fierce
denouncer of tyrants, Beccaria, the philosopher of criminal
jurisprudence, Volta, the physicist, and numerous political economists
of Tuscany. Moved partly by external influences and partly by a slow
internal reawakening, the people was preparing for the efforts of the
19th century. The papacy, during this period, had to reconsider the
question of the Jesuits, who made themselves universally odious, not
only in Italy, but also in France and Spain. In the pontificate of
Clement XIII. they ruled the Vatican, and almost succeeded in embroiling
the pope with the concerted Bourbon potentates of Europe. His successor,
Clement XIV. suppressed the order altogether by a brief of 1773.
(J. A. S.)

D. ITALY IN THE NAPOLEONIC PERIOD, 1796-1814

The campaign of 1796 which led to the awakening of the Italian people to
a new consciousness of unity and strength is detailed in the article
NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS. Here we can attempt only a general survey of the
events, political, civic and social, which heralded the _Risorgimento_
in its first phase. It is desirable in the first place to realize the
condition of Italy at the time when the irruption of the French and the
expulsion of the Austrians opened up a new political vista for that
oppressed and divided people.

Influence of the French Revolution.

Bonaparte in Italy.

For many generations Italy had been bandied to and fro between the
Habsburgs and the Bourbons. The decline of French influence at the close
of the reign of Louis XIV. left the Habsburgs and the Spanish Bourbons
without serious rivals. The former possessed the rich duchies of Milan
(including Mantua) and Tuscany; while through a marriage alliance with
the house of Este of Modena (the Archduke Ferdinand had married the
heiress of Modena) its influence over that duchy was supreme. It also
had a few fiefs in Piedmont and in Genoese territory. By marrying her
daughter, Maria Amelia, to the young duke of Parma, and another
daughter, Maria Carolina, to Ferdinand of Naples, Maria Theresa
consolidated Habsburg influence in the north and south of the peninsula.
The Spanish Bourbons held Naples and Sicily, as well as the duchy of
Parma. Of the nominally independent states the chief were the kingdom
of Sardinia, ruled over by the house of Savoy, and comprising Piedmont,
the isle of Sardinia and nominally Savoy and Nice, though the two
provinces last named had virtually been lost to the monarchy since the
campaign of 1793. Equally extensive, but less important in the political
sphere, were the Papal States and Venetia, the former torpid under the
obscurantist rule of pope and cardinals, the latter enervated by luxury
and the policy of unmanly complaisance long pursued by doge and council.
The ancient rival of Venice, Genoa, was likewise far gone in decline.
The small states, Lucca and San Marino, completed the map of Italy. The
worst governed part of the peninsula was the south, where feudalism lay
heavily on the cultivators and corruption pervaded all ranks. Milan and
Piedmont were comparatively well governed; but repugnance to Austrian
rule in the former case, and the contagion of French Jacobinical
opinions in the latter, brought those populations into increasing
hostility to the rulers. The democratic propaganda, which was permeating
all the large towns of the peninsula, then led to the formation of
numerous and powerful clubs and secret societies; and the throne of
Victor Amadeus III., of the house of Savoy, soon began to totter under
the blows delivered by the French troops at the mountain barriers of his
kingdom and under the insidious assaults of the friends of liberty at
Turin. Plotting was rife at Milan, as also at Bologna, where the memory
of old liberties predisposed men to cast off clerical rule and led to
the first rising on behalf of Italian liberty in the year 1794. At
Palermo the Sicilians struggled hard to establish a republic in place of
the odious government of an alien dynasty. The anathemas of the pope,
the bravery of Piedmontese and Austrians, and the subsidies of Great
Britain failed to keep the league of Italian princes against France
intact. The grand-duke of Tuscany was the first of the European
sovereigns who made peace with, and recognized the French republic,
early in 1795. The first fortnight of Napoleon's campaign of 1796
detached Sardinia from alliance with Austria and England. The enthusiasm
of the Italians for the young Corsican "liberator" greatly helped his
progress. Two months later Ferdinand of Naples sought for an armistice,
the central duchies were easily overrun, and, early in 1797, Pope Pius
VI. was fain to sign terms of peace with Bonaparte at Tolentino,
practically ceding the northern part of his states, known as the
Legations. The surrender of the last Habsburg stronghold, Mantua, on the
2nd of February 1797 left the field clear for the erection of new
political institutions.

The Cispadane Republic.

Already the men of Reggio, Modena and Bologna had declared for a
democratic policy, in which feudalism and clerical rule should have no
place, and in which manhood suffrage, together with other rights
promised by Bonaparte to the men of Milan in May 1796, should form the
basis of a new order of things. In taking this step the Modenese and
Romagnols had the encouragement of Bonaparte, despite the orders which
the French directory sent to him in a contrary sense. The result was the
formation of an assembly at Modena which abolished feudal dues and
customs, declared for manhood suffrage and established the Cispadane
Republic (October 1796).

The Cisalpine Republic.

The close of Bonaparte's victorious campaign against the Archduke
Charles in 1797 enabled him to mature those designs respecting Venice
which are detailed in the article NAPOLEON. On a far higher level was
his conduct towards the Milanese. While the French directory saw in that
province little more than a district which might be plundered and
bargained for, Bonaparte, though by no means remiss in the exaction of
gold and of artistic treasures, was laying the foundation of a friendly
republic. During his sojourn at the castle of Montebello or Mombello,
near Milan, he commissioned several of the leading men of northern Italy
to draw up a project of constitution and list of reforms for that
province. Meanwhile he took care to curb the excesses of the Italian
Jacobins and to encourage the Moderates, who were favourable to the
French connexion as promising a guarantee against Austrian domination
and internal anarchy. He summed up his conduct in the letter of the 8th
of May 1797 to the French directory, "I cool the hot heads here and warm
the cool ones." The Transpadane Republic, or, as it was soon called, the
Cisalpine Republic, began its organized life on the 9th of July 1797,
with a brilliant festival at Milan. The constitution was modelled on
that of the French directory, and, lest there should be a majority of
clerical or Jacobinical deputies, the French Republic through its
general, Bonaparte, nominated and appointed the first deputies and
administrators of the new government. In the same month it was joined by
the Cispadane Republic; and the terms of the treaty of Campo Formio
(October 17, 1797), while fatal to the political life of Venice, awarded
to this now considerable state the Venetian territories west of the
river Adige. A month later, under the pretence of stilling the civil
strifes in the Valtelline, Bonaparte absorbed that Swiss district in the
Cisalpine Republic, which thus included all the lands between Como and
Verona on the north, and Rimini on the south.

End of the Venetian Republic.

Early in the year 1798 the Austrians, in pursuance of the scheme of
partition agreed on at Campo Formio, entered Venice and brought to an
end its era of independence which had lasted some 1100 years. Venice
with its mainland territories east of the Adige, inclusive of Istria and
Dalmatia, went to the Habsburgs, while the Venetian isles of the
Adriatic (the Ionian Isles) and the Venetian fleet went to strengthen
France for that eastern expedition on which Bonaparte had already set
his heart. Venice not only paid the costs of the war to the two chief
belligerents, but her naval resources also helped to launch the young
general on his career of eastern adventure. Her former rival, Genoa, had
also been compelled, in June 1797, to bow before the young conqueror,
and had undergone at his hands a remodelling on the lines already
followed at Milan. The new Genoese republic, French in all but name, was
renamed the Ligurian Republic.

French occupation of Rome.

Before he set sail for Egypt, the French had taken possession of Rome.
Already masters of the papal fortress of Ancona, they began openly to
challenge the pope's authority at the Eternal City itself. Joseph
Bonaparte, then French envoy to the Vatican, encouraged democratic
manifestations; and one of them, at the close of 1797, led to a scuffle
in which a French general, Duphot, was killed. The French directory at
once ordered its general, Berthier, to march to Rome: the Roman
democrats proclaimed a republic on the 15th of February 1798, and on
their invitation Berthier and his troops marched in. The pope, Pius VI.,
was forthwith haled away to Siena and a year later to Valence in the
south of France, where he died. Thus fell the temporal power. The
"liberators" of Rome thereupon proceeded to plunder the city in a way
which brought shame on their cause and disgrace (perhaps not wholly
deserved) on the general left in command, Masséna.

Naples.

The Parthenopaean Republic.

These events brought revolution to the gates of the kingdom of Naples,
the worst-governed part of Italy, where the boorish king, Ferdinand IV.
(_il rè lazzarone_, he was termed), and his whimsical consort, Maria
Carolina, scarcely held in check the discontent of their own subjects. A
British fleet under Nelson, sent into the Mediterranean in May 1798
primarily for their defence, checkmated the designs of Bonaparte in
Egypt, and then, returning to Naples, encouraged that court to adopt a
spirited policy. It is now known that the influence of Nelson and of the
British ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, and Lady Hamilton precipitated
the rupture between Naples and France. The results were disastrous. The
Neapolitan troops at first occupied Rome, but, being badly handled by
their leader, the Austrian general, Mack, they were soon scattered in
flight; and the Republican troops under General Championnet, after
crushing the stubborn resistance of the lazzaroni, made their way into
Naples and proclaimed the Parthenopaean Republic (January 23, 1799). The
Neapolitan Democrats chose five of their leading men to be directors,
and tithes and feudal dues and customs were abolished. Much good work
was done by the Republicans during their brief tenure of power, but it
soon came to an end owing to the course of events which favoured a
reaction against France. The directors of Paris, not content with
overrunning and plundering Switzerland, had outraged German sentiment in
many ways. Further, at the close of 1798 they virtually compelled the
young king of Sardinia, Charles Emmanuel IV., to abdicate at Turin. He
retired to the island of Sardinia, while the French despoiled Piedmont,
thereby adding fuel to the resentment rapidly growing against them in
every part of Europe.

Suvarov in Italy.

The outcome of it all was the War of the Second Coalition, in which
Russia, Austria, Great Britain, Naples and some secondary states of
Germany took part. The incursion of an Austro-Russian army, led by that
strange but magnetic being, Suvarov, decided the campaign in northern
Italy. The French, poorly handled by Schérer and Sérurier, were
everywhere beaten, especially at Magnano (April 5) and Cassano (April
27). Milan and Turin fell before the allies, and Moreau, who took over
the command, had much difficulty in making his way to the Genoese
coast-line. There he awaited the arrival of Macdonald with the army of
Naples. That general, Championnet's successor, had been compelled by
these reverses and by the threatening pressure of Nelson's fleet to
evacuate Naples and central Italy. In many parts the peasants and
townsfolk, enraged by the licence of the French, hung on his flank and
rear. The republics set up by the French at Naples, Rome and Milan
collapsed as soon as the French troops retired; and a reaction in favour
of clerical and Austrian influence set in with great violence. For the
events which then occurred at Naples, so compromising to the reputation
of Nelson, see NELSON and NAPLES. Sir William Hamilton was subsequently
recalled in a manner closely resembling a disgrace, and his place was
taken by Paget, who behaved with more dignity and tact.

Meanwhile Macdonald, after struggling through central Italy, had
defeated an Austrian force at Modena (June 12, 1799), but Suvarov was
able by swift movements utterly to overthrow him at the Trebbia (June
17-19). The wreck of his force drifted away helplessly towards Genoa. A
month later the ambitious young general, Joubert, who took over Moreau's
command and rallied part of Macdonald's following, was utterly routed by
the Austro-Russian army at Novi (August 15) with the loss of 12,000 men.
Joubert perished in the battle. The growing friction between Austria and
Russia led to the transference of Suvarov and his Russians to
Switzerland, with results which were to be fatal to the allies in that
quarter. But in Italy the Austrian successes continued. Melas defeated
Championnet near Coni on the 4th of November; and a little later the
French garrisons at Ancona and Coni surrendered. The tricolour, which
floated triumphantly over all the strongholds of Italy early in the
year, at its close waved only over Genoa, where Masséna prepared for a
stubborn defence. Nice and Savoy also seemed at the mercy of the
invaders. Everywhere the old order of things was restored. The death of
the aged Pope Pius VI. at Valence (August 29, 1799) deprived the French
of whatever advantage they had hoped to gain by dragging him into exile;
on the 24th of March 1800 the conclave, assembled for greater security
on the island of San Giorgio at Venice, elected a new pontiff, Pius VII.

Campaign of Marengo.

Treaty of Lunéville.

Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte returned from Egypt and
landed at Fréjus. The contrast presented by his triumphs, whether real
or imaginary, to the reverses sustained by the armies of the French
directory, was fatal to that body and to popular institutions in France.
After the _coup d'état_ of Brumaire (November 1799) he, as First Consul,
began to organize an expedition against the Austrians (Russia having now
retired from the coalition), in northern Italy. The campaign culminating
at Marengo was the result. By that triumph (due to Desaix and Kellermann
rather than directly to him), Bonaparte consolidated his own position in
France and again laid Italy at his feet. The Austrian general, Melas,
signed an armistice whereby he was to retire with his army beyond the
river Mincio. Ten days earlier, namely on the 4th of June, Masséna had
been compelled by hunger to capitulate at Genoa; but the success at
Marengo, followed up by that of Macdonald in north Italy, and Moreau at
Hohenlinden (December 2, 1800), brought the emperor Francis to sue for
peace which was finally concluded at Lunéville on the 9th of February
1801. The Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics (reconstituted soon after
Marengo) were recognized by Austria on condition that they were
independent of France. The rule of Pius VII. over the Papal States was
admitted; and Italian affairs were arranged much as they were at Campo
Formio: Modena and Tuscany now reverted to French control, their former
rulers being promised compensation in Germany. Naples, easily worsted by
the French, under Miollis, left the British alliance, and made peace by
the treaty of Florence (March 1801), agreeing to withdraw her troops
from the Papal States, to cede Piombino and the Presidii (in Tuscany) to
France and to close her ports to British ships and commerce. King
Ferdinand also had to accept a French garrison at Taranto, and other
points in the south.

Napoleon's reorganization of Italy.

Other changes took place in that year, all of them in favour of France.
By complex and secret bargaining with the court of Madrid, Bonaparte
procured the cession to France of Louisiana, in North America, and
Parma; while the duke of Parma (husband of an infanta of Spain) was
promoted by him to the duchy of Tuscany, now renamed the kingdom of
Etruria. Piedmont was declared to be a military division at the disposal
of France (April 21, 1801); and on the 21st of September 1802,
Bonaparte, then First Consul for life, issued a decree for its
definitive incorporation in the French Republic. About that time, too,
Elba fell into the hands of Napoleon. Piedmont was organized in six
departments on the model of those of France, and a number of French
veterans were settled by Napoleon in and near the fortress of
Alessandria. Besides copying the Roman habit of planting military
colonies, the First Consul imitated the old conquerors of the world by
extending and completing the road-system of his outlying districts,
especially at those important passes, the Mont Cenis and Simplon. He
greatly improved the rough track over the Simplon Pass, so that, when
finished in 1807, it was practicable for artillery. Milan was the
terminus of the road, and the construction of the Foro Buonaparte and
the completion of the cathedral added dignity to the Lombard capital.
The Corniche road was improved; and public works in various parts of
Piedmont, and the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics attested the
foresight and wisdom of the great organizer of industry and quickener of
human energies. The universities of Pavia and Bologna were reopened and
made great progress in this time of peace and growing prosperity.
Somewhat later the Pavia canal was begun in order to connect Lake Como
with the Adriatic for barge-traffic.

The personal nature of the tie binding Italy to France was illustrated
by a curious incident of the winter of 1802-1803. Bonaparte, now First
Consul for life, felt strong enough to impose his will on the Cisalpine
Republic and to set at defiance one of the stipulations of the treaty of
Lunéville. On the pretext of consolidating that republic, he invited 450
of its leading men to come to Lyons to a _consulta_. In reality he and
his agents had already provided for the passing of proposals which were
agreeable to him. The deputies having been dazzled by fêtes and reviews,
Talleyrand and Marescalchi, ministers of foreign affairs at Paris and
Milan, plied them with hints as to the course to be followed by the
_consulta_; and, despite the rage of the more democratic of their
number, everything corresponded to the wishes of the First Consul. It
remained to find a chief. Very many were in favour of Count Melzi, a
Lombard noble, who had been chief of the executive at Milan; but again
Talleyrand and French agents set to work on behalf of their master, with
the result that he was elected president for ten years. He accepted that
office because, as he frankly informed the deputies, he had found no one
who "for his services rendered to his country, his authority with the
people and his separation from party has deserved such an office."
Melzi was elected vice-president with merely honorary functions. The
constitution comprised a _consulta_ charged with executive duties, a
legislative body of 150 members and a court charged with the maintenance
of the fundamental laws. These three bodies were to be chosen by three
electoral colleges consisting of (a) landed proprietors, (b) learned men
and clerics, (c) merchants and traders, holding their sessions
biennially at Milan, Bologna and Brescia respectively. In practice the
_consulta_ could override the legislature; and, as the _consulta_ was
little more than the organ of the president, the whole constitution may
be pronounced as autocratic as that of France after the changes brought
about by Bonaparte in August 1802. Finally we must note that the
Cisalpine now took the name of the Italian Republic, and that by a
concordat with the pope, Bonaparte regulated its relations to the Holy
See in a manner analogous to that adopted in the famous French concordat
promulgated at Easter 1802 (see CONCORDAT). It remains to add that the
Ligurian Republic and that of Lucca remodelled their constitutions in a
way somewhat similar to that of the Cisalpine.

Kingdom of Italy.

Bonaparte's ascendancy did not pass unchallenged. Many of the Italians
retained their enthusiasm for democracy and national independence. In
1803 movements in these directions took place at Rimini, Brescia and
Bologna; but they were sharply repressed, and most Italians came to
acquiesce in the Napoleonic supremacy as inevitable and indeed
beneficial. The complete disregard shown by Napoleon for one of the
chief conditions of the treaty of Lunéville (February 1801)--that
stipulating for the independence of the Ligurian and Cisalpine
Republics--became more and more apparent every year. Alike in political
and commercial affairs they were for all practical purposes dependencies
of France. Finally, after the proclamation of the French empire (May 18,
1804) Napoleon proposed to place his brother Joseph over the Italian
state, which now took the title of kingdom of Italy. On Joseph
declining, Napoleon finally decided to accept the crown which Melzi,
Marescalchi, Serbelloni and others begged him to assume. Accordingly, on
the 26th of May 1805, in the cathedral at Milan, he crowned himself with
the iron crown of the old Lombard kings, using the traditional formula,
"God gave it me: let him beware who touches it." On the 7th of June he
appointed his step-son, Eugène Beauharnais, to be viceroy. Eugène soon
found that his chief duty was to enforce the will of Napoleon. The
legislature at Milan having ventured to alter some details of taxation,
Eugène received the following rule of conduct from his step-father:
"Your system of government is simple: the emperor wills it to be thus."
Republicanism was now everywhere discouraged. The little republic of
Lucca, along with Piombino, was now awarded as a principality by the
emperor to Elisa Bonaparte and her husband, Bacciocchi.

In June 1805 there came a last and intolerable affront to the emperors
of Austria and Russia, who at that very time were seeking to put bounds
to Napoleon's ambition and to redress the balance of power. The French
emperor, at the supposed request of the doge of Genoa, declared the
Ligurian Republic to be an integral part of the French empire. This
defiance to the sovereigns of Russia and Austria rekindled the flames of
war. The third coalition was formed between Great Britain, Russia and
Austria, Naples soon joining its ranks.

Joseph Bonaparte in Naples.

For the chief events of the ensuing campaigns see Napoleonic Campaigns.
While Masséna pursued the Austrians into their own lands at the close of
1805, Italian forces under Eugène and Gouvion St Cyr (q.v.) held their
ground against allied forces landed at Naples. After Austerlitz
(December 2, 1805) Austria made peace by the treaty of Pressburg, ceding
to the kingdom of Italy her part of Venetia along with the provinces of
Istria and Dalmatia. Napoleon then turned fiercely against Maria
Carolina of Naples upbraiding her with her "perfidy." He sent Joseph
Bonaparte and Masséna southwards with a strong column, compelled the
Anglo-Russian forces to evacuate Naples, and occupied the south of the
peninsula with little opposition except at the fortress of Gaeta. The
Bourbon court sailed away to Palermo, where it remained for eight years
under the protection afforded by the British fleet and a British army of
occupation. On the 15th of February 1806 Joseph Bonaparte entered Naples
in triumph, his troops capturing there two hundred pieces of cannon.
Gaeta, however, held out stoutly against the French. Sir Sidney Smith
with a British squadron captured Capri (February 1806), and the peasants
of the Abruzzi and Calabria soon began to give trouble. Worst of all was
the arrival of a small British force in Calabria under Sir John Stuart,
which beat off with heavy loss an attack imprudently delivered by
General Réynier on level ground near the village of Maida (July 4). The
steady volleys of Kempt's light infantry were fatal to the French, who
fell back in disorder under a bayonet charge of the victors, with the
loss of some 2700 men. Calabria now rose in revolt against King Joseph,
and the peasants dealt out savage reprisals to the French troops. On the
18th of July, however, Gaeta surrendered to Masséna, and that marshal,
now moving rapidly southwards, extricated Réynier, crushed the Bourbon
rising in Calabria with great barbarity, and compelled the British force
to re-embark for Sicily. At Palermo Queen Maria Carolina continued to
make vehement but futile efforts for the overthrow of King Joseph.

It is more important to observe that under Joseph and his ministers or
advisers, including the Frenchmen Roederer, Dumas, Miot de Melito and
the Corsican Saliceti, great progress was made in abolishing feudal laws
and customs, in reforming the judicial procedure and criminal laws on
the model of the _Code Napoléon_, and in attempting the beginnings of
elementary education. More questionable was Joseph's policy in closing
and confiscating the property of 213 of the richer monasteries of the
land. The monks were pensioned off, but though the confiscated property
helped to fill the empty coffers of the state, the measure aroused
widespread alarm and resentment among that superstitious people.

The peace of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) enabled Napoleon to press on his
projects for securing the command of the Mediterranean, thenceforth a
fundamental axiom of his policy. Consequently, in the autumn of 1807 he
urged on Joseph the adoption of vigorous measures for the capture of
Sicily. Already, in the negotiations with England during the summer of
1806, the emperor had shown his sense of the extreme importance of
gaining possession of that island, which indeed caused the breakdown of
the peace proposals then being considered; and now he ordered French
squadrons into the Mediterranean in order to secure Corfu and Sicily.
His plans respecting Corfu succeeded. That island and some of the
adjacent isles fell into the hands of the French (some of them were
captured by British troops in 1809-10); but Sicily remained
unassailable. Capri, however, fell to the French on the 18th of October
1808, shortly after the arrival at Naples of the new king, Murat.

Murat, King of Naples.

This ambitious marshal, brother-in-law of Napoleon, foiled in his hope
of gaining the crown of Spain, received that of Naples in the summer of
1808, Joseph Bonaparte being moved from Naples to Madrid. This
arrangement pleased neither of the relatives of the emperor; but his
will now was law on the continent. Joseph left Naples on the 23rd of May
1808; but it was not until the 6th of September that Joachim Murat made
his entry. A fortnight later his consort Caroline arrived, and soon
showed a vigour and restlessness of spirit which frequently clashed with
the dictates of her brother, the emperor and the showy, unsteady policy
of her consort. The Spanish national rising of 1808 and thereafter the
Peninsular War diverted Napoleon's attention from the affairs of south
Italy. In June 1809, during his campaign against Austria, Sir John
Stuart with an Anglo-Sicilian force sailed northwards, captured Ischia
and threw Murat into great alarm; but on the news of the Austrian defeat
at Wagram, Stuart sailed back again.

Central Italy.

It is now time to turn to the affairs of central Italy. Early in 1808
Napoleon proceeded with plans which he had secretly concerted after the
treaty of Tilsit for transferring the infanta of Spain who, after the
death of her consort, reigned at Florence on behalf of her young son,
Charles Louis, from her kingdom of Etruria to the little principality of
Entre Douro e Minho which he proposed to carve out from the north of
Portugal. Etruria reverted to the French empire, but the Spanish
princess and her son did not receive the promised indemnity. Elisa
Bonaparte and her husband, Bacciocchi, rulers of Lucca and Piombino,
became the heads of the administration in Tuscany, Elisa showing decided
governing capacity.

Napoleon and the Papacy.

Annexation of the Papal States.

The last part of the peninsula to undergo the Gallicizing influence was
the papal dominion. For some time past the relations between Napoleon
and the pope, Pius VII., had been severely strained, chiefly because the
emperor insisted on controlling the church, both in France and in the
kingdom of Italy, in a way inconsistent with the traditions of the
Vatican, but also because the pontiff refused to grant the divorce
between Jerome Bonaparte and the former Miss Patterson on which Napoleon
early in the year 1806 laid so much stress. These and other disputes led
the emperor, as successor of Charlemagne, to treat the pope in a very
highhanded way. "Your Holiness (he wrote) is sovereign of Rome, but I am
its emperor"; and he threatened to annul the presumed "donation" of Rome
by Charlemagne, unless the pope yielded implicit obedience to him in all
temporal affairs. He further exploited the Charlemagne tradition for the
benefit of the continental system, that great engine of commercial war
by which he hoped to assure the ruin of England. This aim prompted the
annexation of Tuscany, and his intervention in the affairs of the Papal
States. To this the pope assented under pressure from Napoleon; but the
latter soon found other pretexts for intervention, and in February 1808
a French column under Miollis occupied Rome, and deposed the papal
authorities. Against this violence Pius VII. protested in vain. Napoleon
sought to push matters to an extreme, and on the 2nd of April he adopted
the rigorous measure of annexing to the kingdom of Italy the papal
provinces of Ancona, Urbino, Macerata and Camerina. This measure, which
seemed to the pious an act of sacrilege, and to Italian patriots an
outrage on the only independent sovereign of the peninsula, sufficed for
the present. The outbreak of war in Spain, followed by the rupture with
Austria in the spring of 1809, distracted the attention of the emperor.
But after the occupation of Vienna the conqueror dated from that capital
on the 17th of May 1809 a decree virtually annexing Rome and the
_Patrimonium Petri_ to the French empire. Here again he cited the action
of Charlemagne, his "august predecessor," who had merely given "certain
domains to the bishops of Rome as fiefs, though Rome did not thereby
cease to be part of his empire."

In reply the pope prepared a bull of excommunication against those who
should infringe the prerogatives of the Holy See in this matter.
Thereupon the French general, Miollis, who still occupied Rome, caused
the pope to be arrested and carried him away northwards into Tuscany,
thence to Savona; finally he was taken, at Napoleon's orders, to
Fontainebleau. Thus, a second time, fell the temporal power of the
papacy. By an imperial decree of the 17th of February 1810, Rome and the
neighbouring districts, including Spoleto, became part of the French
empire. Rome thenceforth figured as its second city, and entered upon a
new life under the administration of French officials. The Roman
territory was divided into two departments--the Tiber and Trasimenus;
the _Code Napoléon_ was introduced, public works were set on foot and
great advance was made in the material sphere. Nevertheless the
harshness with which the emperor treated the Roman clergy and suppressed
the monasteries caused deep resentment to the orthodox.

Character of Napoleon's rule.

Collapse of Napoleon's rule.

There is no need to detail the fortunes of the Napoleonic states in
Italy. One and all they underwent the influences emanating from Paris;
and in respect to civil administration, law, judicial procedure,
education and public works, they all experienced great benefits, the
results of which never wholly disappeared. On the other hand, they
suffered from the rigorous measures of the continental system, which
seriously crippled trade at the ports and were not compensated by the
increased facilities for trade with France which Napoleon opened up. The
drain of men to supply his armies in Germany, Spain and Russia was also
a serious loss. A powerful Italian corps marched under Eugène
Beauharnais to Moscow, and distinguished itself at Malo-Jaroslavitz, as
also during the horrors of the retreat in the closing weeks of 1812. It
is said that out of 27,000 Italians who entered Russia with Eugène, only
333 saw their country again. That campaign marked the beginning of the
end for the Napoleonic domination in Italy as elsewhere. Murat, left in
command of the Grand Army at Vilna, abandoned his charge and in the next
year made overtures to the allies who coalesced against Napoleon. For
his vacillations at this time and his final fate, see Murat. Here it
must suffice to say that the uncertainty caused by his policy in
1813-1814 had no small share in embarrassing Napoleon and in
precipitating the downfall of his power in Italy. Eugène Beauharnais,
viceroy of the kingdom of Italy, showed both constancy and courage; but
after the battle of Leipzig (October 16-19, 1813) his power crumbled
away under the assaults of the now victorious Austrians. By an
arrangement with Bavaria, they were able to march through Tirol and down
the valley of the Adige in force, and overpowered the troops of Eugène
whose position was fatally compromised by the defection of Murat and the
dissensions among the Italians. Very many of them, distrusting both of
these kings, sought to act independently in favour of an Italian
republic. Lord William Bentinck with an Anglo-Sicilian force landed at
Leghorn on the 8th of March 1814, and issued a proclamation to the
Italians bidding them rise against Napoleon in the interests of their
own freedom. A little later he gained possession of Genoa. Amidst these
schisms the defence of Italy collapsed. On the 16th of April 1814
Eugène, on hearing of Napoleon's overthrow at Paris, signed an armistice
at Mantua by which he was enabled to send away the French troops beyond
the Alps and entrust himself to the consideration of the allies. The
Austrians, under General Bellegarde, entered Milan without resistance;
and this event precluded the restoration of the old political order.

The arrangements made by the allies in accordance with the treaty of
Paris (June 12, 1814) and the Final Act of the congress of Vienna (June
9, 1815), imposed on Italy boundaries which, roughly speaking,
corresponded to those of the pre-Napoleonic era. To the kingdom of
Sardinia, now reconstituted under Victor Emmanuel I., France ceded its
old provinces, Savoy and Nice; and the allies, especially Great Britain
and Austria, insisted on the addition to that monarchy of the
territories of the former republic of Genoa, in respect of which the
king took the title of duke of Genoa, in order to strengthen it for the
duty of acting as a buffer state between France and the smaller states
of central Italy. Austria recovered the Milanese, and all the
possessions of the old Venetian Republic on the mainland, including
Istria and Dalmatia. The Ionian Islands, formerly belonging to Venice,
were, by a treaty signed at Paris on the 5th of November 1815, placed
under the protection of Great Britain. By an instrument signed on the
24th of April 1815, the Austrian territories in north Italy were erected
into the kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia, which, though an integral part of
the Austrian empire, was to enjoy a separate administration, the symbol
of its separate individuality being the coronation of the emperors with
the ancient iron crown of Lombardy ("Proclamation de l'empereur
d'Autriche, &c.," April 7, 1815, _State Papers_, ii. 906). Francis IV.,
son of the archduke Ferdinand of Austria and Maria Beatrice, daughter of
Ercole Rinaldo, the last of the Estensi, was reinstated as duke of
Modena. Parma and Piacenza were assigned to Marie Louise, daughter of
the Austrian emperor and wife of Napoleon, on behalf of her son, the
little Napoleon, but by subsequent arrangements (1816-1817) the duchy
was to revert at her death to the Bourbons of Parma, then reigning at
Lucca. Tuscany was restored to the grand-duke Ferdinand III. of
Habsburg-Lorraine. The duchy of Lucca was given to Marie Louise of
Bourbon-Parma, who, at the death of Marie Louise of Austria, would
return to Parma, when Lucca would be handed over to Tuscany. The pope,
Pius VII., who had long been kept under restraint by Napoleon at
Fontainebleau, returned to Rome in May 1814, and was recognized by the
congress of Vienna (not without some demur on the part of Austria) as
the sovereign of all the former possessions of the Holy See. Ferdinand
IV. of Naples, not long after the death of his consort, Maria Carolina,
in Austria, returned from Sicily to take possession of his dominions on
the mainland. He received them back in their entirety at the hands of
the powers, who recognized his new title of Ferdinand I. of the Two
Sicilies. The rash attempt of Murat in the autumn of 1815, which led to
his death at Pizzo in Calabria, enabled the Bourbon dynasty to crush
malcontents with all the greater severity. The reaction, which was dull
and heavy in the dominions of the pope and of Victor Emmanuel,
systematically harsh in the Austrian states of the north, and
comparatively mild in Parma and Tuscany, excited the greatest loathing
in southern Italy and Sicily, because there it was directed by a dynasty
which had aroused feelings of hatred mingled with contempt.

There were special reasons why Sicily should harbour these feelings
against the Bourbons. During eight years (1806-1814) the chief places of
the island had been garrisoned by British troops; and the commander of
the force which upheld the tottering rule of Ferdinand at Palermo
naturally had great authority. The British government, which awarded a
large annual subsidy to the king and queen at Palermo, claimed to have
some control over the administration. Lord William Bentinck finally took
over large administrative powers, seeing that Ferdinand, owing to his
dulness, and Maria Carolina, owing to her very suspicious intrigues with
Napoleon, could never be trusted. The contest between the royal power
and that of the Sicilian estates threatened to bring matters to a
deadlock, until in 1812, under the impulse of Lord William Bentinck, a
constitution modelled largely on that of England was passed by the
estates. After the retirement of the British troops in 1814 the
constitution lapsed, and the royal authority became once more absolute.
But the memory of the benefits conferred by "the English constitution"
remained fresh and green amidst the arid waste of repression which
followed. It lived on as one of the impalpable but powerful influences
which spurred on the Sicilians and the democrats of Naples to the
efforts which they put forth in 1821, 1830, 1848 and 1860.

This result, accruing from British intervention, was in some respects
similar to that exerted by Napoleon on the Italians of the mainland. The
brutalities of Austria's white coats in the north, the unintelligent
repression then characteristic of the house of Savoy, the petty spite of
the duke of Modena, the medieval obscurantism of pope and cardinals in
the middle of the peninsula and the clownish excesses of Ferdinand in
the south, could not blot out from the minds of the Italians the
recollection of the benefits derived from the just laws, vigorous
administration and enlightened aims of the great emperor. The hard but
salutary training which they had undergone at his hands had taught them
that they were the equals of the northern races both in the council
chamber and on the field of battle. It had further revealed to them that
truth, which once grasped can never be forgotten, that, despite
differences of climate, character and speech, they were in all
essentials a nation. (J. Hl. R.)

E. THE RISORGIMENTO, 1815-1870

As the result of the Vienna treaties, Austria became the real mistress
of Italy. Not only did she govern Lombardy and Venetia directly, but
Austrian princes ruled in Modena, Parma and Tuscany; Piacenza, Ferrara
and Comacchio had Austrian garrisons; Prince Metternich, the Austrian
chancellor, believed that he could always secure the election of an
Austrophil pope, and Ferdinand of Naples, reinstated by an Austrian
army, had bound himself, by a secret article of the treaty of June 12,
1815, not to introduce methods of government incompatible with those
adopted in Austria's Italian possessions. Austria also concluded
offensive and defensive alliances with Sardinia, Tuscany and Naples;
and Metternich's ambition was to make Austrian predominance over Italy
still more absolute, by placing an Austrian archduke on the Sardinian
throne.

Reaction in the Italian States.

Victor Emmanuel I., the king of Sardinia, was the only native ruler in
the peninsula, and the Savoy dynasty was popular with all classes. But
although welcomed with enthusiasm on his return to Turin, he introduced
a system of reaction which, if less brutal, was no less uncompromising
than that of Austrian archdukes or Bourbon princes. His object was to
restore his dominions to the conditions preceding the French occupation.
The French system of taxation was maintained because it brought in
ampler revenues; but feudalism, the antiquated legislation and
bureaucracy were revived, and all the officers and officials still
living who had served the state before the Revolution, many of them now
in their dotage, were restored to their posts; only nobles were eligible
for the higher government appointments; all who had served under the
French administration were dismissed or reduced in rank, and in the army
beardless scions of the aristocracy were placed over the heads of
war-worn veterans who had commanded regiments in Spain and Russia. The
influence of a bigoted priesthood was re-established, and "every form of
intellectual and moral torment, everything save actual persecution and
physical torture that could be inflicted on the 'impure' was inflicted"
(Cesare Balbo's _Autobiography_). All this soon provoked discontent
among the educated classes. In Genoa the government was particularly
unpopular, for the Genoese resented being handed over to their old enemy
Piedmont like a flock of sheep. Nevertheless the king strongly disliked
the Austrians, and would willingly have seen them driven from Italy.

Austrian rule in Italy.

Reaction in Rome.

Naples.

In Lombardy French rule had ended by making itself unpopular, and even
before the fall of Napoleon a national party, called the _Italici puri_,
had begun to advocate the independence of Lombardy, or even its union
with Sardinia. At first a part of the population were content with
Austrian rule, which provided an honest and efficient administration;
but the rigid system of centralization which, while allowing the
semblance of local autonomy, sent every minute question for settlement
to Vienna; the severe police methods; the bureaucracy, in which the best
appointments were usually conferred on Germans or Slavs wholly dependent
on Vienna, proved galling to the people, and in view of the growing
disaffection the country was turned into a vast armed camp. In Modena
Duke Francis proved a cruel tyrant. In Parma, on the other hand, there
was very little oppression, the French codes were retained, and the
council of state was consulted on all legislative matters. Lucca too
enjoyed good government, and the peasantry were well cared for and
prosperous. In Tuscany the rule of Ferdinand and of his minister
Fossombroni was mild and benevolent, but enervating and demoralizing.
The Papal States were ruled by a unique system of theocracy, for not
only the head of the state but all the more important officials were
ecclesiastics, assisted by the Inquisition, the Index and all the
paraphernalia of medieval church government. The administration was
inefficient and corrupt, the censorship uncompromising, the police
ferocious and oppressive, although quite unable to cope with the
prevalent anarchy and brigandage; the antiquated pontifical statutes
took the place of the French laws, and every vestige of the vigorous old
communal independence was swept away. In Naples King Ferdinand retained
some of the laws and institutions of Murat's régime, and many of the
functionaries of the former government entered his service; but he
revived the Bourbon tradition, the odious police system and the
censorship; and a degrading religious bigotry, to which the masses were
all too much inclined, became the basis of government and social life.
The upper classes were still to a large extent inoculated with French
ideas, but the common people were either devoted to the dynasty or
indifferent. In Sicily, which for centuries had enjoyed a feudal
constitution modernized and Anglicized under British auspices in 1812,
and where anti-Neapolitan feeling was strong, autonomy was suppressed,
the constitution abolished in 1816, and the island, as a reward for its
fidelity to the dynasty, converted into a Neapolitan province governed
by Neapolitan bureaucrats.

Secret societies. The Carbonari.

To the mass of the people the restoration of the old governments
undoubtedly brought a sense of relief, for the terrible drain in men and
money caused by Napoleon's wars had caused much discontent, whereas now
there was a prospect of peace and rest. But the restored governments in
their terror of revolution would not realize that the late régime had
wafted a breath of new life over the country and left ineffaceable
traces in the way of improved laws, efficient administration, good roads
and the sweeping away of old abuses; while the new-born idea of Italian
unity, strengthened by a national pride revived on many a stricken field
from Madrid to Moscow, was a force to be reckoned with. The oppression
and follies of the restored governments made men forget the evils of
French rule and remember only its good side. The masses were still more
or less indifferent, but among the nobility and the educated middle
classes, cut off from all part in free political life, there was
developed either the spirit of despair at Italy's moral degradation, as
expressed in the writings of Foscolo and Leopardi, or a passion of
hatred and revolt, which found its manifestation, in spite of severe
laws, in the development of secret societies. The most important of
these were the Carbonari lodges, whose objects were the expulsion of the
foreigner and the achievement of constitutional freedom (see CARBONARI).

Revolution in Naples, 1820.

When Ferdinand returned to Naples in 1815 he found the kingdom, and
especially the army, honeycombed with Carbonarism, to which many
noblemen and officers were affiliated; and although the police
instituted prosecutions and organized the counter-movement of the
_Calderai_, who may be compared to the "Black Hundreds" of modern
Russia, the revolutionary spirit continued to grow, but it was not at
first anti-dynastic. The granting of the Spanish constitution of 1820
proved the signal for the beginning of the Italian liberationist
movement; a military mutiny led by two officers, Silvati and Morelli,
and the priest Menichini, broke out at Monteforte, to the cry of "God,
the King, and the Constitution!" The troops sent against them commanded
by General Guglielmo Pepe, himself a Carbonaro, hesitated to act, and
the king, finding that he could not count on the army, granted the
constitution (July 13, 1820), and appointed his son Francis regent. The
events that followed are described in the article on the history of
Naples (q.v.). Not only did the constitution, which was modelled on the
impossible Spanish constitution of 1812, prove unworkable, but the
powers of the Grand Alliance, whose main object was to keep the peace of
Europe, felt themselves bound to interfere to prevent the evil precedent
of a successful military revolution. The diplomatic developments that
led to the intervention of Austria are sketched elsewhere (see EUROPE:
_History_); in general the result of the deliberations of the congresses
of Troppau and Laibach was to establish, not the general right of
intervention claimed in the Troppau Protocol, but the special right of
Austria to safeguard her interests in Italy. The defeat of General Pepe
by the Austrians at Rieti (March 7, 1821) and the re-establishment of
King Ferdinand's autocratic power under the protection of Austrian
bayonets were the effective assertion of this principle.

Military revolt in Piedmont.

The movement in Naples had been purely local, for the Neapolitan
Carbonari had at that time no thought save of Naples; it was, moreover,
a movement of the middle and upper classes in which the masses took
little interest. Immediately after the battle of Rieti a Carbonarist
mutiny broke out in Piedmont independently of events in the south. Both
King Victor Emmanuel and his brother Charles Felix had no sons, and the
heir presumptive to the throne was Prince Charles Albert, of the
Carignano branch of the house of Savoy. Charles Albert felt a certain
interest in Liberal ideas and was always surrounded by young nobles of
Carbonarist and anti-Austrian tendencies, and was therefore regarded
with suspicion by his royal relatives. Metternich, too, had an
instinctive dislike for him, and proposed to exclude him from the
succession by marrying one of the king's daughters to Francis of Modena,
and getting the Salic law abolished so that the succession would pass to
the duke and Austria would thus dominate Piedmont. The Liberal movement
had gained ground in Piedmont as in Naples among the younger nobles and
officers, and the events of Spain and southern Italy aroused much
excitement. In March 1821, Count Santorre di Santarosa and other
conspirators informed Charles Albert of a constitutional and
anti-Austrian plot, and asked for his help. After a momentary hesitation
he informed the king; but at his request no arrests were made, and no
precautions were taken. On the 10th of March the garrison of Alessandria
mutinied, and its example was followed on the 12th by that of Turin,
where the Spanish constitution was demanded, and the black, red and blue
flag of the Carbonari paraded the streets. The next day the king
abdicated after appointing Charles Albert regent. The latter immediately
proclaimed the constitution, but the new king, Charles Felix, who was at
Modena at the time, repudiated the regent's acts and exiled him to
Tuscany; and, with his consent, an Austrian army invaded Piedmont and
crushed the constitutionalists at Novara. Many of the conspirators were
condemned to death, but all succeeded in escaping. Charles Felix was
most indignant with the ex-regent, but he resented, as an unwarrantable
interference, Austria's attempt to have him excluded from the succession
at the congress of Verona (1822). Charles Albert's somewhat equivocal
conduct also roused the hatred of the Liberals, and for a long time the
_esecrato Carignano_ was regarded, most unjustly, as a traitor even by
many who were not republicans.

Liberalism in Lombardy.

Carbonarism had been introduced into Lombardy by two Romagnols, Count
Laderchi and Pietro Maroncelli, but the leader of the movement was Count
F. Confalonieri, who was in favour of an Italian federation composed of
northern Italy under the house of Savoy, central Italy under the pope,
and the kingdom of Naples. There had been some mild plotting against
Austria in Milan, and an attempt was made to co-operate with the
Piedmontese movement of 1821; already in 1820 Maroncelli and the poet
Silvio Pellico had been arrested as Carbonari, and after the movement in
Piedmont more arrests were made. The mission of Gaetano Castiglia and
Marquis Giorgio Pallavicini to Turin, where they had interviewed Charles
Albert, although without any definite result--for Confalonieri had
warned the prince that Lombardy was not ready to rise--was accidentally
discovered, and Confalonieri was himself arrested. The plot would never
have been a menace to Austria but for her treatment of the conspirators.
Pellico and Maroncelli were immured in the Spielberg; Confalonieri and
two dozen others were condemned to death, their sentences being,
however, commuted to imprisonment in that same terrible fortress. The
heroism of the prisoners, and Silvio Pellico's account of his
imprisonment (_Le mie Prigioni_), did much to enlist the sympathy of
Europe for the Italian cause.

The Papal States.

Revolutions of 1830.

During the next few years order reigned in Italy, save for a few
unimportant outbreaks in the Papal States; there was, however, perpetual
discontent and agitation, especially in Romagna, where misgovernment was
extreme. Under Pius VII. and his minister Cardinal Consalvi oppression
had not been very severe, and Metternich's proposal to establish a
central inquisitorial tribunal for political offences throughout Italy
had been rejected by the papal government. But on the death of Pius in
1823, his successor Leo XII. (Cardinal Della Genga) proved a ferocious
reactionary under whom barbarous laws were enacted and torture
frequently applied. The secret societies, such as the Carbonari, the
Adelfi and the Bersaglieri d'America, which flourished in Romagna,
replied to these persecutions by assassinating the more brutal officials
and spies. The events of 1820-1821 increased the agitation in Romagna,
and in 1825 large numbers of persons were condemned to death,
imprisonment or exile. The society of the Sanfedisti, formed of the
dregs of the populace, whose object was to murder every Liberal, was
openly protected and encouraged. Leo died in 1829, and the mild,
religious Pius VIII. (Cardinal Castiglioni) only reigned until 1830,
when Gregory XVI. (Cardinal Cappellari) was elected through Austrian
influence, and proved another _zelante_. The July revolution in Paris
and the declaration of the new king, Louis Philippe, that France, as a
Liberal monarchy, would not only not intervene in the internal affairs
of other countries, but would not permit other powers to do so, aroused
great hopes among the oppressed peoples, and was the immediate cause of
a revolution in Romagna and the Marches. In February 1831 these
provinces rose, raised the red, white and green tricolor (which
henceforth took the place of the Carbonarist colours as the Italian
flag), and shook off the papal yoke with surprising ease.[11] At Parma
too there was an outbreak and a demand for the constitution; Marie
Louise could not grant it because of her engagements with Austria, and,
therefore, abandoned her dominions. In Modena Duke Francis, ambitious of
enlarging his territories, coquetted with the Carbonari of Paris, and
opened indirect negotiations with Menotti, the revolutionary leader in
his state, believing that he might assist him in his plans. Menotti, for
his part, conceived the idea of a united Italian state under the duke. A
rising was organized for February 1831; but Francis got wind of it, and,
repenting of his dangerous dallying with revolution, arrested Menotti
and fled to Austrian territory with his prisoner. In his absence the
insurrection took place, and Biagio Nardi, having been elected dictator,
proclaimed that "Italy is one; the Italian nation one sole nation." But
the French king soon abandoned his principle of non-intervention on
which the Italian revolutionists had built their hopes; the Austrians
intervened unhindered; the old governments were re-established in Parma,
Modena and Romagna; and Menotti and many other patriots were hanged. The
Austrians evacuated Romagna in July, but another insurrection having
broken out immediately afterwards which the papal troops were unable to
quell, they returned. This second intervention gave umbrage to France,
who by way of a counterpoise sent a force to occupy Ancona. These two
foreign occupations, which were almost as displeasing to the pope as to
the Liberals, lasted until 1838. The powers, immediately after the
revolt, presented a memorandum to Gregory recommending certain moderate
reforms, but no attention was paid to it. These various movements proved
in the first place that the masses were by no means ripe for revolution,
and that the idea of unity, although now advocated by a few
revolutionary leaders, was far from being generally accepted even by the
Liberals; and, secondly, that, in spite of the indifference of the
masses, the despotic governments were unable to hold their own without
the assistance of foreign bayonets.

Mazzini and "Young Italy."

On the 27th of April 1831, Charles Albert succeeded Charles Felix on the
throne of Piedmont. Shortly afterwards he received a letter from an
unknown person, in which he was exhorted with fiery eloquence to place
himself at the head of the movement for liberating and uniting Italy and
expelling the foreigner, and told that he was free to choose whether he
would be "the first of men or the last of Italian tyrants." The author
was Giuseppe Mazzini, then a young man of twenty-six years, who, though
in theory a republican, was ready to accept the leadership of a prince
of the house of Savoy if he would guide the nation to freedom. The only
result of his letter, however, was that he was forbidden to re-enter
Sardinian territory. Mazzini, who had learned to distrust Carbonarism
owing to its lack of a guiding principle and its absurd paraphernalia of
ritual and mystery, had conceived the idea of a more serious political
association for the emancipation of his country not only from foreign
and domestic despotism but from national faults of character; and this
idea he had materialized in the organization of a society called the
_Giovane Italia_ (Young Italy) among the Italian refugees at Marseilles.
After the events of 1831 he declared that the liberation of Italy could
only be achieved through unity, and his great merit lies in having
inspired a large number of Italians with that idea at a time when
provincial jealousies and the difficulty of communications maintained
separatist feelings. Young Italy spread to all centres of Italian
exiles, and by means of literature carried on an active propaganda in
Italy itself, where the party came to be called "Ghibellini," as though
reviving the traditions of medieval anti-Papalism. Though eventually
this activity of the Giovane Italia supplanted that of the older
societies, in practice it met with no better success; the two attempts
to invade Savoy in the hope of seducing the army from its allegiance
failed miserably, and only resulted in a series of barbarous sentences
of death and imprisonment which made most Liberals despair of Charles
Albert, while they called down much criticism on Mazzini as the
organizer of raids in which he himself took no part. He was now forced
to leave France, but continued his work of agitation from London. The
disorders in Naples and Sicily in 1837 had no connexion with Mazzini,
but the forlorn hope of the brothers Bandiera, who in 1844 landed on the
Calabrian coast, was the work of the Giovane Italia. The rebels were
captured and shot, but the significance of the attempt lies in the fact
that it was the first occasion on which north Italians (the Bandieras
were Venetians and officers in the Austrian navy) had tried to raise the
standard of revolt in the south.

Romagna had continued a prey to anarchy ever since 1831; the government
organized armed bands called the Centurioni (descended from the earlier
Sanfedisti), to terrorize the Liberals, while the secret societies
continued their "propaganda by deeds." It is noteworthy that Romagna was
the only part of Italy where the revolutionary movement was accompanied
by murder. In 1845 several outbreaks occurred, and a band led by Pietro
Renzi captured Rimini, whence a proclamation drawn up by L. C. Farini
was issued demanding the reforms advocated by the powers' memorandum of
1831. But the movement collapsed without result, and the leaders fled to
Tuscany.

Liberalism and economic development.

Side by side with the Mazzinian propaganda in favour of a united
Italian republic, which manifested itself in secret societies, plots
and insurrections, there was another Liberal movement based on the
education of opinion and on economic development. In Piedmont, in
spite of the government's reactionary methods, a large part of the
population were genuinely attached to the Savoy dynasty, and the idea
of a regeneration of Italy under its auspices began to gain ground.
Some writers proclaimed the necessity of building railways, developing
agriculture and encouraging industries, before resorting to
revolution; while others, like the Tuscan Gino Capponi, inspired by
the example of England and France, wished to make the people fit for
freedom by means of improved schools, books and periodicals. Vincenzo
Gioberti (q.v.) published in 1843 his famous treatise _Del primato
morale e civile degli Italiani_, a work, which, in striking contrast
to the prevailing pessimism of the day, extolled the past greatness
and achievements of the Italian people and their present virtues. His
political ideal was a federation of all the Italian states under the
presidency of the pope, on a basis of Catholicism, but without a
constitution. In spite of all its inaccuracies and exaggerations the
book served a useful purpose in reviving the self-respect of a
despondent people. Another work of a similar kind was _Le Speranze
d'Italia_ (1844) by the Piedmontese Count Cesare Balbo (q.v.). Like
Gioberti he advocated a federation of Italian states, but he declared
that before this could be achieved Austria must be expelled from Italy
and compensation found for her in the Near East by making her a
Danubian power--a curious forecast that Italy's liberation would begin
with an eastern war. He extolled Charles Albert and appealed to his
patriotism; he believed that the church was necessary and the secret
societies harmful; representative government was undesirable, but he
advocated a consultative assembly. Above all Italian character must be
reformed and the nation educated. A third important publication was
Massimo d'Azeglio's _Degli ultimi casi di Romagna_, in which the
author, another Piedmontese nobleman, exposed papal misgovernment
while condemning the secret societies and advocating open resistance
and protest. He upheld the papacy in principle, regarded Austria as
the great enemy of Italian regeneration, and believed that the means
of expelling her were only to be found in Piedmont.

The Italian exiles.

Besides the revolutionists and republicans who promoted conspiracy and
insurrection whenever possible, and the moderates or "Neo-Guelphs," as
Gioberti's followers were called, we must mention the Italian exiles
who were learning the art of war in foreign countries--in Spain, in
Greece, in Poland, in South America--and those other exiles who, in
Paris or London, eked out a bare subsistence by teaching Italian or
by their pen, and laid the foundations of that love of Italy which,
especially in England, eventually brought the weight of diplomacy into
the scales for Italian freedom. All these forces were equally
necessary--the revolutionists to keep up agitation and make government
by bayonets impossible; the moderates to curb the impetuosity of the
revolutionists and to present a scheme of society that was neither
reactionary nor anarchical; the volunteers abroad to gain military
experience; and the more peaceful exiles to spread the name of Italy
among foreign peoples. All the while a vast amount of revolutionary
literature was being printed in Switzerland, France and England, and
smuggled into Italy; the poet Giusti satirized the Italian princes,
the dramatist G. B. Niccolini blasted tyranny in his tragedies, the
novelist Guerrazzi re-evoked the memories of the last struggle for
Florentine freedom in _L'Assedio di Firenze_, and Verdi's operas
bristled with political _double entendres_ which escaped the censor
but were understood and applauded by the audience.

Election of Pius IX.

On the death of Pope Gregory XVI. in 1846 Austria hoped to secure the
election of another zealot; but the Italian cardinals, who did not want
an Austrophil, finished the conclave before the arrival of Cardinal
Gaysrück, Austria's mouthpiece, and in June elected Giovanni Maria
Mastai Ferretti as Pius IX. The new pope, who while bishop of Imole had
evinced a certain interest in Liberalism, was a kindly man, of inferior
intelligence, who thought that all difficulties could be settled with a
little good-will, some reforms and a political amnesty. The amnesty
which he granted was the beginning of the immense if short-lived
popularity which he was to enjoy. But he did not move so fast in the
path of reform as was expected, and agitation continued throughout the
papal states.[12] In 1847 some administrative reforms were enacted, the
laity were admitted to certain offices, railways were talked about, and
political newspapers permitted. In April Pius created a _Consulta_, or
consultative assembly, and soon afterwards a council of ministers and a
municipality for Rome. Here he would willingly have stopped, but he soon
realized that he had hardly begun. Every fresh reform edict was greeted
with demonstrations of enthusiasm, but the ominous cry "Viva Pio Nono
solo!" signified dissatisfaction with the whole system of government. A
lay ministry was now demanded, a constitution, and an Italian federation
for war against Austria. Rumours of a reactionary plot by Austria and
the Jesuits against Pius, induced him to create a national guard and to
appoint Cardinal Ferretti as secretary of state.

Revolutionary agitation, 1847.

Events in Rome produced widespread excitement throughout Europe.
Metternich had declared that the one thing which had not entered into
his calculations was a Liberal pope, only that was an impossibility;
still he was much disturbed by Pius's attitude, and tried to stem the
revolutionary tide by frightening the princes. Seizing the agitation in
Romagna as a pretext, he had the town of Ferrara occupied by Austrian
troops, which provoked the indignation not only of the Liberals but also
of the pope, for according to the treaties Austria had the right of
occupying the citadel alone. There was great resentment throughout
Italy, and in answer to the pope's request Charles Albert declared that
he was with him in everything, while from South America Giuseppe
Garibaldi wrote to offer his services to His Holiness. Charles Albert,
although maintaining his reactionary policy, had introduced
administrative reforms, built railways, reorganized the army and
developed the resources of the country. He had little sympathy with
Liberalism and abhorred revolution, but his hatred of Austria and his
resentment at the galling tutelage to which she subjected him had gained
strength year by year. Religion was still his dominant passion, and when
a pope in Liberal guise appeared on the scene and was bullied by
Austria, his two strongest feelings--piety and hatred of Austria--ceased
to be incompatible. In 1847 Lord Minto visited the Italian courts to try
to induce the recalcitrant despots to mend their ways, so as to avoid
revolution and war, the latter being England's especial anxiety; this
mission, although not destined to produce much effect, aroused
extravagant hopes among the Liberals. Charles Louis, the opera-bouffe
duke of Lucca, who had coquetted with Liberalism in the past, now
refused to make any concessions to his subjects, and in 1847 sold his
duchy to Leopold II. of Tuscany (the successor of Ferdinand III. since
1824) to whom it would have reverted in any case at the death of the
duchess of Parma. At the same time Leopold ceded Lunigiana to Parma and
Modena in equal parts, an arrangement which provoked the indignation of
the inhabitants of the district (especially of those destined to be
ruled by Francis V. of Modena, who had succeeded to Francis IV. in
1846), and led to disturbances at Fivizzano. In September 1847, Leopold
gave way to the popular agitation for a national guard, in spite of
Metternich's threats, and allowed greater freedom of the press; every
concession made by the pope was followed by demands for a similar
measure in Tuscany.

Ferdinand I. of the Two Sicilies had died in 1825, and was succeeded by
Francis I. At the latter's death in 1830 Ferdinand II. succeeded, and
although at first he gave promise of proving a wiser ruler, he soon
reverted to the traditional Bourbon methods. An ignorant bigot, he
concentrated the whole of the executive into his own hands, was
surrounded by priests and monks, and served by an army of spies. In 1847
there were unimportant disturbances in various parts of the kingdom, but
there was no anti-dynastic outbreak, the jealousy between Naples and
Sicily largely contributing to the weakness of the movement. On the 12th
of January, however, a revolution, the first of the many throughout
Europe that was to make the year 1848 memorable, broke out at Palermo
under the leadership of Ruggiero Settimo. The Neapolitan army sent to
crush the rising was at first unsuccessful, and the insurgents demanded
the constitution of 1812 or complete independence. Disturbances occurred
at Naples also, and the king, who could not obtain Austrian help, as the
pope refused to allow Austrian troops to pass through his dominions, on
the advice of his prime minister, the duke of Serracapriola, granted a
constitution, freedom of the press, the national guard, &c. (January
28).

Revolutions of 1848.

The news from Naples strengthened the demand for a constitution in
Piedmont. Count Camillo Cavour, then editor of a new and influential
paper called _Il Risorgimento_, had advocated it strongly, and monster
demonstrations were held every day. The king disliked the idea, but
great pressure was brought to bear on him, and finally, on the 4th of
March 1848, he granted the charter which was destined to be the
constitution of the future Italian kingdom. It provided for a nominated
senate and an elective chamber of deputies, the king retaining the right
of veto; the press censorship was abolished, and freedom of meeting, of
the press and of speech were guaranteed. Balbo was called upon to form
the first constitutional ministry. Three days later the grand-duke of
Tuscany promised similar liberties, and a charter, prepared by a
commission which included Gino Capponi and Bettino Ricasoli, was
promulgated on the 17th.

In the Austrian provinces the situation seemed calmer, and the
government rejected the moderate proposals of Daniele Manin and N.
Tommaseo. A demonstration in favour of Pius IX. on the 3rd of January at
Milan was dispersed with unnecessary severity, and martial law was
proclaimed the following month. The revolution which broke out on the
8th of March in Vienna itself and the subsequent flight of Metternich
(see AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: _History_), led to the granting of feeble
concessions to Lombardy and Venetia, which were announced in Milan on
the 18th. But it was too late; and in spite of the exhortations of the
mayor, Gabrio Casati, and of the republican C. Cattaneo, who believed
that a rising against 15,000 Austrian soldiers under Field-Marshal
Radetzky was madness, the famous Five Days' revolution began. It was a
popular outburst of pent-up hate, unprepared by leaders, although
leaders such as Luciano Manara soon arose. Radetzky occupied the citadel
and other points of vantage; but in the night barricades sprang up by
the hundred and were manned by citizens of all classes, armed with every
kind of weapon. The desperate struggle lasted until the 22nd, when the
Austrians, having lost 5000 killed and wounded, were forced to evacuate
the city. The rest of Lombardy and Venetia now flew to arms, and the
Austrian garrisons, except in the Quadrilateral (Verona, Peschiera,
Mantua and Legnano) were expelled. In Venice the people, under the
leadership of Manin, rose in arms and forced the military and civil
governors (Counts Zichy and Palffy) to sign a capitulation on the 22nd
of March, after which the republic was proclaimed. At Milan, where there
was a division of opinion between the monarchists under Casati and the
republicans under Cattaneo, a provisional administration was formed and
the question of the form of government postponed for the moment. The
duke of Modena and Charles Louis of Parma (Marie Louise was now dead)
abandoned their capitals; in both cities provisional governments were
set up which subsequently proclaimed annexation to Piedmont. In Rome the
pope gave way to popular clamour, granting one concession after another,
and on the 8th of February he publicly called down God's blessing on
Italy--that Italy hated by the Austrians, whose name it had hitherto
been a crime to mention. On the 10th of March he appointed a new
ministry, under Cardinal Antonelli, which included several Liberal
laymen, such as Marco Minghetti, G. Pasolini, L. C. Farini and Count G.
Recchi. On the 11th a constitution drawn up by a commission of
cardinals, without the knowledge of the ministry, was promulgated, a
constitution which attempted the impossible task of reconciling the
pope's temporal power with free institutions. In the meanwhile
preparations for war against Austria were being carried on with Pius's
sanction.

First war of Italy against Austria.

There were now three main political tendencies, viz. the union of north
Italy under Charles Albert and an alliance with the pope and Naples, a
federation of the different states under their present rulers, and a
united republic of all Italy. All parties, however, were agreed in
favour of war against Austria, for which the peoples forced their
unwilling rulers to prepare. But the only state capable of taking the
initiative was Piedmont, and the king still hesitated. Then came the
news of the Five Days of Milan, which produced the wildest excitement in
Turin; unless the army were sent to assist the struggling Lombards at
once the dynasty was in jeopardy. Cavour's stirring articles in the
_Risorgimento_ hastened the king's decision, and on the 23rd of March he
declared war (see for the military events ITALIAN WARS, 1848-70). But
much precious time had been lost, and even then the army was not ready.
Charles Albert could dispose of 90,000 men, including some 30,000 from
central Italy, but he took the field with only half his force. He might
yet have cut off Radetzky on his retreat, or captured Mantua, which was
only held by 300 men. But his delays lost him both chances and enabled
Radetzky to receive reinforcements from Austria. The pope, unable to
resist the popular demand for war, allowed his army to depart (March 23)
under the command of General Durando, with instructions to act in
concert with Charles Albert, and he corresponded with the grand-duke of
Tuscany and the king of Naples with a view to a military alliance. But
at the same time, fearing a schism in the church should he attack
Catholic Austria, he forbade his troops to do more than defend the
frontier, and in his Encyclical of the 29th of April stated that, as
head of the church, he could not declare war, but that he was unable to
prevent his subjects from following the example of other Italians. He
then requested Charles Albert to take the papal troops under his
command, and also wrote to the emperor of Austria asking him voluntarily
to relinquish Lombardy and Venetia. Tuscany and Naples had both joined
the Italian league; a Tuscan army started for Lombardy on the 30th of
April, and 17,000 Neapolitans commanded by Pepe (who had returned after
28 years of exile) went to assist Durando in intercepting the Austrian
reinforcements under Nugent. The Piedmontese defeated the enemy at
Pastrengo (April 30), but did not profit by the victory. The Neapolitans
reached Bologna on the 17th of May, but in the meantime a dispute had
broken out at Naples between the king and parliament as to the nature of
the royal oath; a cry of treason was raised by a group of factious
youngsters, barricades were erected and street fighting ensued (May 15).
On the 17th Ferdinand dissolved parliament and recalled the army. On
receiving the order to return, Pepe, after hesitating for some time
between his oath to the king and his desire to fight for Italy, finally
resigned his commission and crossed the Po with a few thousand men, the
rest of his force returning south. The effects of this were soon felt. A
force of Tuscan volunteers was attacked by a superior body of Austrians
at Curtatone and Montanaro and defeated after a gallant resistance on
the 27th of May; Charles Albert, after wasting precious time round
Peschiera, which capitulated on the 30th of May, defeated Radetzky at
Goito. But the withdrawal of the Neapolitans left Durando too weak to
intercept Nugent and his 30,000 men; and the latter, although harassed
by the inhabitants of Venetia and repulsed at Vicenza, succeeded in
joining Radetzky, who was soon further reinforced from Tirol. The whole
Austrian army now turned on Vicenza, which after a brave resistance
surrendered on the 10th of June. All Venetia except the capital was thus
once more occupied by the Austrians. On the 23rd, 24th and 25th of July
(first battle of Custozza) the Piedmontese were defeated and forced to
retire on Milan with Radetzky's superior force in pursuit. The king was
the object of a hostile demonstration in Milan, and although he was
ready to defend the city to the last, the town council negotiated a
capitulation with Radetzky. The mob, egged on by the republicans,
attacked the palace where the king was lodged, and he escaped with
difficulty, returning to Piedmont with the remnants of his army. On the
6th of August Radetzky re-entered Milan, and three days later an
armistice was concluded between Austria and Piedmont, the latter
agreeing to evacuate Lombardy and Venetia. The offer of French
assistance, made after the proclamation of the republic in the spring of
1848, had been rejected mainly because France, fearing that the creation
of a strong Italian state would be a danger to her, would have demanded
the cession of Nice and Savoy, which the king refused to consider.

Daniele Manin and Venice.

Proclamation of the Roman Republic.

Meanwhile, the republic had been proclaimed in Venice; but on the 7th of
July the assembly declared in favour of fusion with Piedmont, and Manin,
who had been elected president, resigned his powers to the royal
commissioners. Soon after Custozza, however, the Austrians blockaded the
city on the land side. In Rome the pope's authority weakened day by day,
and disorder increased. The Austrian attempt to occupy Bologna was
repulsed by the citizens, but unfortunately this success was followed by
anarchy and murder, and Farini only with difficulty restored a semblance
of order. The Mamiani ministry having failed to achieve anything, Pius
summoned Pellegrino Rossi, a learned lawyer who had long been exiled in
France, to form a cabinet. On the 15th of November he was assassinated,
and as no one was punished for this crime the insolence of the
disorderly elements increased, and shots were exchanged with the Swiss
Guard. The terrified pope fled in disguise to Gaeta (November 25), and
when parliament requested him to return he refused even to receive the
deputation. This meant a complete rupture; on the 5th of February 1849 a
constituent assembly was summoned, and on the 9th it voted the downfall
of the temporal power and proclaimed the republic. Mazzini hurried to
Rome to see his dream realized, and was chosen head of the Triumvirate.
On the 18th Pius invited the armed intervention of France, Austria,
Naples and Spain to restore his authority. In Tuscany the government
drifted from the moderates to the extreme democrats; the Ridolfi
ministry was succeeded after Custozza by that of Ricasoli, and the
latter by that of Capponi. The lower classes provoked disorders, which
were very serious at Leghorn, and were only quelled by Guerrazzi's
energy. Capponi resigned in October 1848, and Leopold reluctantly
consented to a democratic ministry led by Guerrazzi and Montanelli, the
former a very ambitious and unscrupulous man, the latter honest but
fantastic. Following the Roman example, a constituent assembly was
demanded to vote on union with Rome and eventually with the rest of
Italy. The grand-duke, fearing an excommunication from the pope, refused
the request, and left Florence for Siena and S. Stefano; on the 8th of
February 1849 the republic was proclaimed, and on the 21st, at the
pressing request of the pope and the king of Naples, Leopold went to
Gaeta.

Ferdinand did not openly break his constitutional promises until Sicily
was reconquered. His troops had captured Messina after a bombardment
which earned him the sobriquet of "King Bomba"; Catania and Syracuse
fell soon after, hideous atrocities being everywhere committed with his
sanction. He now prorogued parliament, adopted stringent measures
against the Liberals, and retired to Gaeta, the haven of refuge for
deposed despots.

Charles Albert renews the war.

Accession of Victor Emmanuel II.

But so long as Piedmont was not completely crushed none of the princes
dared to take decisive measures against their subjects; in spite of
Custozza, Charles Albert still had an army, and Austria, with
revolutions in Vienna, Hungary and Bohemia on her hands, could not
intervene. In Piedmont the Pinelli-Revel ministry, which had continued
the negotiations for an alliance with Leopold and the pope, resigned as
it could not count on a parliamentary majority, and in December the
returned exile Gioberti formed a new ministry. His proposal to reinstate
Leopold and the pope with Piedmontese arms, so as to avoid Austrian
intervention, was rejected by both potentates, and met with opposition
even in Piedmont, which would thereby have forfeited its prestige
throughout Italy. Austrian mediation was now imminent, as the Vienna
revolution had been crushed, and the new emperor, Francis Joseph,
refused to consider any settlement other than on the basis of the
treaties of 1815. But Charles Albert, who, whatever his faults, had a
generous nature, was determined that so long as he had an army in being
he could not abandon the Lombards and the Venetians, whom he had
encouraged in their resistance, without one more effort, though he knew
full well that he was staking all on a desperate chance. On the 12th of
March 1849, he denounced the armistice, and, owing to the want of
confidence in Piedmontese strategy after 1848, gave the chief command to
the Polish General Chrzanowski. His forces amounted to 80,000 men,
including a Lombard corps and some Roman, Tuscan and other volunteers.
But the discipline and moral of the army were shaken and its
organization faulty. General Ramorino, disobeying his instructions,
failed to prevent a corps of Austrians under Lieut. Field-Marshal
d'Aspre from seizing Mortara, a fault for which he was afterwards
court-martialled and shot, and after some preliminary fighting Radetzky
won the decisive battle of Novara (March 23) which broke up the
Piedmontese army. The king, who had sought death in vain all day, had to
ask terms of Radetzky; the latter demanded a slice of Piedmont and the
heir to the throne (Victor Emmanuel) as a hostage, without a reservation
for the consent of parliament. Charles Albert, realizing his own failure
and thinking that his son might obtain better terms, abdicated and
departed at once for Portugal, where he died in a monastery a few months
later. Victor Emmanuel went in person to treat with Radetzky on the 24th
of March. The Field-Marshal received him most courteously and offered
not only to waive the demand for a part of Piedmontese territory, but to
enlarge the kingdom, on condition that the constitution should be
abolished and the blue Piedmontese flag substituted for the tricolor.
But the young king was determined to abide by his father's oath, and had
therefore to agree to an Austrian occupation of the territory between
the Po, the Ticino and the Sesia, and of half the citadel of
Alessandria, until peace should be concluded, the evacuation of all
districts occupied by his troops outside Piedmont, the dissolution of
his corps of Lombard, Polish and Hungarian volunteers and the withdrawal
of his fleet from the Adriatic.

Novara set Austria free to reinstate the Italian despots. Ferdinand at
once re-established autocracy in Naples; though the struggle in Sicily
did not end until May, when Palermo, after a splendid resistance,
capitulated. In Tuscany disorder continued, and although Guerrazzi, who
had been appointed dictator, saved the country from complete anarchy, a
large part of the population, especially among the peasantry, was still
loyal to the grand-duke. After Novara the chief question was how to
avoid an Austrian occupation, and owing to the prevailing confusion the
town council of Florence took matters into its own hands and declared
the grand-duke reinstated, but on a constitutional basis and without
foreign help (April 12). Leopold accepted as regards the constitution,
but said nothing about foreign intervention. Count Serristori, the
grand-ducal commissioner, arrived in Florence on the 4th of May 1849;
the national guard was disbanded; and on the 25th, the Austrians under
d'Aspre entered Florence.

On the 28th of July Leopold returned to his capital, and while that
event was welcomed by a part of the people, the fact that he had come
under Austrian protection ended by destroying all loyalty to the
dynasty, and consequently contributed not a little to Italian unity.

Garibaldi.

France and the Roman Republic.

In Rome the triumvirate decided to defend the republic to the last. The
city was quieter and more orderly than it had ever been before, for
Mazzini and Ciceruacchio successfully opposed all class warfare; and in
April the defenders received a priceless addition to their strength in
the person of Garibaldi, who, on the outbreak of the revolution in 1848,
had returned with a few of his followers from his exile in South
America, and in April 1849 entered Rome with some 500 men to fight for
the republic. At this time France, as a counterpoise to Austrian
intervention in other parts of Italy, decided to restore the pope,
regardless of the fact that this action would necessitate the crushing
of a sister republic. As yet, however, no such intention was publicly
avowed. On the 25th of April General Oudinot landed with 8000 men at
Civitavecchia, and on the 30th attempted to capture Rome by surprise,
but was completely defeated by Garibaldi, who might have driven the
French into the sea, had Mazzini allowed him to leave the city. The
French republican government, in order to gain time for reinforcements
to arrive, sent Ferdinand de Lesseps to pretend to treat with Mazzini,
the envoy himself not being a party to this deception. Mazzini refused
to allow the French into the city, but while the negotiations were being
dragged on Oudinot's force was increased to 35,000 men. At the same time
an Austrian army was marching through the Legations, and Neapolitan and
Spanish troops were advancing from the south. The Roman army (20,000
men) was commanded by General Rosselli, and included, besides
Garibaldi's red-shirted legionaries, volunteers from all parts of Italy,
mostly very young men, many of them wealthy and of noble family. The
Neapolitans were ignominiously beaten in May and retired to the
frontier; on the 1st of June Oudinot declared that he would attack Rome
on the 4th, but by beginning operations on the 3rd, when no attack was
expected, he captured an important position in the Pamphili gardens.

In spite of this success, however, it was not until the end of the
month, and after desperate fighting, that the French penetrated within
the walls and the defence ceased (June 29). The Assembly, which had
continued in session, was dispersed by the French troops on the 2nd of
July, but Mazzini escaped a week later. Garibaldi quitted the city,
followed by 4000 of his men, and attempted to join the defenders of
Venice. In spite of the fact that he was pursued by the armies of four
Powers, he succeeded in reaching San Marino; but his force melted away
and, after hiding in the marshes of Ravenna, he fled across the
peninsula, assisted by nobles, peasants and priests, to the Tuscan
coast, whence he reached Piedmont and eventually America, to await a new
call to fight for Italy (see GARIBALDI).

Reduction of Venice by Austria.

After a heroic defence, conducted by Giuseppe Martinengo, Brescia was
recaptured in April by the Austrians under Lieut. Field-Marshal von
Haynau, the atrocities which followed earning for Haynau the name of
"The Hyena of Brescia." In May they seized Bologna, and Ancona in June,
restoring order in those towns by the same methods as at Brescia. Venice
alone still held out; after Novara the Piedmontese commissioners
withdrew and Manin again took charge of the government. The assembly
voted: "Venice resists the Austrians at all costs," and the citizens
and soldiers, strengthened by the arrival of volunteers from all parts
of Italy, including Pepe, who was given the chief command of the
defenders, showed the most splendid devotion in their hopeless task. By
the end of May the city was blockaded by land and sea, and in July the
bombardment began. On the 24th the city, reduced by famine, capitulated
on favourable terms. Manin, Pepe and a few others were excluded from the
amnesty and went into exile.

Thus were despotism and foreign predominance re-established throughout
Italy save in Piedmont. Yet the "terrible year" was by no means all
loss. The Italian cause had been crushed, but revolution and war had
strengthened the feeling of unity, for Neapolitans had fought for
Venice, Lombards for Rome, Piedmontese for all Italy. Piedmont was shown
to possess the qualities necessary to constitute the nucleus of a great
nation. It was now evident that the federal idea was impossible, for
none of the princes except Victor Emmanuel could be trusted, and that
unity and freedom could not be achieved under a republic, for nothing
could be done without the Piedmontese army, which was royalist to the
core. All reasonable men were now convinced that the question of the
ultimate form of the Italian government was secondary, and that the
national efforts should be concentrated on the task of expelling the
Austrians; the form of government could be decided afterwards. Liberals
were by no means inclined to despair of accomplishing this task; for
hatred of the foreigners, and of the despots restored by their bayonets,
had been deepened by the humiliations and cruelties suffered during the
war into a passion common to all Italy.

Piedmont after the war.

Cavour.

When the terms of the Austro-Piedmontese armistice were announced in the
Chamber at Turin they aroused great indignation, but the king succeeded
in convincing the deputies that they were inevitable. The peace
negotiations dragged on for several months, involving two changes of
ministry, and D'Azeglio became premier. Through Anglo-French mediation
Piedmont's war indemnity was reduced from 230,000,000 to 75,000,000
lire, but the question of the amnesty remained. The king declared
himself ready to go to war again if those compromised in the Lombard
revolution were not freely pardoned, and at last Austria agreed to
amnesty all save a very few, and in August the peace terms were agreed
upon. The Chamber, however, refused to ratify them, and it was not until
the king's eloquent appeal from Moncalieri to his people's loyalty, and
after a dissolution and the election of a new parliament, that the
treaty was ratified (January 9, 1850). The situation in Piedmont was far
from promising, the exchequer was empty, the army disorganized, the
country despondent and suspicious of the king. If Piedmont was to be
fitted for the part which optimists expected it to play, everything must
be built up anew. Legislation had to be entirely reformed, and the bill
for abolishing the special jurisdiction for the clergy (_foro
ecclesiastico_) and other medieval privileges aroused the bitter
opposition of the Vatican as well as of the Piedmontese clericals. This
same year (1850) Cavour, who had been in parliament for some time and
had in his speech of the 7th of March struck the first note of
encouragement after the gloom of Novara, became minister of agriculture,
and in 1851 also assumed the portfolio of finance. He ended by
dominating the cabinet, but owing to his having negotiated a union of
the Right Centre and the Left Centre (the _Connubio_) in the conviction
that the country needed the moderate elements of both parties, he
quarrelled with D'Azeglio (who, as an uncompromising conservative,
failed to see the value of such a move) and resigned. But D'Azeglio was
not equal to the situation, and he, too, resigned in November 1852;
whereupon the king appointed Cavour prime minister, a position which
with short intervals he held until his death.

Austrian rule after 1849.

The Austrians in the period from 1849 to 1859, known as the _decennio
della resistenza_ (decade of resistance), were made to feel that they
were in a conquered country where they could have no social intercourse
with the people; for no self-respecting Lombard or Venetian would even
speak to an Austrian. Austria, on the other hand, treated her Italian
subjects with great severity. The Italian provinces were the most
heavily taxed in the whole empire, and much of the money thus levied was
spent either for the benefit of other provinces or to pay for the huge
army of occupation and the fortresses in Italy. The promise of a
constitution for the empire, made in 1849, was never carried out; the
government of Lombardo-Venetia was vested in Field-Marshal Radetzky; and
although only very few of the revolutionists were excluded from the
amnesty, the carrying of arms or the distribution or possession of
revolutionary literature was punished with death. Long terms of
imprisonment and the bastinado, the latter even inflicted on women, were
the penalties for the least expression of anti-Austrian opinion.

The Lombard republicans had been greatly weakened by the events of 1848,
but Mazzini still believed that a bold act by a few revolutionists would
make the people rise _en masse_ and expel the Austrians. A conspiracy,
planned with the object, among others, of kidnapping the emperor while
on a visit to Venice and forcing him to make concessions, was postponed
in consequence of the _coup d'état_ by which Louis Napoleon became
emperor of the French (1852); but a chance discovery led to a large
number of arrests, and the state trials at Mantua, conducted in the most
shamelessly inquisitorial manner, resulted in five death sentences,
including that of the priest Tazzoli, and many of imprisonment for long
terms. Even this did not convince Mazzini of the hopelessness of such
attempts, for he was out of touch with Italian public opinion, and he
greatly weakened his influence by favouring a crack-brained outbreak at
Milan on the 6th of February 1853, which was easily quelled, numbers of
the insurgents being executed or imprisoned. Radetzky, not satisfied
with this, laid an embargo on the property of many Lombard emigrants who
had settled in Piedmont and become naturalized, accusing them of
complicity. The Piedmontese government rightly regarded this measure as
a violation of the peace treaty of 1850, and Cavour recalled the
Piedmontese minister from Vienna, an action which was endorsed by
Italian public opinion generally, and won the approval of France and
England.

Cavour's ideal for the present was the expulsion of Austria from Italy
and the expansion of Piedmont into a north Italian kingdom; and,
although he did not yet think of Italian unity as a question of
practical policy, he began to foresee it as a future possibility. But in
reorganizing the shattered finances of the state and preparing it for
its greater destinies, he had to impose heavy taxes, which led to
rioting and involved the minister himself in considerable though
temporary unpopularity. His ecclesiastical legislation, too, met with
bitter opposition from the Church.

Crimean War.

Italy and the Congress of Paris, 1856.

But the question was soon forgotten in the turmoil caused by the Crimean
War. Cavour believed that by taking part in the war his country would
gain for itself a military status and a place in the councils of the
great Powers, and establish claims on Great Britain and France for the
realization of its Italian ambitions. One section of public opinion
desired to make Piedmont's co-operation subject to definite promises by
the Powers; but the latter refused to bind themselves, and both Victor
Emmanuel and Cavour realized that, even without such promises,
participation would give Piedmont a claim. There was also the danger
that Austria might join the allies first and Piedmont be left isolated;
but there were also strong arguments on the other side, for while the
Radical party saw no obvious reason why Piedmont should fight other
people's battles, and therefore opposed the alliance, there was the risk
that Austria might join the alliance together with Piedmont, which would
have constituted a disastrous situation. Da Bormida, the minister for
foreign affairs, resigned rather than agree to the proposal, and other
statesmen were equally opposed to it. But after long negotiations the
treaty of alliance was signed in January 1855, and while Austria
remained neutral, a well-equipped Piedmontese force of 15,000 men, under
General La Marmora, sailed for the Crimea. Everything turned out as
Cavour had hoped. The Piedmontese troops distinguished themselves in
the field, gaining the sympathies of the French and English; and at the
subsequent congress of Paris (1856), where Cavour himself was Sardinian
representative, the Italian question was discussed, and the intolerable
oppression of the Italian peoples by Austria and the despots ventilated.

Austria at last began to see that a policy of coercion was useless and
dangerous, and made tentative efforts at conciliation. Taxation was
somewhat reduced, the censorship was made less severe, political
amnesties were granted, humaner officials were appointed and the
Congregations (a sort of shadowy consultative assembly) were revived. In
1856 the emperor and empress visited their Italian dominions, but were
received with icy coldness; the following year, on the retirement of
Radetzky at the age of ninety-three, the archduke Maximilian, an able,
cultivated and kind-hearted man, was appointed viceroy. He made
desperate efforts to conciliate the population, and succeeded with a few
of the nobles, who were led to believe in the possibility of an Italian
confederation, including Lombardy and Venetia which would be united to
Austria by a personal union alone; but the immense majority of all
classes rejected these advances, and came to regard union with Piedmont
with increasing favour.[13]

Restored governments after 1849.

Persecution of Liberals in Naples.

Meanwhile Francis V. of Modena, restored to his duchy by Austrian
bayonets, continued to govern according to the traditions of his house.
Charles II. of Parma, after having been reinstated by the Austrians,
abdicated in favour of his son Charles III. a drunken libertine and a
cruel tyrant (May 1849); the latter was assassinated in 1854, and a
regency under his widow, Marie Louise, was instituted during which the
government became somewhat more tolerable, although by no means free
from political persecution; in 1857 the Austrian troops evacuated the
duchy. Leopold of Tuscany suspended the constitution, and in 1852
formally abolished it by order from Vienna; he also concluded a treaty
of semi-subjection with Austria and a Concordat with the pope for
granting fresh privileges to the Church. His government, however, was
not characterized by cruelty like those of his brother despots, and
Guerrazzi and the other Liberals of 1849, although tried and sentenced
to long terms of imprisonment, were merely exiled. Yet the opposition
gained recruits among all the ablest and most respectable Tuscans. In
Rome, after the restoration of the temporal power by the French troops,
the pope paid no attention to Louis Napoleon's advice to maintain some
form of constitution, to grant a general amnesty, and to secularize the
administration. He promised, indeed, a consultative council of state,
and granted an amnesty from which no less than 25,000 persons were
excluded; but on his return to Rome (12th April 1850), after he was
quite certain that France had given up all idea of imposing
constitutional limitations on him, he re-established his government on
the old lines of priestly absolutism, and, devoting himself to religious
practices, left political affairs mostly to the astute cardinal
Antonelli, who repressed with great severity the political agitation
which still continued. At Naples a trifling disturbance in September
1849, led to the arrest of a large number of persons connected with the
_Unità Italiana_, a society somewhat similar to the Carbonari. The
prisoners included Silvio Spaventa, Luigi Settembrini, Carlo Poerio and
many other cultured and worthy citizens. Many condemnations followed,
and hundreds of "politicals" were immured in hideous dungeons, a state
of things which provoked Gladstone's famous letters to Lord Aberdeen, in
which Bourbon rule was branded for all time as "the negation of God
erected into a system of government." But oppressive, corrupt and
inefficient as it was, the government was not confronted by the
uncompromising hostility of the whole people; the ignorant priest-ridden
masses were either indifferent or of mildly Bourbon sympathies; the
opposition was constituted by the educated middle classes and a part of
the nobility. The revolutionary attempts of Bentivegna in Sicily (1856)
and of the Mazzinian Carlo Pisacane, who landed at Sapri in Calabria
with a few followers in 1857, failed from lack of popular support, and
the leaders were killed.

New Unionist movement.

Napoleon III. and Italy.

The decline of Mazzini's influence was accompanied by the rise of a new
movement in favour of Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel, inspired by
the Milanese marquis Giorgio Pallavicini, who had spent 14 years in the
Spielberg, and by Manin, living in exile in Paris, both of them
ex-republicans who had become monarchists. The propaganda was organized
by the Sicilian La Farina by means of the _Società Nazionale_. All who
accepted the motto "Unity, Independence and Victor Emmanuel" were
admitted into the society. Many of the republicans and Mazzinians joined
it, but Mazzini himself regarded it with no sympathy. In the Austrian
provinces and in the duchies it carried all before it, and gained many
adherents in the Legations, Rome and Naples, although in the latter
regions the autonomist feeling was still strong even among the Liberals.
In Piedmont itself it was at first less successful; and Cavour, although
he aspired ultimately to a united Italy with Rome as the capital,[14]
openly professed no ambition beyond the expulsion of Austria and the
formation of a North Italian kingdom. But he gave secret encouragement
to the movement, and ended by practically directing its activity through
La Farina. The king, too, was in close sympathy with the society's aims,
but for the present it was necessary to hide this attitude from the eyes
of the Powers, whose sympathy Cavour could only hope to gain by
professing hostility to everything that savoured of revolution. Both the
king and his minister realized that Piedmont alone, even with the help
of the National Society, could not expel Austria from Italy without
foreign assistance. Piedmontese finances had been strained to
breaking-point to organize an army obviously intended for other than
merely defensive purposes. Cavour now set himself to the task of
isolating Austria and securing an alliance for her expulsion. A British
alliance would have been preferable, but the British government was too
much concerned with the preservation of European peace. The emperor
Napoleon, almost alone among Frenchmen, had genuine Italian sympathies.
But were he to intervene in Italy, the intervention would not only have
to be successful; it would have to bring tangible advantages to France.
Hence his hesitations and vacillations, which Cavour steadily worked to
overcome. Suddenly on the 14th of January 1858 Napoleon's life was
attempted by Felice Orsini (q.v.) a Mazzinian Romagnol, who believed
that Napoleon was the chief obstacle to the success of the revolution in
Italy. The attempt failed and its author was caught and executed, but
while it appeared at first to destroy Napoleon's Italian sympathies and
led to a sharp interchange of notes between Paris and Turin, the emperor
was really impressed by the attempt and by Orsini's letter from prison
exhorting him to intervene in Italy. He realized how deep the Italian
feeling for independence must be, and that a refusal to act now might
result in further attempts on his life, as indeed Orsini's letter
stated. Consequently negotiations with Cavour were resumed, and a
meeting with him was arranged to take place at Plombières (20th and 21st
of July 1858). There it was agreed that France should supply 200,000 men
and Piedmont 100,000 for the expulsion of the Austrians from Italy, that
Piedmont should be expanded into a kingdom of North Italy, that central
Italy should form a separate kingdom, on the throne of which the emperor
contemplated placing one of his own relatives, and Naples another,
possibly under Lucien Murat; the pope, while retaining only the
"Patrimony of St Peter" (the Roman province), would be president of the
Italian confederation. In exchange for French assistance Piedmont would
cede Savoy and perhaps Nice to France; and a marriage between Victor
Emmanuel's daughter Clothilde and Jerome Bonaparte, to which Napoleon
attached great importance, although not made a definite condition, was
also discussed. No written agreement, however, was signed.

Italian war of 1859.

Armistice of Villafranca.

On the 1st of January 1859, Napoleon astounded the diplomatic world by
remarking to Baron Hübner, the Austrian ambassador, at the New Year's
reception at the Tuileries, that he regretted that relations between
France and Austria were "not so good as they had been"; and at the
opening of the Piedmontese parliament on the 10th Victor Emmanuel
pronounced the memorable words that he could not be insensible to the
cry of pain (_il grido di dolore_) which reached him from all parts of
Italy. Yet after these warlike declarations and after the signing of a
military convention at Turin, the king agreeing to all the conditions
proposed by Napoleon, the latter suddenly became pacific again, and
adopted the Russian suggestion that Italian affairs should be settled by
a congress. Austria agreed on condition that Piedmont should disarm and
should not be admitted to the congress. Lord Malmesbury urged the
Sardinian government to yield; but Cavour refused to disarm, or to
accept the principle of a congress, unless Piedmont were admitted to it
on equal terms with the other Powers. As neither the Sardinian nor the
Austrian government seemed disposed to yield, the idea of a congress had
to be abandoned. Lord Malmesbury now proposed that all three Powers
should disarm simultaneously and that, as suggested by Austria, the
precedent of Laibach should be followed and all the Italian states
invited to plead their cause at the bar of the Great Powers. To this
course Napoleon consented, to the despair of King Victor Emmanuel and
Cavour, who saw in this a proof that he wished to back out of his
engagement and make war impossible. When war seemed imminent volunteers
from all parts of Italy, especially from Lombardy, had come pouring into
Piedmont to enrol themselves in the army or in the specially raised
volunteer corps (the command of which was given to Garibaldi), and "to
go to Piedmont" became a test of patriotism throughout the country.
Urged by a peremptory message from Napoleon, Cavour saw the necessity of
bowing to the will of Europe, of disbanding the volunteers and reducing
the army to a peace footing. The situation, however, was saved by a
false move on the part of Austria. At Vienna the war party was in the
ascendant; the convention for disarmament had been signed, but so far
from its being carried out, the reserves were actually called out on the
12th of April; and on the 23rd, before Cavour's decision was known at
Vienna, an Austrian ultimatum reached Turin, summoning Piedmont to
disarm within three days on pain of invasion. Cavour was filled with joy
at the turn affairs had taken, for Austria now appeared as the
aggressor. On the 29th Francis Joseph declared war, and the next day his
troops crossed the Ticino, a move which was followed, as Napoleon had
stated it would be, by a French declaration of war. The military events
of the Italian war of 1859 are described under ITALIAN WARS. The actions
of Montebello (May 20), Palestro (May 31) and Melegnano (June 8) and the
battles of Magenta (June 4) and Solferino (June 24) all went against the
Austrians. Garibaldi's volunteers raised the standard of insurrection
and held the field in the region of the Italian lakes. After Solferino
the allies prepared to besiege the Quadrilateral. Then Napoleon suddenly
drew back, unwilling, for many reasons, to continue the campaign.
Firstly, he doubted whether the allies were strong enough to attack the
Quadrilateral, for he saw the defects of his own army's organization;
secondly, he began to fear intervention by Prussia, whose attitude
appeared menacing; thirdly, although really anxious to expel the
Austrians from Italy, he did not wish to create a too powerful Italian
state at the foot of the Alps, which, besides constituting a potential
danger to France, might threaten the pope's temporal power, and Napoleon
believed that he could not stand without the clerical vote; fourthly,
the war had been declared against the wishes of the great majority of
Frenchmen and was even now far from popular. Consequently, to the
surprise of all Europe, while the allied forces were drawn up ready for
battle, Napoleon, without consulting Victor Emmanuel, sent General
Fleury on the 6th of July to Francis Joseph to ask for an armistice,
which was agreed to. The king was now informed, and on the 8th Generals
Vaillant, Della Rocca and Hess met at Villafranca and arranged an
armistice until the 15th of August. But the king and Cavour were
terribly upset by this move, which meant peace without Venetia; Cavour
hurried to the king's headquarters at Monzambano and in excited, almost
disrespectful, language implored him not to agree to peace and to
continue the war alone, relying on the Piedmontese army and a general
Italian revolution. But Victor Emmanuel on this occasion proved the
greater statesman of the two; he understood that, hard as it was, he
must content himself with Lombardy for the present, lest all be lost. On
the 11th the two emperors met at Villafranca, where they agreed that
Lombardy should be ceded to Piedmont, and Venetia retained by Austria
but governed by Liberal methods; that the rulers of Tuscany, Parma and
Modena, who had been again deposed, should be restored, the Papal States
reformed, the Legations given a separate administration and the pope
made president of an Italian confederation including Austria as mistress
of Venetia. It was a revival of the old impossible federal idea, which
would have left Italy divided and dominated by Austria and France.
Victor Emmanuel regretfully signed the peace preliminaries, adding,
however, _pour ce qui me concerne_ (which meant that he made no
undertaking with regard to central Italy), and Cavour resigned office.

Unionist movements in Central Italy.

The Lombard campaign had produced important effects throughout the rest
of Italy. The Sardinian government had formally invited that of Tuscany
to participate in the war of liberation, and on the grand-duke rejecting
the proposal, moderates and democrats combined to present an ultimatum
to Leopold demanding that he should abdicate in favour of his son, grant
a constitution and take part in the campaign. On his refusal Florence
rose as one man, and he, feeling that he could not rely on his troops,
abandoned Tuscany on the 27th of April 1859. A provisional government
was formed, led by Ubaldino Peruzzi, and was strengthened on the 8th of
May by the inclusion of Baron Bettino Ricasoli, a man of great force of
character, who became the real head of the administration, and all
through the ensuing critical period aimed unswervingly at Italian unity.
Victor Emmanuel, at the request of the people, assumed the protectorate
over Tuscany, where he was represented by the Sardinian minister
Boncompagni. On the 23rd of May Prince Napoleon, with a French army
corps, landed at Leghorn, his avowed object being to threaten the
Austrian flank;[15] and in June these troops, together with a Tuscan
contingent, departed for Lombardy. In the duchy of Modena an
insurrection had broken out, and after Magenta Duke Francis joined the
Austrian army in Lombardy, leaving a regency in charge. But on the 14th
of June the municipality formed a provisional government and proclaimed
annexation to Piedmont; L. C. Farini was chosen dictator, and 4000
Modenese joined the allies. The duchess-regent of Parma also withdrew to
Austrian territory, and on the 11th of June annexation to Piedmont was
proclaimed. At the same time the Austrians evacuated the Legations and
Cardinal Milesi, the papal representative, departed. The municipality of
Bologna formed a _Giunta_, to which Romagna and the Marches adhered, and
invoked the dictatorship of Victor Emmanuel; at Perugia, too, a
provisional government was constituted under F. Guardabassi. But the
Marches were soon reoccupied by pontifical troops, and Perugia fell, its
capture being followed by an indiscriminate massacre of men, women and
children. In July the marquis D'Azeglio arrived at Bologna as royal
commissioner.

After the meetings at Villafranca Napoleon returned to France. The
question of the cession of Nice and Savoy had not been raised; for the
emperor had not fulfilled his part of the bargain, that he would drive
the Austrians out of Italy, since Venice was yet to be freed. At the
same time he was resolutely opposed to the Piedmontese annexations in
central Italy. But here Cavour intervened, for he was determined to
maintain the annexations, at all costs. Although he had resigned, he
remained in office until Rattazzi could form a new ministry; and while
officially recalling the royal commissioners according to the
preliminaries of Villafranca, he privately encouraged them to remain and
organize resistance to the return of the despots, if necessary by force
(see CAVOUR). Farini, who in August was elected dictator of Parma as
well as Modena, and Ricasoli, who since, on the withdrawal of the
Sardinian commissioner Boncompagni, had become supreme in Tuscany, were
now the men who by their energy and determination achieved the
annexation of central Italy to Piedmont, in spite of the strenuous
opposition of the French emperor and the weakness of many Italian
Liberals. In August Marco Minghetti succeeded in forming a military
league and a customs union between Tuscany, Romagna and the duchies, and
in procuring the adoption of the Piedmontese codes; and envoys were sent
to Paris to mollify Napoleon. Constituent assemblies met and voted for
unity under Victor Emmanuel, but the king could not openly accept the
proposal owing to the emperor's opposition, backed by the presence of
French armies in Lombardy; at a word from Napoleon there might have been
an Austrian, and perhaps a Franco-Austrian, invasion of central Italy.
But to Napoleon's statement that he could not agree to the unification
of Italy, as he was bound by his promises to Austria at Villafranca,
Victor Emmanuel replied that he himself, after Magenta and Solferino,
was bound in honour to link his fate with that of the Italian people;
and General Manfredo Fanti was sent by the Turin government to organize
the army of the Central League, with Garibaldi under him.

Treaty of Zürich.

The terms of the treaty of peace signed at Zürich on the 10th of
November were practically identical with those of the preliminaries of
Villafranca. It was soon evident, however, that the Italian question was
far from being settled. Central Italy refused to be bound by the treaty,
and offered the dictatorship to Prince Carignano, who, himself unable to
accept owing to Napoleon's opposition, suggested Boncompagni, who was
accordingly elected. Napoleon now realized that it would be impossible,
without running serious risks, to oppose the movement in favour of
unity. He suggested an international congress on the question; inspired
a pamphlet, _Le Pape et le Congrès_, which proposed a reduction of the
papal territory, and wrote to the pope advising him to cede Romagna in
order to obtain better guarantees for the rest of his dominions. The
proposed congress fell through, and Napoleon thereupon raised the
question of the cession of Nice and Savoy as the price of his consent to
the union of the central provinces with the Italian kingdom. In January
1866 the Rattazzi ministry fell, after completing the fusion of Lombardy
with Piedmont, and Cavour was again summoned by the king to the head of
affairs.

Cavour well knew the unpopularity that would fall upon him by consenting
to the cession of Nice, the birthplace of Garibaldi, and Savoy, the
cradle of the royal house; but he realized the necessity of the
sacrifice, if central Italy was to be won. The negotiations were long
drawn out; for Cavour struggled to save Nice and Napoleon was anxious to
make conditions, especially as regards Tuscany. At last, on the 24th of
March, the treaty was signed whereby the cession was agreed upon, but
subject to the vote of the populations concerned and ratification by the
Italian parliament. The king having formally accepted the voluntary
annexation of the duchies, Tuscany and Romagna, appointed the prince of
Carignano viceroy with Ricasoli as governor-general (22nd of March), and
was immediately afterwards excommunicated by the pope. On the 2nd of
April 1860 the new Italian parliament, including members from central
Italy, assembled at Turin. Three weeks later the treaty of Turin ceding
Savoy and Nice to France was ratified, though not without much
opposition, and Cavour was fiercely reviled for his share in the
transaction, especially by Garibaldi, who even contemplated an
expedition to Nice, but was induced to desist by the king.

Naples under Francis II.

In May 1859 Ferdinand of Naples was succeeded by his son Francis II.,
who gave no signs of any intention to change his father's policy, and,
in spite of Napoleon's advice, refused to grant a constitution or to
enter into an alliance with Sardinia. The result was a revolutionary
agitation which in Sicily, stirred up by Mazzini's agents, Rosalino Pilo
and Francesco Crispi, culminated, on the 5th of April 1860, in open
revolt. An invitation had been sent Garibaldi to put himself at the head
of the movement; at first he had refused, but reports of the progress of
the insurrection soon determined him to risk all on a bold stroke, and
on the 5th of May he embarked at Quarto, near Genoa, with Bixio, the
Hungarian Türr and some 1000 picked followers, on two steamers. The
preparations for the expedition, openly made, were viewed by Cavour with
mixed feelings. With its object he sympathized; yet he could not give
official sanction to an armed attack on a friendly power, nor on the
other hand could he forbid an action enthusiastically approved by public
opinion. He accordingly directed the Sardinian admiral Persano only to
arrest the expedition should it touch at a Sardinian port; while in
reply to the indignant protests of the continental powers he disclaimed
all knowledge of the affair. On the 11th Garibaldi landed at Marsala,
without opposition, defeated the Neapolitan forces at Calatafimi on the
15th, and on the 27th entered Palermo in triumph, where he proclaimed
himself, in King Victor Emmanuel's name, dictator of Sicily. By the end
of July, after the hard-won victory of Milazzo, the whole island, with
the exception of the citadel of Messina and a few unimportant ports, was
in his hands.

From Cavour's point of view, the situation was now one of extreme
anxiety. It was certain that, his work in Sicily done, Garibaldi would
turn his attention to the Neapolitan dominions on the mainland; and
beyond these lay Umbria and the Marches and--Rome. It was all-important
that whatever victories Garibaldi might win should be won for the
Italian kingdom, and, above all, that no ill-timed attack on the Papal
States should provoke an intervention of the powers. La Farina was
accordingly sent to Palermo to urge the immediate annexation of Sicily
to Piedmont. But Garibaldi, who wished to keep a free hand, distrusted
Cavour and scorned all counsels of expediency, refused to agree; Sicily
was the necessary base for his projected invasion of Naples; it would be
time enough to announce its union with Piedmont when Victor Emmanuel had
been proclaimed king of United Italy in Rome. Foiled by the dictator's
stubbornness, Cavour had once more to take to underhand methods; and,
while continuing futile negotiations with King Francis, sent his agents
into Naples to stir up disaffection and create a sentiment in favour of
national unity strong enough, in any event, to force Garibaldi's hand.

Garibaldi in Naples.

On the 8th of August, in spite of the protests and threats of most of
the powers, the Garibaldians began to cross the Straits, and in a short
time 20,000 of them were on the mainland. The Bourbonists in Calabria,
utterly disorganized, broke before the invincible red-shirts, and the
40,000 men defending the Salerno-Avellino line made no better
resistance, being eventually ordered to fall back on the Volturno. On
the 6th of September King Francis, with his family and several of the
ministers, sailed for Gaeta, and the next day Garibaldi entered Naples
alone in advance of the army, and was enthusiastically welcomed. He
proclaimed himself dictator of the kingdom, with Bertani as secretary of
state, but as a proof of his loyalty he consigned the Neapolitan fleet
to Persano.

Intervention of Piedmont.

His rapid success, meanwhile, inspired both the French emperor and the
government of Turin with misgivings. There was a danger that Garibaldi's
_entourage_, composed of ex-Mazzinians, might induce him to proclaim a
republic and march on Rome; which would have meant French intervention
and the undoing of all Cavour's work. King Victor Emmanuel and Cavour
both wrote to Garibaldi urging him not to spoil all by aiming at too
much. But Garibaldi poured scorn on all suggestions of compromise; and
Cavour saw that the situation could only be saved by the armed
participation of Piedmont in the liberation of south Italy.

The situation was, indeed, sufficiently critical. The unrest in Naples
had spread into Umbria and the Marches, and the papal troops, under
General Lamoricière, were preparing to suppress it. Had they succeeded,
the position of the Piedmontese in Romagna would have been imperilled;
had they failed, the road would have been open for Garibaldi to march on
Rome. In the circumstances, Cavour decided that Piedmont must anticipate
Garibaldi, occupy Umbria and the Marches and place Italy between the
red-shirts and Rome. His excuse was the pope's refusal to dismiss his
foreign levies (September 7). On the 11th of September a Piedmontese
army of 35,000 men crossed the frontier at La Cattolica; on the 18th the
pontifical army was crushed at Castelfidardo; and when, on the 29th,
Ancona fell, Umbria and the Marches were in the power of Piedmont. On
the 15th of October King Victor Emmanuel crossed the Neapolitan border
at the head of his troops.

It had been a race between Garibaldi and the Piedmontese. "If we do not
arrive at the Volturno before Garibaldi reaches La Cattolica," Cavour
had said, "the monarchy is lost, and Italy will remain in the
prison-house of the Revolution."[16] Fortunately for his policy, the
red-shirts had encountered a formidable obstacle to their advance in the
Neapolitan army entrenched on the Volturno under the guns of Capua. On
the 19th of September the Garibaldians began their attack on this
position with their usual impetuous valour; but they were repulsed again
and again, and it was not till the 2nd of October, after a two days'
pitched battle, that they succeeded in carrying the position. The way
was now open for the advance of the Piedmontese, who, save at Isernia,
encountered practically no resistance. On the 29th Victor Emmanuel and
Garibaldi met, and on the 7th of November they entered Naples together.
Garibaldi now resigned his authority into the king's hands and, refusing
the title and other honours offered to him, retired to his island home
of Caprera.[17]

Recognition of the united kingdom of Italy.

Gaeta remained still to be taken. The Piedmontese under Cialdini had
begun the siege on the 5th of November, but it was not until the 10th of
January 1861, when at the instance of Great Britain Napoleon withdrew
his squadron, that the blockade could be made complete. On the 13th of
February the fortress surrendered, Francis and his family having
departed by sea for papal territory. The citadel of Messina capitulated
on the 22nd, and Civitella del Tronto, the last stronghold of
Bourbonism, on the 21st of March. On the 18th of February the first
Italian parliament met at Turin, and Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed king
of Italy. The new kingdom was recognized by Great Britain within a
fortnight, by France three months later, and subsequently by other
powers. It included the whole peninsula except Venetia and Rome, and
these the government and the nation were determined to annex sooner or
later.

Problems of the new government.

Brigandage.

There were, however, other serious problems calling for immediate
attention. The country had to be built up and converted from an
agglomeration of scattered medieval principalities into a unified
modern nation. The first question which arose was that of brigandage
in the south. Brigandage had always existed in the Neapolitan kingdom,
largely owing to the poverty of the people; but the evil was now
aggravated by the mistake of the new government in dismissing the
Bourbon troops, and then calling them out again as recruits. A great
many turned brigands rather than serve again, and together with the
remaining adherents of Bourbon rule and malefactors of all kinds, were
made use of by the ex-king and his _entourage_ to harass the Italian
administration. Bands of desperadoes were formed, commanded by the
most infamous criminals and by foreigners who came to fight in what
they were led to believe was an Italian _Vendée_, but which was in
reality a campaign of butchery and plunder. Villages were sacked and
burnt, men, women and children mutilated, tortured or roasted alive,
and women outraged. The authors of these deeds when pursued by troops
fled into papal territory, where they were welcomed by the authorities
and allowed to refit and raise fresh recruits under the aegis of the
Church. The prime organizers of the movement were King Francis's
uncle, the count of Trapani, and Mons. de Mérode, a Belgian
ecclesiastic who enjoyed immense influence at the Vatican. The task
of suppressing brigandage was entrusted to Generals La Marmora and
Cialdini; but in spite of extreme severity, justifiable in the
circumstances, it took four or five years completely to suppress the
movement. Its vitality, indeed, was largely due to the mistakes made
by the new administration, conducted as this was by officials ignorant
of southern conditions and out of sympathy with a people far more
primitive than in any other part of the peninsula. Politically, its
sole outcome was to prove the impossibility of allowing the
continuance of an independent Roman state in the heart of Italy.

Garibaldi's volunteers.

Another of the government's difficulties was the question of what to
do with Garibaldi's volunteers. Fanti, the minister of war, had three
armies to incorporate in that of Piedmont, viz. that of central Italy,
that of the Bourbons and that of Garibaldi. The first caused no
difficulty; the rank and file of the second were mostly disbanded, but
a number of the officers were taken into the Italian army; the third
offered a more serious problem. Garibaldi demanded that all his
officers should be given equivalent rank in the Italian army, and in
this he had the support of Fanti. Cavour, on the other hand, while
anxious to deal generously with the Garibaldians, recognized the
impossibility of such a course, which would not only have offended the
conservative spirit of the Piedmontese military caste, which disliked
and despised irregular troops, but would almost certainly have
introduced into the army an element of indiscipline and disorder.

Death of Cavour.

On the 18th of April the question of the volunteers was discussed in one
of the most dramatic sittings of the Italian parliament. Garibaldi,
elected member for Naples, denounced Cavour in unmeasured terms for his
treatment of the volunteers and for the cession of Nice, accusing him of
leading the country to civil war. These charges produced a tremendous
uproar, but Bixio by a splendid appeal for concord succeeded in calming
the two adversaries. On the 23rd of April they were formally reconciled
in the presence of the king, but the scene of the 18th of April hastened
Cavour's end. In May the Roman question was discussed in parliament.
Cavour had often declared that in the end the capital of Italy must be
Rome, for it alone of all Italian cities had an unquestioned claim to
moral supremacy, and his views of a free church in a free state were
well known. He had negotiated secretly with the pope through unofficial
agents, and sketched out a scheme of settlement of the Roman question,
which foreshadowed in its main features the law of papal guarantees. But
it was not given him to see this problem solved, for his health was
broken by the strain of the last few years, during which practically the
whole administration of the country was concentrated in his hands. He
died after a short illness on the 6th of June 1861, at a moment when
Italy had the greatest need of his statesmanship.

Ricasoli Ministry. Financial difficulties.

Rattazzi Ministry.

Garibaldi and Rome. Affair of Aspromonte, 1862.

Minghetti Ministry.

Ricasoli now became prime minister, Cavour having advised the king to
that effect. The financial situation was far from brilliant, for the
expenses of the administration of Italy were far larger than the total
of those of all the separate states, and everything had to be created or
rebuilt. The budget of 1861 showed a deficit of 344,000,000 lire, while
the service of the debt was 110,000,000; deficits were met by new loans
issued on unfavourable terms (that of July 1861 for 500,000,000 lire
cost the government 714,833,000), and government stock fell as low as
36. It was now that the period of reckless finance began which, save for
a lucid interval under Sella, was to last until nearly the end of the
century. Considering the state of the country and the coming war for
Venice, heavy expenditure was inevitable, but good management might have
rendered the situation less dangerous. Ricasoli, honest and capable as
he was, failed to win popularity; his attitude on the Roman question,
which became more uncompromising after the failure of his attempt at
conciliation, and his desire to emancipate Italy from French
predominance, brought down on him the hostility of Napoleon. He fell in
March 1862, and was succeeded by Rattazzi, who being more pliable and
intriguing managed at first to please everybody, including Garibaldi. At
this time the extremists and even the moderates were full of schemes for
liberating Venice and Rome. Garibaldi had a plan, with which the premier
was connected, for attacking Austria by raising a revolt in the Balkans
and Hungary, and later he contemplated a raid into the Trentino; but
the government, seeing the danger of such an attempt, arrested several
Garibaldians at Sarnico (near Brescia), and in the _émeute_ which
followed several persons were shot. Garibaldi now became an opponent of
the ministry, and in June went to Sicily, where, after taking counsel
with his former followers, he decided on an immediate raid on Rome. He
summoned his legionaries, and in August crossed over to Calabria with
1000 men. His intentions in the main were still loyal, for he desired to
capture Rome for the kingdom; and he did his best to avoid the regulars
tardily sent against him. On the 29th of August 1862, however, he
encountered a force under Pallavicini at Aspromonte, and, although
Garibaldi ordered his men not to fire, some of the raw Sicilian
volunteers discharged a few volleys which were returned by the regulars.
Garibaldi himself was seriously wounded and taken prisoner. He was shut
up in the fortress of Varignano, and after endless discussions as to
whether he should be tried or not, the question was settled by an
amnesty. The affair made the ministry so unpopular that it was forced to
resign. Farini, who succeeded, retired almost at once on account of
ill-health, and Minghetti became premier, with Visconti-Venosta as
minister for foreign affairs. The financial situation continued to be
seriously embarrassing; deficit was piled on deficit, loan upon loan,
and the service of the debt rose from 90,000,000 lire in 1860 to
220,000,000 in 1864.

France, Italy and the Roman question.

Capital transferred to Florence, 1865.

La Marmora Ministry.

Negotiations were resumed with Napoleon for the evacuation of Rome by
the French troops; but the emperor, though he saw that the temporal
power could not for ever be supported by French bayonets, desired some
guarantee that the evacuation should not be followed, at all events
immediately, by an Italian occupation, lest Catholic opinion should lay
the blame for this upon France. Ultimately the two governments concluded
a convention on the 15th of September 1864, whereby France agreed to
withdraw her troops from Rome so soon as the papal army should be
reorganized, or at the outside within two years, Italy undertaking not
to attack it nor permit others to do so, and to transfer the capital
from Turin to some other city within six months.[18] The change of
capital would have the appearance of a definite abandonment of the _Roma
capitale_ programme, although in reality it was to be merely a _tappa_
(stage) on the way. The convention was kept secret, but the last clause
leaked out and caused the bitterest feeling among the people of Turin,
who would have been resigned to losing the capital provided it were
transferred to Rome, but resented the fact that it was to be established
in any other city, and that the convention was made without consulting
parliament. Demonstrations were held which were repressed with
unnecessary violence, and although the change of capital was not
unpopular in the rest of Italy, where the _Piemontesismo_ of the new
régime was beginning to arouse jealousy, the secrecy with which the
affair was arranged and the shooting down of the people in Turin raised
such a storm of disapproval that the king for the first time used his
privilege of dismissing the ministry. Under La Marmora's administration
the September convention was ratified, and the capital was transferred
to Florence the following year. This affair resulted in an important
political change, for the Piedmontese deputies, hitherto the bulwarks of
moderate conservatism, now shifted to the Left or constitutional
opposition.

Venetian question.

Prusso-Italian Alliance of 1866.

Meanwhile, the Venetian question was becoming more and more acute. Every
Italian felt the presence of the Austrians in the lagoons as a national
humiliation, and between 1859 and 1866 countless plots were hatched for
their expulsion. But, in spite of the sympathy of the king, the attempt
to raise armed bands in Venetia had no success, and it became clear that
the foreigner could only be driven from the peninsula by regular war. To
wage this alone Italy was still too weak, and it was necessary to look
round for an ally. Napoleon was sympathetic; he desired to see the
Austrians expelled, and the Syllabus of Pius IX., which had stirred up
the more aggressive elements among the French clergy against his
government, had brought him once more into harmony with the views of
Victor Emmanuel; but he dared not brave French public opinion by another
war with Austria, nor did Italy desire an alliance which would only have
been bought at the price of further cessions. There remained Prussia,
which, now that the Danish campaign of 1864 was over, was completing her
preparations for the final struggle with Austria for the hegemony of
Germany; and Napoleon, who saw in the furthering of Bismarck's plans the
surest means of securing his own influence in a divided Europe,
willingly lent his aid in negotiating a Prusso-Italian alliance. In the
summer of 1865 Bismarck made formal proposals to La Marmora; but the
_pourparlers_ were interrupted by the conclusion of the convention of
Gastein (August 14), to which Austria agreed partly under pressure of
the Prusso-Italian _entente_. To Italy the convention seemed like a
betrayal; to Napoleon it was a set-back which he tried to retrieve by
suggesting to Austria the peaceful cession of Venetia to the Italian
kingdom, in order to prevent any danger of its alliance with Prussia.
This proposal broke on the refusal of the emperor Francis Joseph to cede
Austrian territory except as the result of a struggle; and Napoleon, won
over by Bismarck at the famous interview at Biarritz, once more took up
the idea of a Prusso-Italian offensive and defensive alliance. This was
actually concluded on the 8th of April 1866. Its terms, dictated by a
natural suspicion on the part of the Italian government, stipulated that
it should only become effective in the event of Prussia declaring war on
Austria within three months. Peace was not to be concluded until Italy
should have received Venetia, and Prussia an equivalent territory in
Germany.

The outbreak of war was postponed by further diplomatic complications.
On the 12th of June Napoleon, whose policy throughout had been obscure
and contradictory, signed a secret treaty with Austria, under which
Venice was to be handed over to him, to be given to Italy in the event
of her making a separate peace. La Marmora, however, who believed
himself bound in honour to Prussia, refused to enter into a separate
arrangement. On the 16th the Prussians began hostilities, and on the
20th Italy declared war.

Ricasoli Ministry.

Battle of Königgrätz.

Victor Emmanuel took the supreme command of the Italian army, and La
Marmora resigned the premiership (which was assumed by Ricasoli), to
become chief of the staff. La Marmora had three army corps (130,000 men)
under his immediate command, to operate on the Mincio, while Cialdini
with 80,000 men was to operate on the Po. The Austrian southern army
consisting of 95,000 men was commanded by the archduke Albert, with
General von John as chief of the staff. On the 23rd of June La Marmora
crossed the Mincio, and on the 24th a battle was fought at Custozza,
under circumstances highly disadvantageous to the Italians, which after
a stubborn contest ended in a crushing Austrian victory. Bad
generalship, bad organization and the jealousy between La Marmora and
Della Rocca were responsible for this defeat. Custozza might have been
afterwards retrieved, for the Italians had plenty of fresh troops
besides Cialdini's army; but nothing was done, as both the king and La
Marmora believed the situation to be much worse than it actually was. On
the 3rd of July the Prussians completely defeated the Austrians at
Königgrätz, and on the 5th Austria ceded Venetia to Napoleon, accepting
his mediation in favour of peace. The Italian iron-clad fleet commanded
by the incapable Persano, after wasting much time at Taranto and Ancona,
made an unsuccessful attack on the Dalmatian island of Lissa on the 18th
of July, and on the 20th was completely defeated by the Austrian
squadron, consisting of wooden ships, but commanded by the capable
Admiral Tegethoff.

Venice united to Italy.

On the 22nd Prussia, without consulting Italy, made an armistice with
Austria, while Italy obtained an eight days' truce on condition of
evacuating the Trentino, which had almost entirely fallen into the
hands of Garibaldi and his volunteers. Ricasoli wished to go on with the
war, rather than accept Venetia as a gift from France; but the king and
La Marmora saw that peace must be made, as the whole Austrian army of
350,000 men was now free to fall on Italy. An armistice was accordingly
signed at Cormons on the 12th of August; Austria handed Venetia over to
General Leboeuf, representing Napoleon; and on the 3rd of October peace
between Austria and Italy was concluded at Vienna. On the 19th Leboeuf
handed Venetia over to the Venetian representatives, and at the
plebiscite held on the 21st and 22nd, 647,246 votes were returned in
favour of union with Italy, only 69 against it. When this result was
announced to the king by a deputation from Venice he said: "This is the
finest day of my life; Italy is made, but it is not complete." Rome was
still wanting.

Revolt in Sicily, 1866.

Rattazzi Ministry.

Garibaldi attacks Rome.

Menabrea Ministry.

Battle of Mentana.

Custozza and Lissa were not Italy's only misfortunes in 1866. There had
been considerable discontent in Sicily, where the government had made
itself unpopular. The priesthood and the remnants of the Bourbon party
fomented an agitation, which in September culminated in an attack on
Palermo by 3000 armed insurgents, and in similar outbreaks elsewhere.
The revolt was put down owing to the energy of the mayor of Palermo,
Marquis A. Di Rudini, and the arrival of reinforcements. The Ricasoli
cabinet fell over the law against the religious houses, and was
succeeded by that of Rattazzi, who with the support of the Left was
apparently more fortunate. The French regular troops were withdrawn from
Rome in December 1866; but the pontifical forces were largely recruited
in France and commanded by officers of the imperial army, and service
under the pope was considered by the French war office as equivalent to
service in France. This was a violation of the letter as well as of the
spirit of the September convention, and a stronger and more
straightforward statesman than Rattazzi would have declared Italy
absolved from its provisions. Mazzini now wanted to promote an
insurrection in Roman territory, whereas Garibaldi advocated an invasion
from without. He delivered a series of violent speeches against the
papacy, and made open preparations for a raid, which were not interfered
with by the government; but on the 23rd of September 1867 Rattazzi had
him suddenly arrested and confined to Caprera. In spite of the vigilance
of the warships he escaped on the 14th of October and landed in Tuscany.
Armed bands had already entered papal territory, but achieved nothing in
particular. Their presence, however, was a sufficient excuse for
Napoleon, under pressure of the clerical party, to send another
expedition to Rome (26th of October). Rattazzi, after ordering a body of
troops to enter papal territory with no definite object, now resigned,
and was succeeded by Menabrea. Garibaldi joined the bands on the 23rd,
but his ill-armed and ill-disciplined force was very inferior to his
volunteers of '49, '60 and '66. On the 24th he captured Monte Rotondo,
but did not enter Rome as the expected insurrection had not broken out.
On the 29th a French force, under de Failly, arrived, and on the 3rd of
November a battle took place at Mentana between 4000 or 5000 red-shirts
and a somewhat superior force of French and pontificals. The
Garibaldians, mowed down by the new French _chassepôt_ rifles, fought
until their last cartridges were exhausted, and retreated the next day
towards the Italian frontier, leaving 800 prisoners.

Lanza Ministry.

The affair of Mentana caused considerable excitement throughout Europe,
and the Roman question entered on an acute stage. Napoleon suggested his
favourite expedient of a congress but the proposal broke down owing to
Great Britain's refusal to participate; and Rouher, the French premier,
declared in the Chamber (5th of December 1867) that France could never
permit the Italians to occupy Rome. The attitude of France strengthened
that anti-French feeling in Italy which had begun with Villafranca; and
Bismarck was not slow to make use of this hostility, with a view to
preventing Italy from taking sides with France against Germany in the
struggle between the two powers which he saw to be inevitable. At the
same time Napoleon was making overtures both to Austria and to Italy,
overtures which were favourably received. Victor Emmanuel was sincerely
anxious to assist Napoleon, for in spite of Nice and Savoy and Mentana
he felt a chivalrous desire to help the man who had fought for Italy.
But with the French at Civitavecchia (they had left Rome very soon after
Mentana) a war for France was not to be thought of, and Napoleon would
not promise more than the literal observance of the September
convention. Austria would not join France unless Italy did the same, and
she realized that that was impossible unless Napoleon gave way about
Rome. Consequently the negotiations were suspended. A scandal concerning
the tobacco monopoly led to the fall of Menabrea, who was succeeded in
December 1869 by Giovanni Lanza, with Visconti-Venosta at the foreign
office and Q. Sella as finance minister. The latter introduced a sounder
financial policy, which was maintained until the fall of the Right in
1876. Mazzini, now openly hostile to the monarchy, was seized with a
perfect monomania for insurrections, and promoted various small risings,
the only effect of which was to show how completely his influence was
gone.

Italian occupation of Rome.

In December 1869 the XXI. oecumenical council began its sittings in
Rome, and on the 18th of July 1870 proclaimed the infallibility of the
pope (see VATICAN COUNCIL). Two days previously Napoleon had declared
war on Prussia, and immediately afterwards he withdrew his troops from
Civitavecchia; but he persuaded Lanza to promise to abide by the
September convention, and it was not until after Worth and Gravelotte
that he offered to give Italy a free hand to occupy Rome. Then it was
too late; Victor Emmanuel asked Thiers if he could give his word of
honour that with 100,000 Italian troops France could be saved, but
Thiers remained silent. Austria replied like Italy: "It is too late." On
the 9th of August Italy made a declaration of neutrality, and three
weeks later Visconti-Venosta informed the powers that Italy was about to
occupy Rome. On the 3rd of September the news of Sédan reached Florence,
and with the fall of Napoleon's empire the September convention ceased
to have any value. The powers having engaged to abstain from
intervention in Italian affairs, Victor Emmanuel addressed a letter to
Pius IX. asking him in the name of religion and peace to accept Italian
protection instead of the temporal power, to which the pope replied that
he would only yield to force. On the 11th of September General Cadorna
at the head of 60,000 men entered papal territory. The garrison of
Civitavecchia surrendered to Bixio, but the 10,000 men in Rome, mostly
French, Belgians, Swiss and Bavarians, under Kanzler, were ready to
fight. Cardinal Antonelli would have come to terms, but the pope decided
on making a sufficient show of resistance to prove that he was yielding
to force. On the 20th the Italians began the attack, and General Mazé de
la Roche's division having effected a breach in the Porta Pia, the pope
ordered the garrison to cease fire and the Italians poured into the
Eternal City followed by thousands of Roman exiles. By noon the whole
city on the left of the Tiber was occupied and the garrison laid down
their arms; the next day, at the pope's request, the Leonine City on the
right bank was also occupied. It had been intended to leave that part of
Rome to the pope, but by the earnest desire of the inhabitants it too
was included in the Italian kingdom. At the plebiscite there were
133,681 votes for union and 1507 against it. In July 1872 King Victor
Emmanuel made his solemn entry into Rome, which was then declared the
capital of Italy. Thus, after a struggle of more than half a century, in
spite of apparently insuperable obstacles, the liberation and the unity
of Italy were accomplished.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--A vast amount of material on the Risorgimento has been
published both in Italy and abroad as well as numerous works of a
literary and critical nature. The most detailed Italian history of the
period is Carlo Tivaroni's _Storia critica del Risorgimento Italiano_
in 9 vols. (Turin, 1888-1897), based on a diligent study of the
original authorities and containing a large amount of information; the
author is a Mazzinian, which fact should be taken into account, but
he generally quotes the opinions of those who disagree with him as
well. Another voluminous but less valuable work is F. Bertolini's
_Storia d'Italia dal 1814 al 1878_, in 2 parts (Milan, 1880-1881.) L.
Chiala's _Lettere del Conte di Cavour_ (7 vols., Turin, 1883-1887) and
D. Zanichelli's _Scritti del Conte di Cavour_ (Bologna, 1892) are very
important, and so are Prince Metternich's _Mémoires_ (7 vols., Paris,
1881). P. Orsi's _L'Italia moderna_ (Milan, 1901) should also be
mentioned. N. Bianchi's _Storia della diplomazia europea in Italia_ (8
vols., Turin, 1865) is an invaluable and thoroughly reliable work. See
also Zini's _Storia d' Italia_ (4 vols., Milan, 1875); Gualterio's
_Gli ultimi rivolgimenti italiani_ (4 vols., Florence, 1850) is
important for the period from 1831 to 1847, and so also is L. Farina's
_Storia d' Italia dal 1815 al 1849_ (5 vols., Turin, 1851); W. R.
Thayer's _Dawn of Italian Independence_ (Boston, 1893) is gushing and
not always accurate; C. Cantù's _Dell' indipendenza italiana
cronistoria_ (Naples, 1872-1877) is reactionary and often unreliable;
V. Bersezio, _Il Regno di Vittorio Emanuele II_ (8 vols., Turin, 1889,
&c.). For English readers Countess E. Martinengo Cesaresco's
_Liberation of Italy_ (London, 1895) is to be strongly recommended,
and is indeed, for accuracy, fairness and synthesis, as well as for
charm of style, one of the very best books on the subject in any
language; Bolton King's _History of Italian Unity_ (2 vols., London,
1899) is bulkier and less satisfactory, but contains a useful
bibliography. A succinct account of the chief events of the period
will be found in Sir Spencer Walpole's _History of Twenty-Five Years_
(London, 1904). See also the _Cambridge Modern History_, vols. x. and
xi. (Cambridge, 1907, &c.), where full bibliographies will be found.
(L. V.*)

F. HISTORY, 1870-1902

Italian occupation of Rome.

The downfall of the temporal power was hailed throughout Italy with
unbounded enthusiasm. Abroad, Catholic countries at first received the
tidings with resignation, and Protestant countries with joy. In France,
where the Government of National Defence had replaced the Empire,
Crémieux, as president of the government delegation at Tours, hastened
to offer his congratulations to Italy. The occupation of Rome caused no
surprise to the French government, which had been forewarned on 11th
September of the Italian intentions. On that occasion Jules Favre had
recognized the September convention to be dead, and, while refusing
explicitly to denounce it, had admitted that unless Italy went to Rome
the city would become a prey to dangerous agitators. At the same time he
made it clear that Italy would occupy Rome upon her own responsibility.
Agreeably surprised by this attitude on the part of France,
Visconti-Venosta lost no time in conveying officially the thanks of
Italy to the French government. He doubtless foresaw that the language
of Favre and Crémieux would not be endorsed by the French Clericals.
Prussia, while satisfied at the fall of the temporal power, seemed to
fear lest Italy might recompense the absence of French opposition to the
occupation of Rome by armed intervention in favour of France. Bismarck,
moreover, was indignant at the connivance of the Italian government in
the Garibaldian expedition to Dijon, and was irritated by
Visconti-Venosta's plea in the Italian parliament for the integrity of
French territory. The course of events in France, however, soon calmed
German apprehensions. The advent of Thiers, his attitude towards the
petition of French bishops on behalf of the pope, the recall of Senard,
the French minister at Florence--who had written to congratulate Victor
Emmanuel on the capture of Rome--and the instructions given to his
successor, the comte de Choiseul, to absent himself from Italy at the
moment of the king's official entry into the new capital (2nd July
1871), together with the haste displayed in appointing a French
ambassador to the Holy See, rapidly cooled the cordiality of
Franco-Italian relations, and reassured Bismarck on the score of any
dangerous intimacy between the two governments.

Attitude of the Vatican.

The friendly attitude of France towards Italy during the period
immediately subsequent to the occupation of Rome seemed to cow and to
dishearten the Vatican. For a few weeks the relations between the Curia
and the Italian authorities were marked by a conciliatory spirit. The
secretary-general of the Italian foreign office, Baron Blanc, who had
accompanied General Cadorna to Rome, was received almost daily by
Cardinal Antonelli, papal secretary of state, in order to settle
innumerable questions arising out of the Italian occupation. The royal
commissioner for finance, Giacomelli, had, as a precautionary measure,
seized the pontifical treasury; but upon being informed by Cardinal
Antonelli that among the funds deposited in the treasury were 1,000,000
crowns of Peter's Pence offered by the faithful to the pope in person,
the commissioner was authorized by the Italian council of state not only
to restore this sum, but also to indemnify the Holy See for moneys
expended for the service of the October coupon of the pontifical debt,
that debt having been taken over by the Italian state. On the 29th of
September Cardinal Antonelli further apprised Baron Blanc that he was
about to issue drafts for the monthly payment of the 50,000 crowns
inscribed in the pontifical budget for the maintenance of the pope, the
Sacred College, the apostolic palaces and the papal guards. The Italian
treasury at once honoured all the papal drafts, and thus contributed a
first instalment of the 3,225,000 lire per annum afterwards placed by
Article 4 of the Law of Guarantees at the disposal of the Holy See.
Payments would have been regularly continued had not pressure from the
French Clerical party coerced the Vatican into refusing any further
instalment.

The Law of Guarantees.

Once in possession of Rome, and guarantor to the Catholic world of the
spiritual independence of the pope, the Italian government prepared
juridically to regulate its relations to the Holy See. A bill known as
the Law of Guarantees was therefore framed and laid before parliament.
The measure was an amalgam of Cavour's scheme for a "free church in a
free state," of Ricasoli's Free Church Bill, rejected by parliament four
years previously, and of the proposals presented to Pius IX. by Count
Ponza di San Martino in September 1870. After a debate lasting nearly
two months the Law of Guarantees was adopted in secret ballot on the
21st of March 1871 by 185 votes against 106.

It consisted of two parts. The first, containing thirteen articles,
recognized (Articles 1 and 2) the person of the pontiff as sacred and
intangible, and while providing for free discussion of religious
questions, punished insults and outrages against the pope in the same
way as insults and outrages against the king. Royal honours were
attributed to the pope (Article 3), who was further guaranteed the
same precedence as that accorded to him by other Catholic sovereigns,
and the right to maintain his Noble and Swiss guards. Article 4
allotted the pontiff an annuity of 3,225,000 lire (£129,000) for the
maintenance of the Sacred College, the sacred palaces, the
congregations, the Vatican chancery and the diplomatic service. The
sacred palaces, museums and libraries were, by Article 5, exempted
from all taxation, and the pope was assured perpetual enjoyment of the
Vatican and Lateran buildings and gardens, and of the papal villa at
Castel Gandolfo. Articles 6 and 7 forbade access of any Italian
official or agent to the above-mentioned palaces or to any eventual
conclave or oecumenical council without special authorization from the
pope, conclave or council. Article 8 prohibited the seizure or
examination of any ecclesiastical papers, documents, books or
registers of purely spiritual character. Article 9 guaranteed to the
pope full freedom for the exercise of his spiritual ministry, and
provided for the publication of pontifical announcements on the doors
of the Roman churches and basilicas. Article 10 extended immunity to
ecclesiastics employed by the Holy See, and bestowed upon foreign
ecclesiastics in Rome the personal rights of Italian citizens. By
Article 11, diplomatists accredited to the Holy See, and papal
diplomatists while in Italy, were placed on the same footing as
diplomatists accredited to the Quirinal. Article 12 provided for the
transmission free of cost in Italy of all papal telegrams and
correspondence both with bishops and foreign governments, and
sanctioned the establishment, at the expense of the Italian state, of
a papal telegraph office served by papal officials in communication
with the Italian postal and telegraph system. Article 13 exempted all
ecclesiastical seminaries, academies, colleges and schools for the
education of priests in the city of Rome from all interference on the
part of the Italian government.

This portion of the law, designed to reassure foreign Catholics, met
with little opposition; but the second portion, regulating the
relations between state and church in Italy, was sharply criticized by
deputies who, like Sella, recognized the ideal of a "free church in a
free state" to be an impracticable dream. The second division of the
law abolished (Article 14) all restrictions upon the right of meeting
of members of the clergy. By Article 15 the government relinquished
its rights to apostolic legation in Sicily, and to the appointment of
its own nominees to the chief benefices throughout the kingdom.
Bishops were further dispensed from swearing fealty to the king,
though, except in Rome and suburbs, the choice of bishops was limited
to ecclesiastics of Italian nationality. Article 16 abolished the need
for royal _exequatur_ and _placet_ for ecclesiastical publications,
but subordinated the enjoyment of temporalities by bishops and
priests to the concession of state _exequatur_ and _placet_. Article
17 maintained the independence of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in
spiritual and disciplinary matters, but reserved for the state the
exclusive right to carry out coercive measures.

On the 12th of July 1871, Articles 268, 269 and 270 of the Italian Penal
Code were so modified as to make ecclesiastics liable to imprisonment
for periods varying from six months to five years, and to fines from
1000 to 3000 lire, for spoken or written attacks against the laws of the
state, or for the fomentation of disorder. An encyclical of Pius IX. to
the bishops of the Catholic Church on the 15th of May 1871 repudiated
the Law of Guarantees, and summoned Catholic princes to co-operate in
restoring the temporal power. Practically, therefore, the law has
remained a one-sided enactment, by which Italy considers herself bound,
and of which she has always observed the spirit, even though the
exigencies of self-defence may have led in some minor respects to
non-observance of the letter. The annuity payable to the pope has, for
instance, been made subject to quinquennial prescription, so that in the
event of tardy recognition of the law the Vatican could at no time claim
payment of more than five years' annuity with interest.

For a few months after the occupation of Rome pressing questions
incidental to a new change of capital and to the administration of a new
domain distracted public attention from the real condition of Italian
affairs. The rise of the Tiber and the flooding of Rome in December 1870
(tactfully used by Victor Emmanuel as an opportunity for a first visit
to the new capital) illustrated the imperative necessity of reorganizing
the drainage of the city and of constructing the Tiber embankment. In
spite of pressure from the French government, which desired Italy to
maintain Florence as the political and to regard Rome merely as the
moral capital of the realm, the government offices and both legislative
chambers were transferred in 1871 to the Eternal City. Early in the year
the crown prince Humbert with the Princess Margherita took up their
residence in the Quirinal Palace, which, in view of the Vatican refusal
to deliver up the keys, had to be opened by force. Eight monasteries
were expropriated to make room for the chief state departments, pending
the construction of more suitable edifices. The growth of Clerical
influence in France engendered a belief that Italy would soon have to
defend with the sword her newly-won unity, while the tremendous lesson
of the Franco-Prussian War convinced the military authorities of the
need for thorough military reform. General Ricotti Magnani, minister of
war, therefore framed an Army Reform Bill designed to bring the Italian
army as nearly as possible up to the Prussian standard. Sella, minister
of finance, notwithstanding the sorry plight of the Italian exchequer,
readily granted the means for the reform. "We must arm," he said, "since
we have overturned the papal throne," and he pointed to France as the
quarter from which attack was most likely to come.

Finance.

Though perhaps less desperate than during the previous decade, the
condition of Italian finance was precarious indeed. With taxation
screwed up to breaking point on personal and real estate, on all forms
of commercial and industrial activity, and on salt, flour and other
necessaries of life; with a deficit of £8,500,000 for the current year,
and the prospect of a further aggregate deficit of £12,000,000 during
the next quinquennium, Sella's heroic struggle against national
bankruptcy was still far from a successful termination. He chiefly had
borne the brunt and won the laurels of the unprecedented fight against
deficit in which Italy had been involved since 1862. As finance minister
in the Rattazzi cabinet of that year he had been confronted with a
public debt of nearly £120,000,000, and with an immediate deficit of
nearly £18,000,000. In 1864, as minister in the La Marmora cabinet, he
had again to face an excess of expenditure over income amounting to more
than £14,600,000. By the seizure and sale of Church lands, by the sale
of state railways, by "economy to the bone" and on one supreme occasion
by an appeal to taxpayers to advance a year's quota of the land-tax, he
had met the most pressing engagements of that troublous period. The king
was persuaded to forgo one-fifth of his civil list, ministers and the
higher civil servants were required to relinquish a portion of their
meagre salaries, but, in spite of all, Sella had found himself in 1865
compelled to propose the most hated of fiscal burdens--a grist tax on
cereals. This tax (_macinato_) had long been known in Italy. Vexatious
methods of assessment and collection had made it so unpopular that the
Italian government in 1859-1860 had thought it expedient to abolish it
throughout the realm. Sella hoped by the application of a mechanical
meter both to obviate the odium attaching to former methods of
collection and to avoid the maintenance of an army of inspectors and
tax-gatherers, whose stipends had formerly eaten up most of the proceeds
of the impost. Before proposing the reintroduction of the tax, Sella and
his friend Ferrara improved and made exhaustive experiments with the
meter. The result of their efforts was laid before parliament in one of
the most monumental and most painstaking preambles ever prefixed to a
bill. Sella, nevertheless, fell before the storm of opposition which his
scheme aroused. Scialoja, who succeeded him, was obliged to adopt a
similar proposal, but parliament again proved refractory. Ferrara,
successor of Scialoja, met a like fate; but Count Cambray-Digny, finance
minister in the Menabrea cabinet of 1868-1869, driven to find means to
cover a deficit aggravated by the interest on the Venetian debt,
succeeded, with Sella's help, in forcing a Grist Tax Bill through
parliament, though in a form of which Sella could not entirely approve.
When, on the 1st of January 1869, the new tax came into force, nearly
half the flour-mills in Italy ceased work. In many districts the
government was obliged to open mills on its own account. Inspectors and
tax-gatherers did their work under police protection, and in several
parts of the country riots had to be suppressed _manu militari_. At
first the net revenue from the impost was less than £1,100,000; but
under Sella's firm administration (1869-1873), and in consequence of
improvements gradually introduced by him, the net return ultimately
exceeded £3,200,000. The parliamentary opposition to the impost, which
the Left denounced as "the tax on hunger," was largely factitious. Few,
except the open partisans of national bankruptcy, doubted its necessity;
yet so strong was the current of feeling worked up for party purposes by
opponents of the measure, that Sella's achievement in having by its
means saved the financial situation of Italy deserves to rank among the
most noteworthy performances of modern parliamentary statesmanship.

Under the stress of the appalling financial conditions represented by
chronic deficit, crushing taxation, the heavy expenditure necessary for
the consolidation of the kingdom, the reform of the army and the
interest on the pontifical debt, Sella, on the 11th of December 1871,
exposed to parliament the financial situation in all its nakedness. He
recognized that considerable improvement had already taken place.
Revenue from taxation had risen in a decade from £7,000,000 to
£20,200,000; profit on state monopolies had increased from £7,000,000 to
£9,400,000; exports had grown to exceed imports; income from the working
of telegraphs had tripled itself; railways had been extended from 2200
to 6200 kilometres, and the annual travelling public had augmented from
15,000,000 to 25,000,000 persons. The serious feature of the situation
lay less in the income than in the "intangible" expenditure, namely, the
vast sums required for interest on the various forms of public debt and
for pensions. Within ten years this category of outlay had increased
from £8,000,000 to £28,800,000. During the same period the assumption of
the Venetian and Roman debts, losses on the issue of loans and the
accumulation of annual deficits, had caused public indebtedness to rise
from £92,000,000 to £328,000,000, no less than £100,000,000 of the
latter sum having been sacrificed in premiums and commissions to bankers
and underwriters of loans. By economies and new taxes Sella had reduced
the deficit to less than £2,000,000 in 1871, but for 1872 he found
himself confronted with a total expenditure of £8,000,000 in excess of
revenue. He therefore proposed to make over the treasury service to the
state banks, to increase the forced currency, to raise the stamp and
registration duties and to impose a new tax on textile fabrics. An
optional conversion of sundry internal loans into consolidated stock at
a lower rate of interest was calculated to effect considerable saving.
The battle over these proposals was long and fierce. But for the tactics
of Rattazzi, leader of the Left, who, by basing his opposition on party
considerations, impeded the secession of Minghetti and a part of the
Right from the ministerial majority, Sella would have been defeated. On
the 23rd of March 1872, however, he succeeded in carrying his programme,
which not only provided for the pressing needs of the moment, but laid
the foundation of the much-needed equilibrium between expenditure and
revenue.

Religious Orders Bill.

In the spring of 1873 it became evident that the days of the Lanza-Sella
cabinet were numbered. Fear of the advent of a Radical administration
under Rattazzi alone prevented the Minghettian Right from revolting
against the government. The Left, conscious of its strength, impatiently
awaited the moment of accession to power. Sella, the real head of the
Lanza cabinet, was worn out by four years' continuous work and
disheartened by the perfidious misrepresentation in which Italian
politicians, particularly those of the Left, have ever excelled. By
sheer force of will he compelled the Chamber early in 1873 to adopt some
minor financial reforms, but on the 29th of April found himself in a
minority on the question of a credit for a proposed state arsenal at
Taranto. Pressure from all sides of the House, however, induced the
ministry to retain office until after the debate on the application to
Rome and the Papal States of the Religious Orders Bill (originally
passed in 1866)--a measure which, with the help of Ricasoli, was carried
at the end of May. While leaving intact the general houses of the
various confraternities (except that of the Jesuits), the bill abolished
the corporate personality of religious orders, handed over their schools
and hospitals to civil administrators, placed their churches at the
disposal of the secular clergy, and provided pensions for nuns and
monks, those who had families being sent to reside with their relatives,
and those who by reason of age or bereavement had no home but their
monasteries being allowed to end their days in religious houses
specially set apart for the purpose. The proceeds of the sale of the
suppressed convents and monasteries were partly converted into pensions
for monks and nuns, and partly allotted to the municipal charity boards
which had undertaken the educational and charitable functions formerly
exercised by the religious orders. To the pope was made over £16,000 per
annum as a contribution to the expense of maintaining in Rome
representatives of foreign orders; the Sacred College, however, rejected
this endowment, and summoned all the suppressed confraternities to
reconstitute themselves under the ordinary Italian law of association. A
few days after the passage of the Religious Orders Bill, the death of
Rattazzi (5th June 1873) removed all probability of the immediate advent
of the Left. Sella, uncertain of the loyalty of the Right, challenged a
vote on the immediate discussion of further financial reforms, and on
the 23rd of June was overthrown by a coalition of the Left under
Depretis with a part of the Right under Minghetti and the Tuscan Centre
under Correnti. The administration which thus fell was unquestionably
the most important since the death of Cavour. It had completed national
unity, transferred the capital to Rome, overcome the chief obstacles to
financial equilibrium, initiated military reform and laid the foundation
of the relations between state and church.

Minghetti.

The succeeding Minghetti-Visconti-Venosta cabinet--which held office
from the 10th of July 1873 to the 18th of March 1876--continued in
essential points the work of the preceding administration. Minghetti's
finance, though less clear-sighted and less resolute than that of Sella,
was on the whole prudent and beneficial. With the aid of Sella he
concluded conventions for the redemption of the chief Italian railways
from their French and Austrian proprietors. By dint of expedients he
gradually overcame the chronic deficit, and, owing to the normal
increase of revenue, ended his term of office with the announcement of a
surplus of some £720,000. The question whether this surplus was real or
only apparent has been much debated, but there is no reason to doubt its
substantial reality. It left out of account a sum of £1,000,000 for
railway construction which was covered by credit, but, on the other
hand, took no note of £360,000 expended in the redemption of debt.
Practically, therefore, the Right, of which the Minghetti cabinet was
the last representative administration, left Italian finance with a
surplus of £80,000. Outside the all-important domain of finance, the
attention of Minghetti and his colleagues was principally absorbed by
strife between church and state, army reform and railway redemption. For
some time after the occupation of Rome the pope, in order to
substantiate the pretence that his spiritual freedom had been
diminished, avoided the creation of cardinals and the nomination of
bishops. On the 22nd of December 1873, however, he unexpectedly created
twelve cardinals, and subsequently proceeded to nominate a number of
bishops. Visconti-Venosta, who had retained the portfolio for foreign
affairs in the Minghetti cabinet, at once drew the attention of the
European powers to this proof of the pope's spiritual freedom and of the
imaginary nature of his "imprisonment" in the Vatican. At the same time
he assured them that absolute liberty would be guaranteed to the
deliberations of a conclave. In relation to the Church in Italy,
Minghetti's policy was less perspicacious. He let it be understood that
the announcement of the appointment of bishops and the request for the
royal _exequatur_ might be made to the government impersonally by the
congregation of bishops and regulars, by a municipal council or by any
other corporate body--a concession of which the bishops were quick to
take advantage, but which so irritated Italian political opinion that,
in July 1875, the government was compelled to withdraw the temporalities
of ecclesiastics who had neglected to apply for the _exequatur_, and to
evict sundry bishops who had taken possession of their palaces without
authorization from the state. Parliamentary pressure further obliged
Bonghi, minister of public instruction, to compel clerical seminaries
either to forgo the instruction of lay pupils or to conform to the laws
of the state in regard to inspection and examination, an ordinance which
gave rise to conflicts between ecclesiastical and lay authorities, and
led to the forcible dissolution of the Mantua seminary and to the
suppression of the Catholic university in Rome.

Military and naval reform.

More noteworthy than its management of internal affairs were the efforts
of the Minghetti cabinet to strengthen and consolidate national defence.
Appalled by the weakness, or rather the non-existence, of the navy,
Admiral Saint-Bon, with his coadjutor Signor Brin, addressed himself
earnestly to the task of recreating the fleet, which had never recovered
from the effects of the disaster of Lissa. During his three years of
office he laid the foundation upon which Brin was afterwards to build up
a new Italian navy. Simultaneously General Ricotti Magnani matured the
army reform scheme which he had elaborated under the preceding
administration. His bill, adopted by parliament on the 7th of June 1875,
still forms the ground plan of the Italian army.

Foreign policy under the Right.

It was fortunate for Italy that during the whole period 1860-1876 the
direction of her foreign policy remained in the experienced hands of
Visconti-Venosta, a statesman whose trustworthiness, dignity and
moderation even political opponents have been compelled to recognize.
Diplomatic records fail to substantiate the accusations of lack of
initiative and instability of political criterion currently brought
against him by contemporaries. As foreign minister of a young state
which had attained unity in defiance of the most formidable religious
organization in the world and in opposition to the traditional policy of
France, it could but be Visconti-Venosta's aim to uphold the dignity of
his country while convincing European diplomacy that United Italy was an
element of order and progress, and that the spiritual independence of
the Roman pontiff had suffered no diminution. Prudence, moreover,
counselled avoidance of all action likely to serve the predominant
anti-Italian party in France as a pretext for violent intervention in
favour of the pope. On the occasion of the Metrical Congress, which met
in Paris in 1872, he, however, successfully protested against the
recognition of the Vatican delegate, Father Secchi, as a representative
of a "state," and obtained from Count de Rémusat, French foreign
minister, a formal declaration that the presence of Father Secchi on
that occasion could not constitute a diplomatic precedent. The
irritation displayed by Bismarck at the Francophil attitude of Italy
towards the end of the Franco-German War gave place to a certain show of
goodwill when the great chancellor found himself in his turn involved in
a struggle against the Vatican and when the policy of Thiers began to
strain Franco-Italian relations. Thiers had consistently opposed the
emperor Napoleon's pro-Italian policy. In the case of Italy, as in that
of Germany, he frankly regretted the constitution of powerful
homogeneous states upon the borders of France. Personal pique
accentuated this feeling in regard to Italy. The refusal of Victor
Emmanuel II. to meet Thiers at the opening of the Mont Cenis tunnel (a
refusal not unconnected with offensive language employed at Florence in
October 1870 by Thiers during his European tour, and with his
instructions to the French minister to remain absent from Victor
Emmanuel's official entry into Rome) had wounded the _amour propre_ of
the French statesman, and had decreased whatever inclination he might
otherwise have felt to oppose the French Clerical agitation for the
restoration of the temporal power, and for French interference with the
Italian Religious Orders Bill. Consequently relations between France and
Italy became so strained that in 1873 both the French minister to the
Quirinal and the Italian minister to the Republic remained for several
months absent from their posts. At this juncture the emperor of Austria
invited Victor Emmanuel to visit the Vienna Exhibition, and the Italian
government received a confidential intimation that acceptance of the
invitation to Vienna would be followed by a further invitation from
Berlin. Perceiving the advantage of a visit to the imperial and
apostolic court after the Italian occupation of Rome and the suppression
of the religious orders, and convinced of the value of more cordial
intercourse with the German empire, Visconti-Venosta and Minghetti
advised their sovereign to accept both the Austrian and the subsequent
German invitations. The visit to Vienna took place on the 17th to the
22nd of September, and that to Berlin on the 22nd to the 26th of
September 1873, the Italian monarch being accorded in both capitals a
most cordial reception, although the contemporaneous publication of La
Marmora's famous pamphlet, _More Light on the Events of 1866_, prevented
intercourse between the Italian ministers and Bismarck from being
entirely confidential. Visconti-Venosta and Minghetti, moreover, wisely
resisted the chancellor's pressure to override the Law of Guarantees and
to engage in an Italian _Kulturkampf_. Nevertheless the royal journey
contributed notably to the establishment of cordial relations between
Italy and the central powers, relations which were further strengthened
by the visit of the emperor Francis Joseph to Victor Emmanuel at Venice
in April 1875, and by that of the German emperor to Milan in October of
the same year. Meanwhile Thiers had given place to Marshal Macmahon, who
effected a decided improvement in Franco-Italian relations by recalling
from Civitavecchia the cruiser "Orénoque," which since 1870 had been
stationed in that port at the disposal of the pope in case he should
desire to quit Rome. The foreign policy of Visconti-Venosta may be said
to have reinforced the international position of Italy without sacrifice
of dignity, and without the vacillation and short-sightedness which was
to characterize the ensuing administrations of the Left.

First Depretis Cabinet.

The fall of the Right on the 18th of March 1876 was an event destined
profoundly and in many respects adversely to affect the course of
Italian history. Except at rare and not auspicious intervals, the Right
had held office from 1849 to 1876. Its rule was associated in the
popular mind with severe administration; hostility to the democratic
elements represented by Garibaldi, Crispi, Depretis and Bertani;
ruthless imposition and collection of taxes in order to meet the
financial engagements forced upon Italy by the vicissitudes of her
Risorgimento; strong predilection for Piedmontese, Lombards and Tuscans,
and a steady determination, not always scrupulous in its choice of
means, to retain executive power and the most important administrative
offices of the state for the _consorteria_, or close corporation, of its
own adherents. For years the men of the Left had worked to inoculate the
electorate with suspicion of Conservative methods and with hatred of the
imposts which they nevertheless knew to be indispensable to sound
finance. In regard to the grist tax especially, the agitators of the
Left had placed their party in a radically false position. Moreover, the
redemption of the railways by the state--contracts for which had been
signed by Sella in 1875 on behalf of the Minghetti cabinet with
Rothschild at Basel and with the Austrian government at Vienna--had been
fiercely opposed by the Left, although its members were for the most
part convinced of the utility of the operation. When, at the beginning
of March 1876, these contracts were submitted to parliament, a group of
Tuscan deputies, under Cesare Correnti, joined the opposition, and on
the 18th of March took advantage of a chance motion concerning the date
of discussion of an interpellation on the grist tax to place the
Minghetti cabinet in a minority. Depretis, ex-pro-dictator of Sicily,
and successor of Rattazzi in the leadership of the Left, was entrusted
by the king with the formation of a Liberal ministry. Besides the
premiership, Depretis assumed the portfolio of finance; Nicotera, an
ex-Garibaldian of somewhat tarnished reputation, but a man of energetic
and conservative temperament, was placed at the ministry of the
interior; public works were entrusted to Zanardelli, a Radical
doctrinaire of considerable juridical attainments; General Mezzacapo and
Signor Brin replaced General Ricotti Magnani and Admiral Saint-Bon at
the war office and ministry of marine; while to Mancini and Coppino,
prominent members of the Left, were allotted the portfolios of justice
and public instruction. Great difficulty was experienced in finding a
foreign minister willing to challenge comparison with Visconti-Venosta.
Several diplomatists in active service were approached, but, partly on
account of their refusal, and partly from the desire of the Left to
avoid giving so important a post to a diplomatist bound by ties of
friendship or of interest to the Right, the choice fell upon Melegari,
Italian minister at Bern.

Programme of the Left.

The new ministers had long since made monarchical professions of faith,
but, up to the moment of taking office, were nevertheless considered to
be tinged with an almost revolutionary hue. The king alone appeared to
feel no misgiving. His shrewd sense of political expediency and his
loyalty to constitutional principles saved him from the error of
obstructing the advent and driving into an anti-dynastic attitude
politicians who had succeeded in winning popular favour. Indeed, the
patriotism and loyalty of the new ministers were above suspicion. Danger
lay rather in entrusting men schooled in political conspiracy and in
unscrupulous parliamentary opposition with the government of a young
state still beset by enemies at home and abroad. As an opposition party
the Left had lived upon the facile credit of political promises, but had
no well-considered programme nor other discipline nor unity of purpose
than that born of the common eagerness of its leaders for office and
their common hostility to the Right. Neither Depretis, Nicotera, Crispi,
Cairoli nor Zanardelli was disposed permanently to recognize the
superiority of any one chief. The dissensions which broke out among them
within a few months of the accession of their party to power never
afterwards disappeared, except at rare moments when it became necessary
to unite in preventing the return of the Conservatives. Considerations
such as these could not be expected to appeal to the nation at large,
which hailed the advent of the Left as the dawn of an era of unlimited
popular sovereignty, diminished administrative pressure, reduction of
taxation and general prosperity. The programme of Depretis corresponded
only in part to these expectations. Its chief points were extension of
the franchise, incompatibility of a parliamentary mandate with an
official position, strict enforcement of the rights of the State in
regard to the Church, protection of freedom of conscience, maintenance
of the military and naval policy inaugurated by the Conservatives,
acceptance of the railway redemption contracts, consolidation of the
financial equilibrium, abolition of the forced currency, and,
eventually, fiscal reform. The long-promised abolition of the grist tax
was not explicitly mentioned, opposition to the railway redemption
contracts was transformed into approval, and the vaunted reduction of
taxation replaced by lip-service to the Conservative deity of financial
equilibrium. The railway redemption contracts were in fact immediately
voted by parliament, with a clause pledging the government to legislate
in favour of farming out the railways to private companies.

Nicotera, minister of the interior, began his administration of home
affairs by a sweeping change in the _personnel_ of the prefects,
sub-prefects and public prosecutors, but found himself obliged to incur
the wrath of his supporters by prohibiting Radical meetings likely to
endanger public order, and by enunciating administrative principles
which would have befitted an inveterate Conservative. In regard to the
Church, he instructed the prefects strictly to prevent infraction of the
law against religious orders. At the same time the cabinet, as a whole,
brought in a Clerical Abuses Bill, threatening with severe punishment
priests guilty of disturbing the peace of families, of opposing the laws
of the state, or of fomenting disorder. Depretis, for his part, was
compelled to declare impracticable the immediate abolition of the grist
tax, and to frame a bill for the increase of revenue, acts which caused
the secession of some sixty Radicals and Republicans from the
ministerial majority, and gave the signal for an agitation against the
premier similar to that which he himself had formerly undertaken against
the Right. The first general election under the Left (November 1876) had
yielded the cabinet the overwhelming majority of 421 Ministerialists
against 87 Conservatives, but the very size of the majority rendered it
unmanageable. The Clerical Abuses Bill provoked further dissensions:
Nicotera was severely affected by revelations concerning his political
past; Zanardelli refused to sanction the construction of a railway in
Calabria in which Nicotera was interested; and Depretis saw fit to
compensate the supporters of his bill for the increase of revenue by
decorating at one stroke sixty ministerial deputies with the Order of
the Crown of Italy. A further derogation from the ideal of democratic
austerity was committed by adding £80,000 per annum to the king's civil
list (14th May 1877) and by burdening the state exchequer with royal
household pensions amounting to £20,000 a year. The civil list, which
the law of the 10th of August 1862 had fixed at £650,000 a year, but
which had been voluntarily reduced by the king to £530,000 in 1864, and
to £490,000 in 1867, was thus raised to £570,000 a year. Almost the only
respect in which the Left could boast a decided improvement over the
administration of the Right was the energy displayed by Nicotera in
combating brigandage and the mafia in Calabria and Sicily. Successes
achieved in those provinces failed, however, to save Nicotera from the
wrath of the Chamber, and on the 14th of December 1877 a cabinet crisis
arose over a question concerning the secrecy of telegraphic
correspondence. Depretis thereupon reconstructed his administration,
excluding Nicotera, Melegari and Zanardelli, placing Crispi at the home
office, entrusting Magliani with finance, and himself assuming the
direction of foreign affairs.

Foreign policy of the Left.

In regard to foreign affairs, the début of the Left as a governing party
was scarcely more satisfactory than its home policy. Since the war of
1866 the Left had advocated an Italo-Prussian alliance in opposition to
the Francophil tendencies of the Right. On more than one occasion
Bismarck had maintained direct relations with the chiefs of the Left,
and had in 1870 worked to prevent a Franco-Italian alliance by
encouraging the "party of action" to press for the occupation of Rome.
Besides, the Left stood for anti-clericalism and for the retention by
the State of means of coercing the Church, in opposition to the men of
the Right, who, with the exception of Sella, favoured Cavour's ideal of
"a free Church in a free State," and the consequent abandonment of state
control over ecclesiastical government. Upon the outbreak of the
Prussian _Kulturkampf_ the Left had pressed the Right to introduce an
Italian counterpart to the Prussian May laws, especially as the
attitude of Thiers and the hostility of the French Clericals obviated
the need for sparing French susceptibilities. Visconti-Venosta and
Minghetti, partly from aversion to a Jacobin policy, and partly from a
conviction that Bismarck sooner or later would undertake his _Gang nach
Canossa_, regardless of any tacit engagement he might have assumed
towards Italy, had wisely declined to be drawn into any infraction of
the Law of Guarantees. It was, however, expected that the chiefs of the
Left, upon attaining office, would turn resolutely towards Prussia in
search of a guarantee against the Clerical menace embodied in the régime
of Marshal Macmahon. On the contrary, Depretis and Melegari, both of
whom were imbued with French Liberal doctrines, adopted towards the
Republic an attitude so deferential as to arouse suspicion in Vienna and
Berlin. Depretis recalled Nigra from Paris and replaced him by General
Cialdini, whose ardent plea for Italian intervention in favour of France
in 1870, and whose comradeship with Marshal Macmahon in 1859, would, it
was supposed, render him _persona gratissima_ to the French government.
This calculation was falsified by events. Incensed by the elevation to
the rank of embassies of the Italian legation in Paris and the French
legation to the Quirinal, and by the introduction of the Italian bill
against clerical abuses, the French Clerical party not only attacked
Italy and her representative, General Cialdini, in the Chamber of
Deputies, but promoted a monster petition against the Italian bill. Even
the _coup d'état_ of the 16th of May 1877 (when Macmahon dismissed the
Jules Simon cabinet for opposing the Clerical petition) hardly availed
to change the attitude of Depretis. As a precaution against an eventual
French attempt to restore the temporal power, orders were hurriedly
given to complete the defences of Rome, but in other respects the
Italian government maintained its subservient attitude. Yet at that
moment the adoption of a clear line of policy, in accord with the
central powers, might have saved Italy from the loss of prestige
entailed by her bearing in regard to the Russo-Turkish War and the
Austrian acquisition of Bosnia, and might have prevented the
disappointment subsequently occasioned by the outcome of the Congress of
Berlin. In the hope of inducing the European powers to "compensate"
Italy for the increase of Austrian influence on the Adriatic, Crispi
undertook in the autumn of 1877, with the approval of the king, and in
spite of the half-disguised opposition of Depretis, a semi-official
mission to Paris, Berlin, London and Vienna. The mission appears not to
have been an unqualified success, though Crispi afterwards affirmed in
the Chamber (4th March 1886) that Depretis might in 1877 "have harnessed
fortune to the Italian chariot." Depretis, anxious only to avoid "a
policy of adventure," let slip whatever opportunity may have presented
itself, and neglected even to deal energetically with the impotent but
mischievous Italian agitation for a "rectification" of the
Italo-Austrian frontier. He greeted the treaty of San Stefano (3rd March
1878) with undisguised relief, and by the mouth of the king,
congratulated Italy (7th March 1878) on having maintained with the
powers friendly and cordial relations "free from suspicious
precautions," and upon having secured for herself "that most precious of
alliances, the alliance of the future"--a phrase of which the empty
rhetoric was to be bitterly demonstrated by the Berlin Congress and the
French occupation of Tunisia.

Crispi.

Deaths of Victor Emmanuel II. and Pius IX.

Leo XIII.

The entry of Crispi into the Depretis cabinet (December 1877) placed at
the ministry of the interior a strong hand and sure eye at a moment when
they were about to become imperatively necessary. Crispi was the only
man of truly statesmanlike calibre in the ranks of the Left. Formerly a
friend and disciple of Mazzini, with whom he had broken on the question
of the monarchical form of government which Crispi believed
indispensable to the unification of Italy, he had afterwards been one of
Garibaldi's most efficient coadjutors and an active member of the "party
of action." Passionate, not always scrupulous in his choice and use of
political weapons, intensely patriotic, loyal with a loyalty based
rather on reason than sentiment, quick-witted, prompt in action,
determined and pertinacious, he possessed in eminent degree many
qualities lacking in other Liberal chieftains. Hardly had he assumed
office when the unexpected death of Victor Emmanuel II. (9th January
1878) stirred national feeling to an unprecedented depth, and placed the
continuity of monarchical institutions in Italy upon trial before
Europe. For thirty years Victor Emmanuel had been the centre point of
national hopes, the token and embodiment of the struggle for national
redemption. He had led the country out of the despondency which followed
the defeat of Novara and the abdication of Charles Albert, through all
the vicissitudes of national unification to the final triumph at Rome.
His disappearance snapped the chief link with the heroic period, and
removed from the helm of state a ruler of large heart, great experience
and civil courage, at a moment when elements of continuity were needed
and vital problems of internal reorganization had still to be faced.
Crispi adopted the measures necessary to ensure the tranquil accession
of King Humbert with a quick energy which precluded any Radical or
Republican demonstrations. His influence decided the choice of the Roman
Pantheon as the late monarch's burial-place, in spite of formidable
pressure from the Piedmontese, who wished Victor Emmanuel II. to rest
with the Sardinian kings at Superga. He also persuaded the new ruler to
inaugurate, as King Humbert I., the new dynastical epoch of the kings of
Italy, instead of continuing as Humbert IV. the succession of the kings
of Sardinia. Before the commotion caused by the death of Victor Emmanuel
had passed away, the decease of Pius IX (7th February 1878) placed
further demands upon Crispi's sagacity and promptitude. Like Victor
Emmanuel, Pius IX. had been bound up with the history of the
Risorgimento, but, unlike him, had represented and embodied the
anti-national, reactionary spirit. Ecclesiastically, he had become the
instrument of the triumph of Jesuit influence, and had in turn set his
seal upon the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Syllabus and Papal
Infallibility. Yet, in spite of all, his jovial disposition and
good-humoured cynicism saved him from unpopularity, and rendered his
death an occasion of mourning. Notwithstanding the pontiff's bestowal of
the apostolic benediction _in articulo mortis_ upon Victor Emmanuel, the
attitude of the Vatican had remained so inimical as to make it doubtful
whether the conclave would be held in Rome. Crispi, whose strong
anti-clerical convictions did not prevent him from regarding the papacy
as preeminently an Italian institution, was determined both to prove to
the Catholic world the practical independence of the government of the
Church and to retain for Rome so potent a centre of universal attraction
as the presence of the future pope. The Sacred College having decided to
hold the conclave abroad, Crispi assured them of absolute freedom if
they remained in Rome, or of protection to the frontier should they
migrate, but warned them that, once evacuated, the Vatican would be
occupied in the name of the Italian government and be lost to the Church
as headquarters of the papacy. The cardinals thereupon overruled their
former decision, and the conclave was held in Rome, the new pope,
Cardinal Pecci, being elected on the 20th of February 1878 without let
or hindrance. The Italian government not only prorogued the Chamber
during the conclave to prevent unseemly inquiries or demonstrations on
the part of deputies, but by means of Mancini, minister of justice, and
Cardinal di Pietro, assured the new pope protection during the
settlement of his outstanding personal affairs, an assurance of which
Leo XIII. on the evening after his election, took full advantage. At the
same time the duke of Aosta, commander of the Rome army corps, ordered
the troops to render royal honours to the pontiff should he officially
appear in the capital. King Humbert addressed to the pope a letter of
congratulation upon his election, and received a courteous reply. The
improvement thus signalized in the relations between Quirinal and
Vatican was further exemplified on the 18th of October 1878, when the
Italian government accepted a papal formula with regard to the granting
of the royal _exequatur_ for bishops, whereby they, upon nomination by
the Holy See, recognized state control over, and made application for,
the payment of their temporalities.

Cairoli.

The Depretis-Crispi cabinet did not long survive the opening of the new
reign. Crispi's position was shaken by a morally plausible but
juridically untenable charge of bigamy, while on the 8th of March the
election of Cairoli, an opponent of the ministry and head of the
extremer section of the Left, to the presidency of the Chamber, induced
Depretis to tender his resignation to the new king. Cairoli succeeded in
forming an administration, in which his friend Count Corti, Italian
ambassador at Constantinople, accepted the portfolio of foreign affairs,
Zanardelli the ministry of the interior, and Seismit Doda the ministry
of finance. Though the cabinet had no stable majority, it induced the
Chamber to sanction a commercial treaty which had been negotiated with
France and a general "autonomous" customs tariff. The commercial treaty
was, however, rejected by the French Chamber in June 1878, a
circumstance necessitating the application of the Italian general
tariff, which implied a 10 to 20% increase in the duties on the
principal French exports. A highly imaginative financial exposition by
Seismit Doda, who announced a surplus of £2,400,000, paved the way for a
Grist Tax Reduction Bill, which Cairoli had taken over from the Depretis
programme. The Chamber, though convinced of the danger of this reform,
the perils of which were incisively demonstrated by Sella, voted by an
overwhelming majority for an immediate reduction of the impost by
one-fourth, and its complete abolition within four years. Cairoli's
premiership was, however, destined to be cut short by an attempt made
upon the king's life in November 1878, during a royal visit to Naples,
by a miscreant named Passanante. In spite of the courage and presence of
mind of Cairoli, who received the dagger thrust intended for the king,
public and parliamentary indignation found expression in a vote which
compelled the ministry to resign.

Italy and the Berlin Congress.

Irredentism.

Though brief, Cairoli's term of office was momentous in regard to
foreign affairs. The treaty of San Stefano had led to the convocation of
the Berlin Congress, and though Count Corti was by no means ignorant of
the rumours concerning secret agreements between Germany, Austria and
Russia, and Germany, Austria and Great Britain, he scarcely seemed alive
to the possible effect of such agreements upon Italy. Replying on the
9th of April 1878 to interpellations by Visconti-Venosta and other
deputies on the impending Congress of Berlin, he appeared free from
apprehension lest Italy, isolated, might find herself face to face with
a change of the balance of power in the Mediterranean, and declared that
in the event of serious complications Italy would be "too much sought
after rather than too much forgotten." The policy of Italy in the
congress, he added, would be to support the interests of the young
Balkan nations. Wrapped in this optimism, Count Corti proceeded, as
first Italian delegate, to Berlin, where he found himself obliged, on
the 28th of May, to join reluctantly in sanctioning the Austrian
occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 8th of July the revelation
of the Anglo-Ottoman treaty for the British occupation of Cyprus took
the congress by surprise. Italy, who had made the integrity of the
Ottoman empire a cardinal point of her Eastern policy, felt this change
of the Mediterranean _status quo_ the more severely inasmuch as, in
order not to strain her relations with France, she had turned a deaf ear
to Austrian, Russian and German advice to prepare to occupy Tunisia in
agreement with Great Britain. Count Corti had no suspicion that France
had adopted a less disinterested attitude towards similar suggestions
from Bismarck and Lord Salisbury. He therefore returned from the German
capital with "clean" but empty hands, a plight which found marked
disfavour in Italian eyes, and stimulated anti-Austrian Irredentism.
Ever since Venetia had been ceded by Austria to the emperor Napoleon,
and by him to Italy, after the war of 1866, secret revolutionary
committees had been formed in the northern Italian provinces to prepare
for the "redemption" of Trent and Trieste. For twelve years these
committees had remained comparatively inactive, but in 1878 the presence
of the ex-Garibaldian Cairoli at the head of the government, and popular
dissatisfaction at the spread of Austrian sway on the Adriatic,
encouraged them to begin a series of noisy demonstrations. On the
evening of the signature at Berlin of the clause sanctioning the
Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an Irredentist riot took
place before the Austrian consulate at Venice. The Italian government
attached little importance to the occurrence, and believed that a
diplomatic expression of regret would suffice to allay Austrian
irritation. Austria, indeed, might easily have been persuaded to ignore
the Irredentist agitation, had not the equivocal attitude of Cairoli and
Zanardelli cast doubt upon the sincerity of their regret. The former at
Pavia (15th October 1878), and the latter at Arco (3rd November),
declared publicly that Irredentist manifestations could not be prevented
under existing laws, but gave no hint of introducing any law to sanction
their prevention. "Repression, not prevention" became the official
formula, the enunciation of which by Cairoli at Pavia caused Count Corti
and two other ministers to resign.

Finance.

The fall of Cairoli, and the formation of a second Depretis cabinet in
1878, brought no substantial change in the attitude of the government
towards Irredentism, nor was the position improved by the return of
Cairoli to power in the following July. Though aware of Bismarck's
hostility towards Italy, of the conclusion of the Austro-German alliance
of 1879, and of the undisguised ill-will of France, Italy not only made
no attempt to crush an agitation as mischievous as it was futile, but
granted a state funeral to General Avezzana, president of the
Irredentist League. In Bonghi's mordant phrase, the foreign policy of
Italy during this period may be said to have been characterized by
"enormous intellectual impotence counterbalanced by equal moral
feebleness." Home affairs were scarcely better managed. Parliament had
degenerated into a congeries of personal groups, whose members were
eager only to overturn cabinets in order to secure power for the leaders
and official favours for themselves. Depretis, who had succeeded Cairoli
in December 1878, fell in July 1879, after a vote in which Cairoli and
Nicotera joined the Conservative opposition. On 12th July Cairoli formed
a new administration, only to resign on 24th November, and to
reconstruct his cabinet with the help of Depretis. The administration of
finance was as chaotic as the condition of parliament. The £2,400,000
surplus announced by Seismit Doda proved to be a myth. Nevertheless
Magliani, who succeeded Seismit Doda, had neither the perspicacity nor
the courage to resist the abolition of the grist tax. The first vote of
the Chamber for the immediate diminution of the tax, and for its total
abolition on 1st January 1883, had been opposed by the Senate. A second
bill was passed by the Chamber on 18th July 1879, providing for the
immediate repeal of the grist tax on minor cereals, and for its total
abolition on 1st January 1884. While approving the repeal in regard to
minor cereals, the Senate (24th January 1880) again rejected the repeal
of the tax on grinding wheat as prejudicial to national finance. After
the general election of 1880, however, the Ministerialists, aided by a
number of factious Conservatives, passed a third bill repealing the
grist tax on wheat (10th July 1880), the repeal to take effect from the
1st of January 1884 onwards. The Senate, in which the partisans of the
ministry had been increased by numerous appointments ad hoc, finally set
the seal of its approval upon the measure. Notwithstanding this
prospective loss of revenue, parliament showed great reluctance to vote
any new impost, although hardly a year previously it had sanctioned
(30th June 1879) Depretis's scheme for spending during the next eighteen
years £43,200,000 in building 5000 kilometres of railway, an expenditure
not wholly justified by the importance of the lines, and useful
principally as a source of electoral sops for the constituents of
ministerial deputies. The unsatisfactory financial condition of the
Florence, Rome and Naples municipalities necessitated state help, but
the Chamber nevertheless proceeded with a light heart (23rd February
1881) to sanction the issue of a foreign loan for £26,000,000, with a
view to the abolition of the forced currency, thus adding to the burdens
of the exchequer a load which three years later again dragged Italy into
the gulf of chronic deficit.

Tunisia.

In no modern country is error or incompetence on the part of
administrators more swiftly followed by retribution than in Italy; both
at home and abroad she is hemmed in by political and economic conditions
which leave little margin for folly, and still less for "mental and
moral insufficiency," such as had been displayed by the Left. Nemesis
came in the spring of 1881, in the form of the French invasion of
Tunisia. Guiccioli, the biographer of Sella, observes that Italian
politicians find it especially hard to resist "the temptation of
appearing crafty." The men of the Left believed themselves subtle enough
to retain the confidence and esteem of all foreign powers while
coquetting at home with elements which some of these powers had reason
to regard with suspicion. Italy, in constant danger from France, needed
good relations with Austria and Germany, but could only attain the
goodwill of the former by firm treatment of the revolutionary
Irredentist agitation, and of the latter by clear demonstration of
Italian will and ability to cope with all anti-monarchical forces.
Depretis and Cairoli did neither the one nor the other. Hence, when
opportunity offered firmly to establish Italian predominance in the
central Mediterranean by an occupation of Tunisia, they found themselves
deprived of those confidential relations with the central powers, and
even with Great Britain, which might have enabled them to use the
opportunity to full advantage. The conduct of Italy in declining the
suggestions received from Count Andrássy and General Ignatiev on the eve
of the Russo-Turkish War--that Italy should seek compensation in Tunisia
for the extension of Austrian sway in the Balkans--and in subsequently
rejecting the German suggestion to come to an arrangement with Great
Britain for the occupation of Tunisia as compensation for the British
occupation of Cyprus, was certainly due to fear lest an attempt on
Tunisia should lead to a war with France, for which Italy knew herself
to be totally unprepared. This very unpreparedness, however, rendered
still less excusable her treatment of the Irredentist agitation, which
brought her within a hair's-breadth of a conflict with Austria. Although
Cairoli, upon learning of the Anglo-Ottoman convention in regard to
Cyprus, had advised Count Corti of the possibility that Great Britain
might seek to placate France by conniving at a French occupation of
Tunisia, neither he nor Count Corti had any inkling of the verbal
arrangement made between Lord Salisbury and Waddington at the instance
of Bismarck, that, when convenient, France should occupy Tunisia, an
agreement afterwards confirmed (with a reserve as to the eventual
attitude of Italy) in despatches exchanged in July and August 1878
between the Quai d'Orsay and Downing Street. Almost up to the moment of
the French occupation of Tunisia the Italian government believed that
Great Britain, if only out of gratitude for the bearing of Italy in
connexion with the Dulcigno demonstration in the autumn of 1880, would
prevent French acquisition of the Regency. Ignorant of the assurance
conveyed to France by Lord Granville that the Gladstone cabinet would
respect the engagements of the Beaconsfield-Salisbury administration,
Cairoli, in deference to Italian public opinion, endeavoured to
neutralize the activity of the French consul Roustan by the appointment
of an equally energetic Italian consul, Macciò. The rivalry between
these two officials in Tunisia contributed not a little to strain
Franco-Italian relations, but it is doubtful whether France would have
precipitated her action had not General Menabrea, Italian ambassador in
London, urged his government to purchase the Tunis-Goletta railway from
the English company by which it had been constructed. A French attempt
to purchase the line was upset in the English courts, and the railway
was finally secured by Italy at a price more than eight times its real
value. This pertinacity engendered a belief in France that Italy was
about to undertake in Tunisia a more aggressive policy than necessary
for the protection of her commercial interests. Roustan therefore
hastened to extort from the bey concessions calculated to neutralize the
advantages which Italy had hoped to secure by the possession of the
Tunis-Goletta line, and at the same time the French government prepared
at Toulon an expeditionary corps for the occupation of the Regency. In
the spring of 1881 the Kroumir tribe was reported to have attacked a
French force on the Algerian border, and on the 9th of April Roustan
informed the bey of Tunis that France would chastise the assailants. The
bey issued futile protests to the powers. On the 26th of April the
island of Tabarca was occupied by the French, Bizerta was seized on the
2nd of May, and on the 12th of May the bey signed the treaty of Bardo
accepting the French protectorate. France undertook the maintenance of
order in the Regency, and assumed the representation of Tunisia in all
dealings with other countries.

Italian indignation at the French _coup de main_ was the deeper on
account of the apparent duplicity of the government of the Republic. On
the 11th of May the French foreign minister, Barthélémy Saint Hilaire,
had officially assured the Italian ambassador in Paris that France "had
no thought of occupying Tunisia or any part of Tunisian territory,
beyond some points of the Kroumir country." This assurance, dictated by
Jules Ferry to Barthélémy Saint Hilaire in the presence of the Italian
ambassador, and by him telegraphed _en clair_ to Rome, was considered a
binding pledge that France would not materially alter the _status quo_
in Tunisia. Documents subsequently published have somewhat attenuated
the responsibility of Ferry and Saint Hilaire for this breach of faith,
and have shown that the French forces in Tunisia acted upon secret
instructions from General Farre, minister of war in the Ferry cabinet,
who pursued a policy diametrically opposed to the official declarations
made by the premier and the foreign minister. Even had this circumstance
been known at the time, it could scarcely have mitigated the intense
resentment of the whole Italian nation at an event which was considered
tantamount not only to the destruction of Italian aspirations to
Tunisia, but to the ruin of the interests of the numerous Italian colony
and to a constant menace against the security of the Sicilian and south
Italian coasts.

Had the blow thus struck at Italian influence in the Mediterranean
induced politicians to sink for a while their personal differences and
to unite in presenting a firm front to foreign nations, the crisis in
regard to Tunisia might not have been wholly unproductive of good.
Unfortunately, on this, as on other critical occasions, deputies proved
themselves incapable of common effort to promote general welfare. While
excitement over Tunisia was at its height, but before the situation was
irretrievably compromised to the disadvantage of Italy, Cairoli had been
compelled to resign by a vote of want of confidence in the Chamber. The
only politician capable of dealing adequately with the situation was
Sella, leader of the Right, and to him the crown appealed. The faction
leaders of the Left, though divided by personal jealousies and mutually
incompatible ambitions, agreed that the worst evil which could befall
Italy would be the return of the Right to power, and conspired to
preclude the possibility of a Sella cabinet. An attempt by Depretis to
recompose the Cairoli ministry proved fruitless, and after eleven
precious days had been lost, King Humbert was obliged, on the 19th of
April 1881, to refuse Cairoli's resignation. The conclusion of the
treaty of Bardo on the 12th of May, however, compelled Cairoli to
sacrifice himself to popular indignation. Again Sella was called upon,
but again the dog-in-the-manger policy of Depretis, Cairoli, Nicotera
and Baccarini, in conjunction with the intolerant attitude of some
extreme Conservatives, proved fatal to his endeavours. Depretis then
succeeded in recomposing the Cairoli cabinet without Cairoli, Mancini
being placed at the foreign office. Except in regard to an increase of
the army estimates, urgently demanded by public opinion, the new
ministry had practically no programme. Public opinion was further
irritated against France by the massacre of some Italian workmen at
Marseilles on the occasion of the return of the French expedition from
Tunisia, and Depretis, in response to public feeling, found himself
obliged to mobilize a part of the militia for military exercises. In
this condition of home and foreign affairs occurred disorders at Rome in
connexion with the transfer of the remains of Pius IX. from St Peter's
to the basilica of San Lorenzo. Most of the responsibility lay with the
Vatican, which had arranged the procession in the way best calculated to
irritate Italian feeling, but little excuse can be offered for the
failure of the Italian authorities to maintain public order. In
conjunction with the occupation of Tunisia, the effect of these
disorders was to exhibit Italy as a country powerless to defend its
interests abroad or to keep peace at home. The scandal and the pressure
of foreign Catholic opinion compelled Depretis to pursue a more
energetic policy, and to publish a formal declaration of the
intangibility of the Law of Guarantees.

Growth of the Triple Alliance.

Meanwhile a conviction was spreading that the only way of escape from
the dangerous isolation of Italy lay in closer agreement with Austria
and Germany. Depretis tardily recognized the need for such agreement, if
only to remove the "coldness and invincible diffidence" which, by
subsequent confession of Mancini, then characterized the attitude of the
central powers; but he was opposed to any formal alliance, lest it might
arouse French resentment, while the new Franco-Italian treaty was still
unconcluded, and the foreign loan for the abolition of the forced
currency had still to be floated. He, indeed, was not disposed to
concede to public opinion anything beyond an increase of the army, a
measure insistently demanded by Garibaldi and the Left. The Right
likewise desired to strengthen both army and navy, but advocated cordial
relations with Berlin and Vienna as a guarantee against French
domineering, and as a pledge that Italy would be vouchsafed time to
effect her armaments without disturbing financial equilibrium. The Right
also hoped that closer accord with Germany and Austria would compel
Italy to conform her home policy more nearly to the principles of order
prevailing in those empires. More resolute than Right or Left was the
Centre, a small group led by Sidney Sonnino, a young politician of
unusual fibre, which sought in the press and in parliament to spread a
conviction that the only sound basis for Italian policy would be close
alliance with the central powers and a friendly understanding with Great
Britain in regard to Mediterranean affairs. The principal Italian public
men were divided in opinion on the subject of an alliance. Peruzzi,
Lanza and Bonghi pleaded for equal friendship with all powers, and
especially with France; Crispi, Minghetti, Cadorna and others, including
Blanc, secretary-general to the foreign office, openly favoured a
pro-Austrian policy. Austria and Germany, however, scarcely reciprocated
these dispositions. The Irredentist agitation had left profound traces
at Berlin as well as at Vienna, and had given rise to a distrust of
Depretis which nothing had yet occurred to allay. Nor, in view of the
comparative weakness of Italian armaments, could eagerness to find an
ally be deemed conclusive proof of the value of Italian friendship.
Count di Robilant, Italian ambassador at Vienna, warned his government
not to yield too readily to pro-Austrian pressure, lest the dignity of
Italy be compromised, or her desire for an alliance be granted on
onerous terms. Mancini, foreign minister, who was as anxious as Depretis
for the conclusion of the Franco-Italian commercial treaty, gladly
followed this advice, and limited his efforts to the maintenance of
correct diplomatic relations with the central powers. Except in regard
to the Roman question, the advantages and disadvantages of an Italian
alliance with Austria and Germany counterbalanced each other. A
_rapprochement_ with France and a continuance of the Irredentist
movement could not fail to arouse Austro-German hostility; but, on the
other hand, to draw near to the central powers would inevitably
accentuate the diffidence of France. In the one hypothesis, as in the
other, Italy could count upon the moral support of Great Britain, but
could not make of British friendship the keystone of a Continental
policy. Apart from resentment against France on account of Tunisia there
remained the question of the temporal power of the pope to turn the
scale in favour of Austria and Germany. Danger of foreign interference
in the relations between Italy and the papacy had never been so great
since the Italian occupation of Rome, as when, in the summer of 1881,
the disorders during the transfer of the remains of Pius IX. had lent an
unwonted ring of plausibility to the papal complaint concerning the
"miserable" position of the Holy See. Bismarck at that moment had
entered upon his "pilgrimage to Canossa," and was anxious to obtain from
the Vatican the support of German Catholics. What resistance could
Italy have offered had the German chancellor, seconded by Austria, and
assuredly supported by France, called upon Italy to revise the Law of
Guarantees in conformity with Catholic exigencies, or had he taken the
initiative of making papal independence the subject of an international
conference? Friendship and alliance with Catholic Austria and powerful
Germany could alone lay this spectre. This was the only immediate
advantage Italy could hope to obtain by drawing nearer the central
Powers.

The political conditions of Europe favoured the realization of Italian
desires. Growing rivalry between Austria and Russia in the Balkans
rendered the continuance of the "League of the Three Emperors" a
practical impossibility. The Austro-German alliance of 1879 formally
guaranteed the territory of the contracting parties, but Austria could
not count upon effectual help from Germany in case of war, since Russian
attack upon Austria would certainly have been followed by French attack
upon Germany. As in 1860-1870, it therefore became a matter of the
highest importance for Austria to retain full disposal of all her troops
by assuring herself against Italian aggression. The tsar, Alexander
III., under the impression of the assassination of his father, desired,
however, the renewal of the _Dreikaiserbund_, both as a guarantee of
European peace and as a conservative league against revolutionary
parties. The German emperor shared this desire, but Bismarck and the
Austrian emperor wished to substitute for the imperial league some more
advantageous combination. Hence a tacit understanding between Bismarck
and Austria that the latter should profit by Italian resentment against
France to draw Italy into the orbit of the Austro-German alliance. For
the moment Germany was to hold aloof lest any active initiative on her
part should displease the Vatican, of whose help Bismarck stood in need.

At the beginning of August 1881 the Austrian press mooted the idea of a
visit from King Humbert to the emperor Francis Joseph. Count di
Robilant, anxious that Italy should not seem to beg a smile from the
central Powers, advised Mancini to receive with caution the suggestions
of the Austrian press. Depretis took occasion to deny, in a form
scarcely courteous, the probability of the visit. Robilant's opposition
to a precipitate acceptance of the Austrian hint was founded upon fear
lest King Humbert at Vienna might be pressed to disavow Irredentist
aspirations, and upon a desire to arrange for a visit of the emperor
Francis Joseph to Rome in return for King Humbert's visit to Vienna.
Seeing the hesitation of the Italian government, the Austrian and German
semi-official press redoubled their efforts to bring about the visit. By
the end of September the idea had gained such ground in Italy that the
visit was practically settled, and on the 7th of October Mancini
informed Robilant (who was then in Italy) of the fact. Though he
considered such precipitation impolitic, Robilant, finding that
confidential information of Italian intentions had already been conveyed
to the Austrian government, sought an interview with King Humbert, and
on the 17th of October started for Vienna to settle the conditions of
the visit. Depretis, fearing to jeopardize the impending conclusion of
the Franco-Italian commercial treaty, would have preferred the visit to
take the form of an act of personal courtesy between sovereigns. The
Austrian government, for its part, desired that the king should be
accompanied by Depretis, though not by Mancini, lest the presence of the
Italian foreign minister should lend to the occasion too marked a
political character. Mancini, unable to brook exclusion, insisted,
however, upon accompanying the king. King Humbert with Queen Margherita
reached Vienna on the morning of the 27th of October, and stayed at the
Hofburg until the 31st of October. The visit was marked by the greatest
cordiality, Count Robilant's fears of inopportune pressure with regard
to Irredentism proving groundless. Both in Germany and Austria the visit
was construed as a preliminary to the adhesion of Italy to the
Austro-German alliance. Count Hatzfeldt, on behalf of the German Foreign
Office, informed the Italian ambassador in Berlin that whatever was
done at Vienna would be regarded as having been done in the German
capital. Nor did nascent irritation in France prevent the conclusion of
the Franco-Italian commercial treaty, which was signed at Paris on the
3rd of November.

In Italy public opinion as a whole was favourable to the visit,
especially as it was not considered an obstacle to the projected
increase of the army and navy. Doubts, however, soon sprang up as to its
effect upon the minds of Austrian statesmen, since on the 8th of
November the language employed by Kállay and Count Andrássy to the
Hungarian delegations on the subject of Irredentism was scarcely
calculated to soothe Italian susceptibilities. But on 9th November the
European situation was suddenly modified by the formation of the
Gambetta cabinet, and, in view of the policy of revenge with which
Gambetta was supposed to be identified, it became imperative for
Bismarck to assure himself that Italy would not be enticed into a
Francophil attitude by any concession Gambetta might offer. As usual
when dealing with weaker nations, the German chancellor resorted to
intimidation. He not only re-established the Prussian legation to the
Vatican, suppressed since 1874, and omitted from the imperial message to
the Reichstag (17th November 1881) all reference to King Humbert's visit
to Vienna, but took occasion on the 29th of November to refer to Italy
as a country tottering on the verge of revolution, and opened in the
German semi-official press a campaign in favour of an international
guarantee for the independence of the papacy. These manoeuvres produced
their effect upon Italian public opinion. In the long and important
debate upon foreign policy in the Italian Chamber of Deputies (6th to
9th December) the fear was repeatedly expressed lest Bismarck should
seek to purchase the support of German Catholics by raising the Roman
question. Mancini, still unwilling frankly to adhere to the
Austro-German alliance, found his policy of "friendship all round"
impeded by Gambetta's uncompromising attitude in regard to Tunisia.
Bismarck nevertheless continued his press campaign in favour of the
temporal power until, reassured by Gambetta's decision to send Roustan
back to Tunis to complete as minister the anti-Italian programme begun
as consul, he finally instructed his organs to emphasize the common
interests of Germany and Italy on the occasion of the opening of the St
Gothard tunnel. But the effect of the German press campaign could not be
effaced in a day. At the new year's reception of deputies King Humbert
aroused enthusiasm by a significant remark that Italy intended to remain
"mistress in her own house"; while Mancini addressed to Count de Launay,
Italian ambassador in Berlin, a haughty despatch, repudiating the
supposition that the pope might (as Bismarckian emissaries had suggested
to the Vatican) obtain abroad greater spiritual liberty than in Rome, or
that closer relations between Italy and Germany, such as were required
by the interests and aspirations of the two countries, could be made in
any way contingent upon a modification of Italian freedom of action in
regard to home affairs.

Death of Garibaldi.

Signature of the Treaty, 1882.

The sudden fall of Gambetta (26th January 1882) having removed the fear of
immediate European complications, the cabinets of Berlin and Vienna again
displayed diffidence towards Italy. So great was Bismarck's distrust of
Italian parliamentary instability, his doubts of Italian capacity for
offensive warfare and his fear of the Francophil tendencies of Depretis,
that for many weeks the Italian ambassador at Berlin was unable to obtain
audience of the chancellor. But for the Tunisian question Italy might
again have been drawn into the wake of France. Mancini tried to impede the
organization of French rule in the Regency by refusing to recognize the
treaty of Bardo, yet so careless was Bismarck of Italian susceptibilities
that he instructed the German consul at Tunis to recognize French decrees.
Partly under the influence of these circumstances, and partly in response
to persuasion by Baron Blanc, secretary-general for foreign affairs,
Mancini instructed Count di Robilant to open negotiations for an
Italo-Austrian alliance--instructions which Robilant neglected until
questioned by Count Kalnóky on the subject. The first exchange of ideas
between the two Governments proved fruitless, since Kalnóky, somewhat
Clerical-minded, was averse from guaranteeing the integrity of all Italian
territory, and Mancini was equally unwilling to guarantee to Austria
permanent possession of Trent and Trieste. Mancini, moreover, wished the
treaty of alliance to provide for reciprocal protection of the chief
interests of the contracting Powers, Italy undertaking to second
Austria-Hungary in the Balkans, and Austria and Germany pledging
themselves to support Italy in Mediterranean questions. Without some such
proviso Italy would, in Mancini's opinion, be exposed single-handed to
French resentment. At the request of Kalnóky, Mancini defined his proposal
in a memorandum, but the illness of himself and Depretis, combined with an
untoward discussion in the Italian press on the failure of the Austrian
emperor to return in Rome King Humbert's visit to Vienna, caused
negotiations to drag. The pope, it transpired, had refused to receive the
emperor if he came to Rome on a visit to the Quirinal, and Francis Joseph,
though anxious to return King Humbert's visit, was unable to offend the
feelings of his Catholic subjects. Meanwhile (11th May 1882) the Italian
parliament adopted the new Army Bill, involving a special credit of
£5,100,000 for the creation of two new army corps, by which the war
footing of the regular army was raised to nearly 850,000 men and the
ordinary military estimates to £8,000,000 per annum. Garibaldi, who, since
the French occupation of Tunis, had ardently worked for the increase of
the army, had thus the satisfaction of seeing his desire realized before
his death at Caprera, on the 2nd of June 1882. "In spirit a child, in
character a man of classic mould," Garibaldi had remained the nation's
idol, an almost legendary hero whose place none could aspire to fill.
Gratitude for his achievements and sorrow for his death found expression
in universal mourning wherein king and peasant equally joined. Before his
death, and almost contemporaneously with the passing of the Army Bill,
negotiations for the alliance were renewed. Encouraged from Berlin,
Kalnóky agreed to the reciprocal territorial guarantee, but declined
reciprocity in support of special interests. Mancini had therefore to be
content with a declaration that the allies would act in mutually friendly
intelligence. Depretis made some opposition, but finally acquiesced, and
the treaty of triple alliance was signed on the 20th of May 1882, five
days after the promulgation of the Franco-Italian commercial treaty in
Paris. Though partial revelations have been made, the exact tenor of the
treaty of triple alliance has never been divulged. It is known to have
been concluded for a period of five years, to have pledged the contracting
parties to join in resisting attack upon the territory of any one of them,
and to have specified the military disposition to be adopted by each in
case attack should come either from France, or from Russia, or from both
simultaneously. The Italian General Staff is said to have undertaken, in
the event of war against France, to operate with two armies on the
north-western frontier against the French armée des Alpes, of which the
war strength is about 250,000 men. A third Italian army would, if
expedient, pass into Germany, to operate against either France or Russia.
Austria undertook to guard the Adriatic on land and sea, and to help
Germany by checkmating Russia on land. Germany would be sufficiently
employed in carrying on war against two fronts. Kalnóky desired that both
the terms of the treaty and the fact of its conclusion should remain
secret, but Bismarck and Mancini hastened to hint at its existence, the
former in the Reichstag on the 12th of June 1882, and the latter in the
Italian semi-official press. A revival of Irredentism in connexion with
the execution of an Austrian deserter named Oberdank, who after escaping
into Italy endeavoured to return to Austria with explosive bombs in his
possession, and the cordial references to France made by Depretis at
Stradella (8th October 1882), prevented the French government from
suspecting the existence of the alliance, or from ceasing to strive after
a Franco-Italian understanding. Suspicion was not aroused until March
1883, when Mancini, in defending himself against strictures upon his
refusal to co-operate with Great Britain in Egypt, practically revealed
the existence of the treaty, thereby irritating France and destroying
Depretis's secret hope of finding in the triple alliance the advantage of
an Austro-German guarantee without the disadvantage of French enmity. In
Italy the revelation of the treaty was hailed with satisfaction except by
the Clericals, who were enraged at the blow thus struck at the restoration
of the pope's temporal power, and by the Radicals, who feared both the
inevitable breach with republican France and the reinforcement of Italian
constitutional parties by intimacy with strong monarchical states such as
Germany and Austria. These very considerations naturally combined to
recommend the fact to constitutionalists, who saw in it, besides the
territorial guarantee, the elimination of the danger of foreign
interference in the relations between Italy and the Vatican, such as
Bismarck had recently threatened and such as France was believed ready to
propose.

First renewal of the Triple Alliance.

Nevertheless, during its first period (1882-1887) the triple alliance
failed to ensure cordiality between the contracting Powers. Mancini
exerted himself in a hundred ways to soothe French resentment. He not
only refused to join Great Britain in the Egyptian expedition, but
agreed to suspend Italian consular jurisdiction in Tunis, and deprecated
suspicion of French designs upon Morocco. His efforts were worse than
futile. France remained cold, while Bismarck and Kalnóky, distrustful of
the Radicalism of Depretis and Mancini, assumed towards their ally an
attitude almost hostile. Possibly Germany and Austria may have been
influenced by the secret treaty signed between Austria, Germany and
Russia on the 21st of March 1884, and ratified during the meeting of the
three emperors at Skierniewice in September of that year, by which
Bismarck, in return for "honest brokerage" in the Balkans, is understood
to have obtained from Austria and Russia a promise of benevolent
neutrality in case Germany should be "forced" to make war upon a fourth
power--France. Guaranteed thus against Russian attack, Italy became in
the eyes of the central powers a negligible quantity, and was treated
accordingly. Though kept in the dark as to the Skierniewice arrangement,
the Italian government soon discovered from the course of events that
the triple alliance had practically lost its object, European peace
having been assured without Italian co-operation. Meanwhile France
provided Italy with fresh cause for uneasiness by abating her hostility
to Germany. Italy in consequence drew nearer to Great Britain, and at
the London conference on the Egyptian financial question sided with
Great Britain against Austria and Germany. At the same time negotiations
took place with Great Britain for an Italian occupation of Massawa, and
Mancini, dreaming of a vast Anglo-Italian enterprise against the Mahdi,
expatiated in the spring of 1885 upon the glories of an Anglo-Italian
alliance, an indiscretion which drew upon him a scarcely-veiled
_démenti_ from London. Again speaking in the Chamber, Mancini claimed
for Italy the principal merit in the conclusion of the triple alliance,
but declared that the alliance left Italy full liberty of action in
regard to interests outside its scope, "especially as there was no
possibility of obtaining protection for such interests from those who by
the alliance had not undertaken to protect them." These words, which
revealed the absence of any stipulation in regard to the protection of
Italian interests in the Mediterranean, created lively dissatisfaction
in Italy and corresponding satisfaction in France. They hastened
Mancini's downfall (17th June 1885), and prepared the advent of count di
Robilant, who three months later succeeded Mancini at the Italian
Foreign Office. Robilant, for whom the Skierniewice pact was no secret,
followed a firmly independent policy throughout the Bulgarian crisis of
1885-1886, declining to be drawn into any action beyond that required by
the treaty of Berlin and the protection of Italian interests in the
Balkans. Italy, indeed, came out of the Eastern crisis with enhanced
prestige and with her relations to Austria greatly improved. Towards
Prince Bismarck Robilant maintained an attitude of dignified
independence, and as, in the spring of 1886, the moment for the renewal
of the triple alliance drew near, he profited by the development of the
Bulgarian crisis and the threatened Franco-Russian understanding to
secure from the central powers "something more" than the bare
territorial guarantee of the original treaty. This "something more"
consisted, at least in part, of the arrangement, with the help of
Austria and Germany, of an Anglo-Italian naval understanding having
special reference to the Eastern question, but providing for common
action by the British and Italian fleets in the Mediterranean in case of
war. A vote of the Italian Chamber on the 4th of February 1887, in
connexion with the disaster to Italian troops at Dogali, in Abyssinia,
brought about the resignation of the Depretis-Robilant cabinet. The
crisis dragged for three months, and before its definitive solution by
the formation of a Depretis-Crispi ministry, Robilant succeeded (17th
March 1887) in renewing the triple alliance on terms more favourable to
Italy than those obtained in 1882. Not only did he secure concessions
from Austria and Germany corresponding in some degree to the improved
state of the Italian army and navy, but, in virtue of the Anglo-Italian
understanding, assured the practical adhesion of Great Britain to the
European policy of the central powers, a triumph probably greater than
any registered by Italian diplomacy since the completion of national
unity.

Internal reforms.

The railway conventions.

The period between May 1881 and July 1887 occupied, in the region of
foreign affairs, by the negotiation, conclusion and renewal of the
triple alliance, by the Bulgarian crisis and by the dawn of an Italian
colonial policy, was marked at home by urgent political and economic
problems, and by the parliamentary phenomena known as _trasformismo_. On
the 29th of June 1881 the Chamber adopted a Franchise Reform Bill, which
increased the electorate from 600,000 to 2,000,000 by lowering the
fiscal qualification from 40 to 19.80 lire in direct taxation, and by
extending the suffrage to all persons who had passed through the two
lower standards of the elementary schools, and practically to all
persons able to read and write. The immediate result of the reform was
to increase the political influence of large cities where the proportion
of illiterate workmen was lower than in the country districts, and to
exclude from the franchise numbers of peasants and small proprietors
who, though of more conservative temperament and of better economic
position than the artizan population of the large towns, were often
unable to fulfil the scholarship qualification. On the 12th of April
1883 the forced currency was formally abolished by the resumption of
treasury payments in gold with funds obtained through a loan of
£14,500,000 issued in London on the 5th of May 1882. Owing to the
hostility of the French market, the loan was covered with difficulty,
and, though the gold premium fell and commercial exchanges were
temporarily facilitated by the resumption of cash payments, it is
doubtful whether these advantages made up for the burden of £640,000
additional annual interest thrown upon the exchequer. On the 6th of
March 1885 parliament finally sanctioned the conventions by which state
railways were farmed out to three private companies--the Mediterranean,
Adriatic and Sicilian. The railways redeemed in 1875-1876 had been
worked in the interval by the government at a heavy loss. A commission
of inquiry reported in favour of private management. The conventions,
concluded for a period of sixty years, but terminable by either party
after twenty or forty years, retained for the state the possession of
the lines (except the southern railway, viz. the line from Bologna to
Brindisi belonging to the Società Meridionale to whom the Adriatic lines
were now farmed), but sold rolling stock to the companies, arranged
various schedules of state subsidy for lines projected or in course of
construction, guaranteed interest on the bonds of the companies and
arranged for the division of revenue between the companies, the reserve
fund and the state. National control of the railways was secured by a
proviso that the directors must be of Italian nationality. Depretis and
his colleague Genala, minister of public works, experienced great
difficulty in securing parliamentary sanction for the conventions, not
so much on account of their defective character, as from the opposition
of local interests anxious to extort new lines from the government. In
fact, the conventions were only voted by a majority of twenty-three
votes after the government had undertaken to increase the length of new
state-built lines from 1500 to 2500 kilometres. Unfortunately, the
calculation of probable railway revenue on which the conventions had
been based proved to be enormously exaggerated. For many years the 37½%
of the gross revenue (less the cost of maintaining the rolling stock,
incumbent on the state) scarcely sufficed to pay the interest on debts
incurred for railway construction and on the guaranteed bonds. Gradually
the increase of traffic consequent upon the industrial development of
Italy decreased the annual losses of the state, but the position of the
government in regard to the railways still remained so unsatisfactory as
to render the resumption of the whole system by the state on the
expiration of the first period of twenty years in 1905 inevitable.

Finance.

Intimately bound up with the forced currency, the railway conventions
and public works was the financial question in general. From 1876, when
equilibrium between expenditure and revenue had first been attained,
taxation yielded steady annual surpluses, which in 1881 reached the
satisfactory level of £2,120,000. The gradual abolition of the grist tax
on minor cereals diminished the surplus in 1882 to £236,000, and in 1883
to £110,000, while the total repeal of the grist tax on wheat, which
took effect on the 1st of January 1884, coincided with the opening of a
new and disastrous period of deficit. True, the repeal of the grist tax
was not the only, nor possibly even the principal, cause of the deficit.
The policy of "fiscal transformation" inaugurated by the Left increased
revenue from indirect taxation from £17,000,000 in 1876 to more than
£24,000,000 in 1887, by substituting heavy corn duties for the grist
tax, and by raising the sugar and petroleum duties to unprecedented
levels. But partly from lack of firm financial administration, partly
through the increase of military and naval expenditure (which in 1887
amounted to £9,000,000 for the army, while special efforts were made to
strengthen the navy), and principally through the constant drain of
railway construction and public works, the demands upon the exchequer
grew largely to exceed the normal increase of revenue, and necessitated
the contraction of new debts. In their anxiety to remain in office
Depretis and the finance minister, Magliani, never hesitated to mortgage
the financial future of their country. No concession could be denied to
deputies, or groups of deputies, whose support was indispensable to the
life of the cabinet, nor, under such conditions, was it possible to
place any effective check upon administrative abuses in which
politicians or their electors were interested. Railways, roads and
harbours which contractors had undertaken to construct for reasonable
amounts were frequently made to cost thrice the original estimates.
Minghetti, in a trenchant exposure of the parliamentary condition of
Italy during this period, cites a case in which a credit for certain
public works was, during a debate in the Chamber, increased by the
government from £6,600,000 to £9,000,000 in order to conciliate local
political interests. In the spring of 1887 Genala, minister of public
works, was taken to task for having sanctioned expenditure of
£80,000,000 on railway construction while only £40,000,000 had been
included in the estimates. As most of these credits were spread over a
series of years, succeeding administrations found their financial
liberty of action destroyed, and were obliged to cover deficit by
constant issues of consolidated stock. Thus the deficit of £940,000 for
the financial year 1885-1886 rose to nearly £2,920,000 in 1887-1888, and
in 1888-1889 attained the terrible level of £9,400,000.

Nevertheless, in spite of many and serious shortcomings, the long series
of Depretis administrations was marked by the adoption of some useful
measures. Besides the realization of the formal programme of the Left,
consisting of the repeal of the grist tax, the abolition of the forced
currency, the extension of the suffrage and the development of the
railway system, Depretis laid the foundation for land tax re-assessment
by introducing a new cadastral survey. Unfortunately, the new survey was
made largely optional, so that provinces which had reason to hope for a
diminution of land tax under a revised assessment hastened to complete
their survey, while others, in which the average of the land tax was
below a normal assessment, neglected to comply with the provisions of
the scheme. An important undertaking, known as the Agricultural Inquiry,
brought to light vast quantities of information valuable for future
agrarian legislation. The year 1885 saw the introduction and adoption of
a measure embodying the principle of employers' liability for accidents
to workmen, a principle subsequently extended and more equitably defined
in the spring of 1899. An effort to encourage the development of the
mercantile marine was made in the same year, and a convention was
concluded with the chief lines of passenger steamers to retain their
fastest vessels as auxiliaries to the fleet in case of war. Sanitation
and public hygiene received a potent impulse from the cholera epidemic
of 1884, many of the unhealthiest quarters in Naples and other cities
being demolished and rebuilt, with funds chiefly furnished by the state.
The movement was strongly supported by King Humbert, whose intrepidity
in visiting the most dangerous spots at Busca and Naples while the
epidemic was at its height, reassuring the panic-stricken inhabitants by
his presence, excited the enthusiasm of his people and the admiration of
Europe.

"Trasformismo."

During the accomplishment of these and other reforms the condition of
parliament underwent profound change. By degrees the administrations of
the Left had ceased to rely solely upon the Liberal sections of the
Chamber, and had carried their most important bills with the help of the
Right. This process of transformation was not exclusively the work of
Depretis, but had been initiated as early as 1873, when a portion of the
Right under Minghetti had, by joining the Left, overturned the
Lanza-Sella cabinet. In 1876 Minghetti himself had fallen a victim to a
similar defection of Conservative deputies. The practical annihilation
of the old Right in the elections of 1876 opened a new parliamentary
era. Reduced in number to less than one hundred, and radically changed
in spirit and composition, the Right gave way, if not to despair, at
least to a despondency unsuited to an opposition party. Though on more
than one occasion personal rancour against the men of the Moderate Left
prevented the Right from following Sella's advice and regaining, by
timely coalition with cognate parliamentary elements, a portion of its
former influence, the bulk of the party, with singular inconsistency,
drew nearer and nearer to the Liberal cabinets. The process was
accelerated by Sella's illness and death (14th March 1884), an event
which cast profound discouragement over the more thoughtful of the
Conservatives and Moderate Liberals, by whom Sella had been regarded as
a supreme political reserve, as a statesman whose experienced vigour and
patriotic sagacity might have been trusted to lift Italy from any depth
of folly or misfortune. By a strange anomaly the Radical measures
brought forward by the Left diminished instead of increasing the
distance between it and the Conservatives. Numerically insufficient to
reject such measures, and lacking the fibre and the cohesion necessary
for the pursuance of a far-sighted policy, the Right thought prudent not
to employ its strength in uncompromising opposition, but rather, by
supporting the government, to endeavour to modify Radical legislation in
a Conservative sense. In every case the calculation proved fallacious.
Radical measures were passed unmodified, and the Right was compelled
sadly to accept the accomplished fact. Thus it was with the abolition of
the grist tax, the reform of the suffrage, the railway conventions and
many other bills. When, in course of time, the extended suffrage
increased the Republican and Extreme Radical elements in the Chamber,
and the Liberal "Pentarchy" (composed of Crispi, Cairoli, Nicotera,
Zanardelli and Baccarini) assumed an attitude of bitter hostility to
Depretis, the Right, obeying the impulse of Minghetti, rallied openly to
Depretis, lending him aid without which his prolonged term of office
would have been impossible. The result was parliamentary chaos, baptized
_trasformismo_. In May 1883 this process received official recognition
by the elimination of the Radicals Zanardelli and Baccarini from the
Depretis cabinet, while in the course of 1884 a Conservative, Signor
Biancheri, was elected to the presidency of the Chamber, and another
Conservative, General Ricotti, appointed to the War Office. Though
Depretis, at the end of his life in 1887, showed signs of repenting of
the confusion thus created, he had established a parliamentary system
destined largely to sterilize and vitiate the political life of Italy.

Colonial policy.

Contemporaneously with the vicissitudes of home and foreign policy under
the Left there grew up in Italy a marked tendency towards colonial
enterprise. The tendency itself dated from 1869, when a congress of the
Italian chambers of commerce at Genoa had urged the Lanza cabinet to
establish a commercial depôt on the Red Sea. On the 11th of March 1870
an Italian shipper, Signor Rubattino, had bought the bay of Assab, with
the neighbouring island of Darmakieh, from Beheran, sultan of Raheita,
for £1880, the funds being furnished by the government. The Egyptian
government being unwilling to recognize the sovereignty of Beheran over
Assab or his right to sell territory to a foreign power,
Visconti-Venosta thought it opportune not then to occupy Assab. No
further step was taken until, at the end of 1879, Rubattino prepared to
establish a commercial station at Assab. The British government made
inquiry as to his intentions, and on the 19th of April 1880 received a
formal undertaking from Cairoli that Assab would never be fortified nor
be made a military establishment. Meanwhile (January 1880) stores and
materials were landed, and Assab was permanently occupied. Eighteen
months later a party of Italian sailors and explorers under Lieutenant
Biglieri and Signor Giulietti were massacred in Egyptian territory.
Egypt, however, refused to make thorough inquiry into the massacre, and
was only prevented from occupying Raheita and coming into conflict with
Italy by the good offices of Lord Granville, who dissuaded the Egyptian
government from enforcing its sovereignty. On the 20th of September 1881
Beheran formally accepted Italian protection, and in the following
February an Anglo-Italian convention established the Italian title to
Assab on condition that Italy should formally recognise the suzerainty
of the Porte and of the khedive over the Red Sea coast, and should
prevent the transport of arms and munitions of war through the territory
of Assab. This convention was never recognized by the Porte nor by the
Egyptian government. A month later (10th March 1882) Rubattino made over
his establishment to the Italian government, and on the 12th of June the
Chamber adopted a bill constituting Assab an Italian crown colony.

The Egyptian Question.

Disaster of Dogali.

Within four weeks of the adoption of this bill the bombardment of
Alexandria by the British fleet (11th July 1882) opened an era destined
profoundly to affect the colonial position of Italy. The revolt of Arabi
Pasha (September 1881) had led to the meeting of an ambassadorial
conference at Constantinople, promoted by Mancini, Italian minister for
foreign affairs, in the hope of preventing European intervention in
Egypt and the permanent establishment of an Anglo-French condominium to
the detriment of Italian influence. At the opening of the conference
(23rd June 1882) Italy secured the signature of a self-denying protocol
whereby all the great powers undertook to avoid isolated action; but the
rapid development of the crisis in Egypt, and the refusal of France to
co-operate with Great Britain in the restoration of order, necessitated
vigorous action by the latter alone. In view of the French refusal, Lord
Granville on the 27th of July invited Italy to join in restoring order
in Egypt; but Mancini and Depretis, in spite of the efforts of Crispi,
then in London, declined the offer. Financial considerations, lack of
proper transports for an expeditionary corps, fear of displeasing
France, dislike of a "policy of adventure," misplaced deference towards
the ambassadorial conference in Constantinople, and unwillingness to
thwart the current of Italian sentiment in favour of the Egyptian
"nationalists," were the chief motives of the Italian refusal, which had
the effect of somewhat estranging Great Britain and Italy. Anglo-Italian
relations, however, regained their normal cordiality two years later,
and found expression in the support lent by Italy to the British
proposal at the London conference on the Egyptian question (July 1884).
About the same time Mancini was informed by the Italian agent in Cairo
that Great Britain would be well disposed towards an extension of
Italian influence on the Red Sea coast. Having sounded Lord Granville,
Mancini received encouragement to seize Beilul and Massawa, in view of
the projected restriction of the Egyptian zone of military occupation
consequent on the Mahdist rising in the Sudan. Lord Granville further
inquired whether Italy would co-operate in pacifying the Sudan, and
received an affirmative reply. Italian action was hastened by news that,
in December 1884, an exploring party under Signor Bianchi, royal
commissioner for Assab, had been massacred in the Aussa (Danakil)
country, an event which aroused in Italy a desire to punish the
assassins and to obtain satisfaction for the still unpunished massacre
of Signor Giulietti and his companions. Partly to satisfy public
opinion, partly in order to profit by the favourable disposition of the
British government, and partly in the hope of remedying the error
committed in 1882 by refusal to co-operate with Great Britain in Egypt,
the Italian government in January 1885 despatched an expedition under
Admiral Caimi and Colonel Saletta to occupy Massawa and Beilul. The
occupation, effected on the 5th of February, was accelerated by fear
lest Italy might be forestalled by France or Russia, both of which
powers were suspected of desiring to establish themselves firmly on the
Red Sea and to exercise a protectorate over Abyssinia. News of the
occupation reached Europe simultaneously with the tidings of the fall of
Khartum, an event which disappointed Italian hopes of military
co-operation with Great Britain in the Sudan. The resignation of the
Gladstone-Granville cabinet further precluded the projected Italian
occupation of Suakin, and the Italians, wisely refraining from an
independent attempt to succour Kassala, then besieged by the Mahdists,
bent their efforts to the increase of their zone of occupation around
Massawa. The extension of the Italian zone excited the suspicions of
John, negus of Abyssinia, whose apprehensions were assiduously fomented
by Alula, ras of Tigré, and by French and Greek adventurers. Measures,
apparently successful, were taken to reassure the negus, but shortly
afterwards protection inopportunely accorded by Italy to enemies of Ras
Alula, induced the Abyssinians to enter upon hostilities. In January
1886 Ras Alula raided the village of Wa, to the west of Zula, but
towards the end of the year (23rd November) Wa was occupied by the
irregular troops of General Gené, who had superseded Colonel Saletta at
Massawa. Angered by this step, Ras Alula took prisoners the members of
an Italian exploring party commanded by Count Salimbeni, and held them
as hostages for the evacuation of Wa. General Gené nevertheless
reinforced Wa and pushed forward a detachment to Saati. On the 25th of
January 1887 Ras Alula attacked Saati, but was repulsed with loss. On
the following day, however, the Abyssinians succeeded in surprising,
near the village of Dogali, an Italian force of 524 officers and men
under Colonel De Cristoforis, who were convoying provisions to the
garrison of Saati. The Abyssinians, 20,000 strong, speedily overwhelmed
the small Italian force, which, after exhausting its ammunition, was
destroyed where it stood. One man only escaped. Four hundred and seven
men and twenty-three officers were killed outright, and one officer and
eighty-one men wounded. Dead and wounded alike were horribly mutilated
by order of Alula. Fearing a new attack, General Gené withdrew his
forces from Saati, Wa and Arafali; but the losses of the Abyssinians at
Saati and Dogali had been so heavy as to dissuade Alula from further
hostilities.

Abyssinia.

Treaty of Uccialli.

In Italy the disaster of Dogali produced consternation, and caused the
fall of the Depretis-Robilant cabinet. The Chamber, eager for revenge,
voted a credit of £200,000, and sanctioned the despatch of
reinforcements. Meanwhile Signor Crispi, who, though averse from
colonial adventure, desired to vindicate Italian honour, entered the
Depretis cabinet as minister of the interior, and obtained from
parliament a new credit of £800,000. In November 1887 a strong
expedition under General di San Marzano raised the strength of the
Massawa garrison to nearly 20,000 men. The British government, desirous
of preventing an Italo-Abyssinian conflict, which could but strengthen
the position of the Mahdists, despatched Mr (afterwards Sir) Gerald
Portal from Massawa on the 29th of October to mediate with the negus.
The mission proved fruitless. Portal returned to Massawa on the 25th of
December 1887, and warned the Italians that John was preparing to attack
them in the following spring with an army of 100,000 men. On the 28th of
March 1888 the negus indeed descended from the Abyssinian high plateau
in the direction of Saati, but finding the Italian position too strong
to be carried by assault, temporized and opened negotiations for peace.
His tactics failed to entice the Italians from their position, and on
the 3rd of April sickness among his men compelled John to withdraw the
Abyssinian army. The negus next marched against Menelek, king of Shoa,
whose neutrality Italy had purchased with 5000 Remington rifles and a
supply of ammunition, but found him with 80,000 men too strongly
entrenched to be successfully attacked. Tidings of a new Mahdist
incursion into Abyssinian territory reaching the negus induced him to
postpone the settlement of his quarrel with Menelek until the dervishes
had been chastised. Marching towards the Blue Nile, he joined battle
with the Mahdists, but on the 10th of March 1889 was killed, in the hour
of victory, near Gallabat. His death gave rise to an Abyssinian war of
succession between Mangashà, natural son of John, and Menelek, grandson
of the Negus Sella-Sellassié. Menelek, by means of Count Antonelli,
resident in the Shoa country, requested Italy to execute a diversion in
his favour by occupying Asmarà and other points on the high plateau.
Antonelli profited by the situation to obtain Menelek's signature to a
treaty fixing the frontiers of the Italian colony and defining
Italo-Abyssinian relations. The treaty, signed at Uccialli on the 2nd of
May 1899, arranged for regular intercourse between Italy and Abyssinia
and conceded to Italy a portion of the high plateau, with the positions
of Halai, Saganeiti and Asmarà. The main point of the treaty, however,
lay in clause 17:--

"His Majesty the king of kings of Ethiopia _consents_ to make use of
the government of His Majesty the king of Italy for the treatment of
all questions concerning other powers and governments."

Upon this clause Italy founded her claim to a protectorate over
Abyssinia. In September 1889 the treaty of Uccialli was ratified in
Italy by Menelek's lieutenant, the Ras Makonnen. Makonnen further
concluded with the Italian premier, Crispi, a convention whereby Italy
recognized Menelek as emperor of Ethiopia, Menelek recognized the
Italian colony, and arranged for a special Italo-Abyssinian currency and
for a loan. On the 11th of October Italy communicated article 17 of the
treaty of Uccialli to the European powers, interpreting it as a valid
title to an Italian protectorate over Abyssinia. Russia alone neglected
to take note of the communication, and persisted in the hostile attitude
she had assumed at the moment of the occupation of Massawa. Meanwhile
the Italian mint coined thalers bearing the portrait of King Humbert,
with an inscription referring to the Italian protectorate, and on the
1st of January 1890 a royal decree conferred upon the colony the name of
"Eritrea."

Operations in Abyssinia.

In the colony itself General Baldissera, who had replaced General
Saletta, delayed the movement against Mangashà desired by Menelek. The
Italian general would have preferred to wait until his intervention was
requested by both pretenders to the Abyssinian throne. Pressed by the
home government, he, however, instructed a native ally to occupy the
important positions of Keren and Asmarà, and prepared himself to take
the offensive against Mangashà and Ras Alula. The latter retreated south
of the river Mareb, leaving the whole of the cis-Mareb territory,
including the provinces of Hamasen, Agameh, Seraè and Okulè-Kusai, in
Italian hands. General Orero, successor of Baldissera, pushed offensive
action more vigorously, and on the 26th of January 1890 entered Adowa, a
city considerably to the south of the Mareb--an imprudent step which
aroused Menelek's suspicions, and had hurriedly to be retraced.
Mangashà, seeing further resistance to be useless, submitted to Menelek,
who at the end of February ratified at Makallé the additional
convention to the treaty of Uccialli, but refused to recognize the
Italian occupation of the Mareb. The negus, however, conformed to
article 17 of the treaty of Uccialli by requesting Italy to represent
Abyssinia at the Brussels anti-slavery conference, an act which
strengthened Italian illusions as to Menelek's readiness to submit to
their protectorate. Menelek had previously notified the chief European
powers of his coronation at Entotto (14th December 1889), but Germany
and Great Britain replied that such notification should have been made
through the Italian government. Germany, moreover, wounded Menelek's
pride by employing merely the title of "highness." The negus took
advantage of the incident to protest against the Italian text of article
17, and to contend that the Amharic text contained no equivalent for the
word "_consent_," but merely stipulated that Abyssinia "_might_" make
use of Italy in her relations with foreign powers. On the 28th of
October 1890 Count Antonelli, negotiator of the treaty, was despatched
to settle the controversy, but on arriving at Adis Ababa, the new
residence of the negus, found agreement impossible either with regard to
the frontier or the protectorate. On the 10th of April 1891, Menelek
communicated to the powers his views with regard to the Italian
frontier, and announced his intention of re-establishing the ancient
boundaries of Ethiopia as far as Khartum to the north-west and Victoria
Nyanza to the south. Meanwhile the marquis de Rudini, who had succeeded
Crispi as Italian premier, had authorized the abandonment of article 17
even before he had heard of the failure of Antonelli's negotiations.
Rudini was glad to leave the whole dispute in abeyance and to make with
the local ras, or chieftains, of the high plateau an arrangement
securing for Italy the cis-Mareb provinces of Seraè and Okulè-Kusai
under the rule of an allied native chief named Bath-Agos. Rudini,
however, was able to conclude two protocols with Great Britain (March
and April 1891) whereby the British government definitely recognized
Abyssinia as within the Italian sphere of influence in return for an
Italian recognition of British rights in the Upper Nile.

First Crispi Cabinet.

Tosti and conciliation.

Terms of the "Roman Question."

The period 1887-1890 was marked in Italy by great political activity.
The entry of Crispi into the Depretis cabinet as minister of the
interior (4th April 1887) introduced into the government an element of
vigour which had long been lacking. Though sixty-eight years of age,
Crispi possessed an activity, a rapidity of decision and an energy in
execution with which none of his contemporaries could vie. Within four
months the death of Depretis (29th July 1887) opened for Crispi the way
to the premiership. Besides assuming the presidency of the council of
ministers and retaining the ministry of the interior, Crispi took over
the portfolio of foreign affairs which Depretis had held since the
resignation of Count di Robilant. One of the first questions with which
he had to deal was that of conciliation between Italy and the Vatican.
At the end of May the pope, in an allocution to the cardinals, had
spoken of Italy in terms of unusual cordiality, and had expressed a wish
for peace. A few days later Signor Bonghi, one of the framers of the Law
of Guarantees, published in the _Nuova Antologia_ a plea for
reconciliation on the basis of an amendment to the Law of Guarantees and
recognition by the pope of the Italian title to Rome. The chief incident
cf the movement towards conciliation consisted, however, in the
publication of a pamphlet entitled _La Conciliazione_ by Father Tosti, a
close friend and confidant of the pope, extolling the advantages of
peace between Vatican and Quirinal. Tosti's pamphlet was known to
represent papal ideas, and Tosti himself was _persona grata_ to the
Italian government. Reconciliation seemed within sight when suddenly
Tosti's pamphlet was placed on the Index, ostensibly on account of a
phrase, "The whole of Italy entered Rome by the breach of Porta Pia; the
king cannot restore Rome to the pope, since Rome belongs to the Italian
people." On the 4th of June 1887 the official Vatican organ, the
_Osservatore Romano_, published a letter written by Tosti to the pope
conditionally retracting the views expressed in the pamphlet. The letter
had been written at the pope's request, on the understanding that it
should not be published. On the 15th of June the pope addressed to
Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro, secretary of state, a letter reiterating
in uncompromising terms the papal claim to the temporal power, and at
the end of July Cardinal Rampolla reformulated the same claim in a
circular to the papal nuncios abroad. The dream of conciliation was at
an end, but the Tosti incident had served once more to illustrate the
true position of the Vatican in regard to Italy. It became clear that
neither the influence of the regular clergy, of which the Society of
Jesus is the most powerful embodiment, nor that of foreign clerical
parties, which largely control the Peter's Pence fund, would ever permit
renunciation of the papal claim to temporal power. France, and the
French Catholics especially, feared lest conciliation should diminish
the reliance of the Vatican upon France, and consequently French hold
over the Vatican. The Vatican, for its part, felt its claim to temporal
power to be too valuable a pecuniary asset and too efficacious an
instrument of church discipline lightly to be thrown away. The legend of
an "imprisoned pope," subject to every whim of his gaolers, had never
failed to arouse the pity and loosen the purse-strings of the faithful;
dangerous innovators and would-be reformers within the church could be
compelled to bow before the symbol of the temporal power, and their
spirit of submission tested by their readiness to forgo the realization
of their aims until the head of the church should be restored to his
rightful domain. More important than all was the interest of the Roman
curia, composed almost exclusively of Italians, to retain in its own
hands the choice of the pontiff and to maintain the predominance of the
Italian element and the Italian spirit in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Conciliation with Italy would expose the pope and his Italian
_entourage_ to suspicion of being unduly subject to Italian political
influence--of being, in a word, more Italian than Catholic. Such a
suspicion would inevitably lead to a movement in favour of the
internationalization of the curia and of the papacy. In order to avoid
this danger it was therefore necessary to refuse all compromise, and, by
perpetual reiteration of a claim incompatible with Italian territorial
unity, to prove to the church at large that the pope and the curia were
more Catholic than Italian. Such rigidity of principle need not be
extended to the affairs of everyday contact between the Vatican and the
Italian authorities, with regard to which, indeed, a tacit _modus
vivendi_ was easily attainable. Italy, for her part, could not go back
upon the achievements of the Risorgimento by restoring Rome or any
portion of Italian territory to the pope. She had hoped by conciliation
to arrive at an understanding which should have ranged the church among
the conservative and not among the disruptive forces of the country, but
she was keenly desirous to retain the papacy as a preponderatingly
Italian institution, and was ready to make whatever formal concessions
might have appeared necessary to reassure foreign Catholics concerning
the reality of the pope's spiritual independence. The failure of the
conciliation movement left profound irritation between Vatican and
Quirinal, an irritation which, on the Vatican side, found expression in
vivacious protests and in threats of leaving Rome; and, on the Italian
side, in the deposition of the syndic of Rome for having visited the
cardinal-vicar, in the anti-clerical provisions of the new penal code,
and in the inauguration (9th June 1889) of a monument to Giordano Bruno
on the very site of his martyrdom.

The internal situation inherited by Crispi from Depretis was very
unsatisfactory. Extravagant expenditure on railways and public works,
loose administration of finance, the cost of colonial enterprise, the
growing demands for the army and navy, the impending tariff war with
France, and the over-speculation in building and in industrial ventures,
which had absorbed all the floating capital of the country, had combined
to produce a state of affairs calling for firm and radical treatment.
Crispi, burdened by the premiership and by the two most important
portfolios in the cabinet, was, however, unable to exercise efficient
control over all departments of state. Nevertheless his administration
was by no means unfruitful. Zanardelli, minister of justice, secured in
June 1888 the adoption of a new penal code; state surveillance was
extended to the _opere pie_, or charitable institutions; municipal
franchise was reformed by granting what was practically manhood suffrage
with residential qualification, provision being made for minority
representation; and the central state administration was reformed by a
bill fixing the number and functions of the various ministries. The
management of finance was scarcely satisfactory, for though Giolitti,
who had succeeded Magliani and Perazzi at the treasury, suppressed the
former's illusory "pension fund," he lacked the fibre necessary to deal
with the enormous deficit of nearly £10,000,000 in 1888-1889, the
existence of which both Perazzi and he had recognized. The most
successful feature of Crispi's term of office was his strict maintenance
of order and the suppression of Radical and Irredentist agitation. So
vigorous was his treatment of Irredentism that he dismissed without
warning his colleague Seismit Doda, minister of finance, for having
failed to protest against Irredentist speeches delivered in his presence
at Udine. Firmness such as this secured for him the support of all
constitutional elements, and after three years' premiership his position
was infinitely stronger than at the outset. The general election of 1890
gave the cabinet an almost unwieldy majority, comprising four-fifths of
the Chamber. A lengthy term of office seemed to be opening out before
him when, on the 31st of January 1891, Crispi, speaking in a debate upon
an unimportant bill, angrily rebuked the Right for its noisy
interruptions. The rebuke infuriated the Conservative deputies, who,
protesting against Crispi's words in the name of the "sacred memories"
of their party, precipitated a division and placed the cabinet in a
minority. The incident, whether due to chance or guile, brought about
the resignation of Crispi. A few days later he was succeeded in the
premiership by the marquis di Rudini, leader of the Right, who formed a
coalition cabinet with Nicotera and a part of the Left.

Rudini.

Second renewal of the Triple Alliance.

Giolitti.

The sudden fall of Crispi wrought a great change in the character of
Italian relations with foreign powers. His policy had been characterized
by extreme cordiality towards Austria and Germany, by a close
understanding with Great Britain in regard to Mediterranean questions,
and by an apparent animosity towards France, which at one moment seemed
likely to lead to war. Shortly before the fall of the Depretis-Robilant
cabinet Count Robilant had announced the intention of Italy to denounce
the commercial treaties with France and Austria, which would lapse on
the 31st of December 1887, and had intimated his readiness to negotiate
new treaties. On the 24th of June 1887, in view of a possible rupture of
commercial relations with France, the Depretis-Crispi cabinet introduced
a new general tariff. The probability of the conclusion of a new
Franco-Italian treaty was small, both on account of the protectionist
spirit of France and of French resentment at the renewal of the triple
alliance, but even such slight probability vanished after a visit paid
to Bismarck by Crispi (October 1887) within three months of his
appointment to the premiership. Crispi entertained no a priori animosity
towards France, but was strongly convinced that Italy must emancipate
herself from the position of political dependence on her powerful
neighbour which had vitiated the foreign policy of the Left. So far was
he from desiring a rupture with France, that he had subordinated
acceptance of the portfolio of the interior in the Depretis cabinet to
an assurance that the triple alliance contained no provision for
offensive warfare. But his ostentatious visit to Friedrichsruh, and a
subsequent speech at Turin, in which, while professing sentiments of
friendship and esteem for France, he eulogized the personality of
Bismarck, aroused against him a hostility on the part of the French
which he was never afterwards able to allay. France was equally careless
of Italian susceptibilities, and in April 1888 Goblet made a futile but
irritating attempt to enforce at Massawa the Ottoman régime of the
capitulations in regard to non-Italian residents. In such circumstances
the negotiations for the new commercial treaty could but fail, and
though the old treaty was prolonged by special arrangement for two
months, differential tariffs were put in force on both sides of the
frontier on the 29th of February 1888. The value of French exports into
Italy decreased immediately by one-half, while Italian exports to France
decreased by nearly two-thirds. At the end of 1889 Crispi abolished the
differential duties against French imports and returned to the general
Italian tariff, but France declined to follow his lead and maintained
her prohibitive dues. Meanwhile the enthusiastic reception accorded to
the young German emperor on the occasion of his visit to Rome in October
1888, and the cordiality shown towards King Humbert and Crispi at Berlin
in May 1889, increased the tension of Franco-Italian relations; nor was
it until after the fall of Prince Bismarck in March 1890 that Crispi
adopted towards the Republic a more friendly attitude by sending an
Italian squadron to salute President Carnot at Toulon. The chief
advantage derived by Italy from Crispi's foreign policy was the increase
of confidence in her government on the part of her allies and of Great
Britain. On the occasion of the incident raised by Goblet with regard to
Massawa, Bismarck made it clear to France that, in case of
complications, Italy would not stand alone; and when in February 1888 a
strong French fleet appeared to menace the Italian coast, the British
Mediterranean squadron demonstrated its readiness to support Italian
naval dispositions. Moreover, under Crispi's hand Italy awoke from the
apathy of former years and gained consciousness of her place in the
world. The conflict with France, the operations in Eritrea, the vigorous
interpretation of the triple alliance, the questions of Morocco and
Bulgaria, were all used by him as means to stimulate national sentiment.
With the instinct of a true statesman, he felt the pulse of the people,
divined their need for prestige, and their preference for a government
heavy-handed rather than lax. How great had been Crispi's power was seen
by contrast with the policy of the Rudini cabinet which succeeded him in
February 1891. Crispi's so-called "megalomania" gave place to
retrenchment in home affairs and to a deferential attitude towards all
foreign powers. The premiership of Rudini was hailed by the Radical
leader, Cavallotti, as a pledge of the non-renewal of the triple
alliance, against which the Radicals began a vociferous campaign. Their
tactics, however, produced a contrary effect, for Rudini, accepting
proposals from Berlin, renewed the alliance in June 1891 for a period of
twelve years. None of Rudini's public utterances justify the supposition
that he assumed office with the intention of allowing the alliance to
lapse on its expiry in May 1892; indeed, he frankly declared it to form
the basis of his foreign policy. The attitude of several of his
colleagues was more equivocal, but though they coquetted with French
financiers in the hope of obtaining the support of the Paris Bourse for
Italian securities, the precipitate renewal of the alliance destroyed
all probability of a close understanding with France. The desire of
Rudini to live on the best possible terms with all powers was further
evinced in the course of a visit paid to Monza by M. de Giers in October
1891, when the Russian statesman was apprised of the entirely defensive
nature of Italian engagements under the triple alliance. At the same
time he carried to a successful conclusion negotiations begun by Crispi
for the renewal of commercial treaties with Austria and Germany upon
terms which to some extent compensated Italy for the reduction of her
commerce with France, and concluded with Great Britain conventions for
the delimitation of British and Italian spheres of influence in
north-east Africa. In home affairs his administration was weak and
vacillating, nor did the economies effected in naval and military
expenditure and in other departments suffice to strengthen the position
of a cabinet which had disappointed the hopes of its supporters. On the
14th of April 1892 dissensions between ministers concerning the
financial programme led to a cabinet crisis, and though Rudini succeeded
in reconstructing his administration, he was defeated in the Chamber on
the 5th of May and obliged to resign. King Humbert, who, from lack of
confidence in Rudini, had declined to allow him to dissolve parliament,
entrusted Signor Giolitti, a Piedmontese deputy, sometime treasury
minister in the Crispi cabinet, with the formation of a ministry of the
Left, which contrived to obtain six months' supply on account, and
dissolved the Chamber.

Bank scandals.

The ensuing general election (November 1892), marked by unprecedented
violence and abuse of official pressure upon the electorate, fitly
ushered in what proved to be the most unfortunate period of Italian
history since the completion of national unity. The influence of
Giolitti was based largely upon the favour of a court clique, and
especially of Rattazzi, minister of the royal household. Early in 1893 a
scandal arose in connexion with the management of state banks, and
particularly of the Banca Romana, whose managing director, Tanlongo, had
issued £2,500,000 of duplicate bank-notes. Giolitti scarcely improved
matters by creating Tanlongo a member of the senate, and by denying in
parliament the existence of any mismanagement. The senate, however,
manifested the utmost hostility to Tanlongo, whom Giolitti, in
consequence of an interpellation in the Chamber, was compelled to
arrest. Arrests of other prominent persons followed, and on the 3rd of
February the Chamber authorized the prosecution of De Zerbi, a
Neapolitan deputy accused of corruption. On the 20th of February De
Zerbi suddenly expired. For a time Giolitti successfully opposed inquiry
into the conditions of the state banks, but on the 21st of March was
compelled to sanction an official investigation by a parliamentary
commission composed of seven members. On the 23rd of November the report
of the commission was read to the Chamber amid intense excitement. It
established that all Italian cabinets since 1880 had grossly neglected
the state banks; that the two preceding cabinets had been aware of the
irregularities committed by Tanlongo; that Tanlongo had heavily
subsidized the press, paying as much as £20,000 for that purpose in 1888
alone; that a number of deputies, including several ex-ministers, had
received from him loans of a considerable amount, which they had
apparently made no effort to refund; that Giolitti had deceived the
Chamber with regard to the state banks, and was open to suspicion of
having, after the arrest of Tanlongo, abstracted a number of documents
from the latter's papers before placing the remainder in the hands of
the judicial authorities. In spite of the gravity of the charges
formulated against many prominent men, the report merely "deplored" and
"disapproved" of their conduct, without proposing penal proceedings.
Fear of extending still farther a scandal which had already attained
huge dimensions, and the desire to avoid any further shock to national
credit, convinced the commissioners of the expediency of avoiding a long
series of prosecutions. The report, however, sealed the fate of the
Giolitti cabinet, and on the 24th of November it resigned amid general
execration.

Aigues-Mortes massacre.

Insurrection in Sicily.

Apart from the lack of scruple manifested by Giolitti in the bank
scandals, he exhibited incompetence in the conduct of foreign and home
affairs. On the 16th and 18th of August 1893 a number of Italian workmen
were massacred at Aigues-Mortes. The French authorities, under whose
eyes the massacre was perpetrated, did nothing to prevent or repress it,
and the mayor of Marseilles even refused to admit the wounded Italian
workmen to the municipal hospital. These occurrences provoked
anti-French demonstrations in many parts of Italy, and revived the
chronic Italian rancour against France. The Italian foreign minister,
Brin, began by demanding the punishment of the persons guilty of the
massacre, but hastened to accept as satisfactory the anodyne measures
adopted by the French government. Giolitti removed the prefect of Rome
for not having prevented an expression of popular anger, and presented
formal excuses to the French consul at Messina for a demonstration
against that consulate. In the following December the French tribunal at
Angoulême acquitted all the authors of the massacre. At home Giolitti
displayed the same weakness. Riots at Naples in August 1893 and symptoms
of unrest in Sicily found him, as usual, unprepared and vacillating. The
closing of the French market to Sicilian produce, the devastation
wrought by the phylloxera and the decrease of the sulphur trade had
combined to produce in Sicily a discontent of which Socialist agitators
took advantage to organize the workmen of the towns and the peasants of
the country into groups known as _fasci_. The movement had no
well-defined object. Here and there it was based upon a bastard
Socialism, in other places it was made a means of municipal party
warfare under the guidance of the local mafia, and in some districts it
was simply popular effervescence against the local octrois on bread and
flour. As early as January 1893 a conflict had occurred between the
police and the populace, in which several men, women and children were
killed, an occurrence used by the agitators further to inflame the
populace. Instead of maintaining a firm policy, Giolitti allowed the
movement to spread until, towards the autumn of 1893, he became alarmed
and drafted troops into the island, though in numbers insufficient to
restore order. At the moment of his fall the movement assumed the aspect
of an insurrection, and during the interval between his resignation
(24th November) and the formation of a new Crispi cabinet (10th
December) conflicts between the public forces and the rioters were
frequent. The return of Crispi to power--a return imposed by public
opinion as that of the only man capable of dealing with the desperate
situation--marked the turning-point of the crisis. Intimately acquainted
with the conditions of his native island, Crispi adopted efficacious
remedies. The _fasci_ were suppressed, Sicily was filled with troops,
the reserves were called out, a state of siege proclaimed, military
courts instituted and the whole movement crushed in a few weeks. The
chief agitators were either sentenced to heavy terms of imprisonment or
were compelled to flee the country. A simultaneous insurrection at
Massa-Carrara was crushed with similar vigour. Crispi's methods aroused
great outcry in the Radical press, but the severe sentences of the
military courts were in time tempered by the Royal prerogative of
amnesty.

Financial crisis.

But it was not alone in regard to public order that heroic measures were
necessary. The financial situation inspired serious misgivings. While
engagements contracted by Depretis in regard to public works had more
than neutralized the normal increase of revenue from taxation, the whole
credit of the state had been affected by the severe economic and
financial crises of the years 1889-1893. The state banks, already
hampered by maladministration, were encumbered by huge quantities of
real estate which had been taken over as compensation for unredeemed
mortgages. Baron Sidney Sonnino, minister of finance in the Crispi
cabinet, found a prospective deficit of £7,080,000, and in spite of
economies was obliged to face an actual deficit of more than £6,000,000.
Drastic measures were necessary to limit expenditure and to provide new
sources of revenue. Sonnino applied, and subsequently amended, the Bank
Reform Bill passed by the previous Administration (August 10, 1893) for
the creation of a supreme state bank, the Bank of Italy, which was
entrusted with the liquidation of the insolvent Banca Romana. The new
law forbade the state banks to lend money on real estate, limited their
powers of discounting bills and securities, and reduced the maximum of
their paper currency. In order to diminish the gold premium, which under
Giolitti had risen to 16%, forced currency was given to the existing
notes of the banks of Italy, Naples and Sicily, while special state
notes were issued to meet immediate currency needs. Measures were
enforced to prevent Italian holders of consols from sending their
coupons abroad to be paid in gold, with the result that, whereas in 1893
£3,240,000 had been paid abroad in gold for the service of the January
coupons and only £680,000 in paper in Italy, the same coupon was paid a
year later with only £1,360,000 abroad and £2,540,000 at home. Economies
for more than £1,000,000, were immediately effected, taxes, calculated
to produce £2,440,000, were proposed to be placed upon land, incomes,
salt and corn, while the existing income-tax upon consols (fixed at 8%
by Cambray-Digny in 1868, and raised to 13.20% by Sella in 1870) was
increased to 20% irrespectively of the stockholders' nationality. These
proposals met with opposition so fierce as to cause a cabinet crisis,
but Sonnino who resigned office as minister of finance, returned to
power as minister of the treasury, promulgated some of his proposals by
royal decree, and in spite of vehement opposition secured their
ratification by the Chamber. The tax upon consols, which, in conjunction
with the other severe fiscal measures, was regarded abroad as a pledge
that Italy intended at all costs to avoid bankruptcy, caused a rise in
Italian stocks. When the Crispi cabinet fell in March 1896 Sonnino had
the satisfaction of seeing revenue increased by £3,400,000, expenditure
diminished by £2,800,000, the gold premium reduced from 16 to 5%,
consolidated stock at 95 instead of 72, and, notwithstanding the
expenditure necessitated by the Abyssinian War, financial equilibrium
practically restored.

Attacks on Crispi.

While engaged in restoring order and in supporting Sonnino's courageous
struggle against bankruptcy, Crispi became the object of fierce attacks
from the Radicals, Socialists and anarchists. On the 16th of June an
attempt by an anarchist named Lega was made on Crispi's life; on the
24th of June President Carnot was assassinated by the anarchist Caserio;
and on the 30th of June an Italian journalist was murdered at Leghorn
for a newspaper attack upon anarchism--a series of outrages which led
the government to frame and parliament to adopt (11th July) a Public
Safety Bill for the prevention of anarchist propaganda and crime. At the
end of July the trial of the persons implicated in the Banca Romana
scandal revealed the fact that among the documents abstracted by
Giolitti from the papers of the bank manager, Tanlongo, were several
bearing upon Crispi's political and private life. On the 11th of
December Giolitti laid these and other papers before the Chamber, in the
hope of ruining Crispi, but upon examination most of them were found to
be worthless, and the rest of so private a nature as to be unfit for
publication. The effect of the incident was rather to increase
detestation of Giolitti than to damage Crispi. The latter, indeed,
prosecuted the former for libel and for abuse of his position when
premier, but after many vicissitudes, including the flight of Giolitti
to Berlin in order to avoid arrest, the Chamber refused authorization
for the prosecution, and the matter dropped. A fresh attempt of the same
kind was then made against Crispi by the Radical leader Cavallotti, who
advanced unproven charges of corruption and embezzlement. These attacks
were, however, unavailing to shake Crispi's position, and in the general
election of May 1895 his government obtained a majority of nearly 200
votes. Nevertheless public confidence in the efficacy of the
parliamentary system and in the honesty of politicians was seriously
diminished by these unsavoury occurrences, which, in combination with
the acquittal of all the defendants in the Banca Romana trial, and the
abandonment of the proceedings against Giolitti, reinforced to an
alarming degree the propaganda of the revolutionary parties.

Complications in Eritrea.

The foreign policy of the second Crispi Administration, in which the
portfolio of foreign affairs was held by Baron Blanc, was, as before,
marked by a cordial interpretation of the triple alliance, and by close
accord with Great Britain. In the Armenian question Italy seconded with
energy the diplomacy of Austria and Germany, while the Italian fleet
joined the British Mediterranean squadron in a demonstration off the
Syrian coast. Graver than any foreign question were the complications in
Eritrea. Under the arrangement concluded in 1891 by Rudini with native
chiefs in regard to the Italo-Abyssinian frontier districts, relations
with Abyssinia had remained comparatively satisfactory. Towards the
Sudan, however, the Mahdists, who had recovered from a defeat inflicted
by an Italian force at Agordat in 1890, resumed operations in December
1893. Colonel Arimondi, commander of the colonial forces in the absence
of the military governor, General Baratieri, attacked and routed a
dervish force 10,000 strong on the 21st of December. The Italian troops,
mostly native levies, numbered only 2200 men. The dervish loss was more
than 1000 killed, while the total Italian casualties amounted to less
than 230. General Baratieri, upon returning to the colony, decided to
execute a _coup de main_ against the dervish base at Kassala, both in
order to relieve pressure from that quarter and to preclude a combined
Abyssinian and dervish attack upon the colony at the end of 1894. The
protocol concluded with Great Britain on the 15th of April 1891, already
referred to, contained a clause to the effect that, were Kassala
occupied by the Italians, the place should be transferred to the
Egyptian government as soon as the latter should be in a position to
restore order in the Sudan. Concentrating a little army of 2600 men,
Baratieri surprised and captured Kassala on the 17th of July 1894, and
garrisoned the place with native levies under Italian officers.
Meanwhile Menelek, jealous of the extension of Italian influence to a
part of northern Somaliland and to the Benadir coast, had, with the
support of France and Russia, completed his preparations for asserting
his authority as independent ruler of Ethiopia. On the 11th of May 1893
he denounced the treaty of Uccialli, but the Giolitti cabinet, absorbed
by the bank scandals, paid no heed to his action. Possibly an adroit
repetition in favour of Mangashà and against Menelek of the policy
formerly followed in favour of Menelek against the negus John might have
consolidated Italian influence in Abyssinia by preventing the ascendancy
of any single chieftain. The Italian government, however, neglected this
opening, and Mangashà came to terms with Menelek. Consequently the
efforts of Crispi and his envoy, Colonel Piano, to conclude a new treaty
with Menelek in June 1894 not only proved unsuccessful, but formed a
prelude to troubles on the Italo-Abyssinian frontier. Bath-Agos, the
native chieftain who ruled the Okulé-Kusai and the cis-Mareb provinces
on behalf of Italy, intrigued with Mangashà, ras of the trans-Mareb
province of Tigre, and with Menelek, to raise a revolt against Italian
rule on the high plateau. In December 1894 the revolt broke out, but
Major Toselli with a small force marched rapidly against Bath Agos, whom
he routed and killed at Halai. General Baratieri, having reason to
suspect the complicity of Mangashà in the revolt, called upon him to
furnish troops for a projected Italo-Abyssinian campaign against the
Mahdists. Mangashà made no reply, and Baratieri crossing the Mareb
advanced to Adowa, but four days later was obliged to return northwards.
Mangashà thereupon took the offensive and attempted to occupy the
village of Coatit in Okulé-Kusai, but was forestalled and defeated by
Baratieri on the 13th of January 1895. Hurriedly retreating to Senafé,
hard pressed by the Italians, who shelled Senafé on the evening of the
15th of January, Mangashà was obliged to abandon his camp and provisions
to Baratieri, who also secured a quantity of correspondence establishing
the complicity of Menelek and Mangashà in the revolt of Bath-Agos.

Conquest of Tigre.

Battle of Adowa.

The comparatively facile success achieved by Baratieri against Mangashà
seems to have led him to undervalue his enemy, and to forget that
Menelek, negus and king of Shoa, had an interest in allowing Mangashà to
be crushed, in order that the imperial authority and the superiority of
Shoan over Tigrin arms might be the more strikingly asserted. After
obtaining the establishment of an apostolic prefecture in Eritrea under
the charge of Italian Franciscans, Baratieri expelled from the colony
the French Lazarist missionaries for their alleged complicity in the
Bath-Agos insurrection, and in March 1895 undertook the conquest of
Tigre. Occupying Adigrat and Makallè, he reached Adowa on the 1st of
April, and thence pushed forward to Axum, the holy city of Abyssinia.
These places were garrisoned, and during the rainy season Baratieri
returned to Italy, where he was received with unbounded enthusiasm.
Whether he or the Crispi cabinet had any inkling of the enterprise to
which they were committed by the occupation of Tigre is more than
doubtful. Certainly Baratieri made no adequate preparations to repel an
Abyssinian attempt to reconquer the province. Early in September both
Mangashà and Menelek showed signs of activity, and on the 20th of
September Makonnen, ras of Harrar, who up till then had been regarded as
a friend and quasi-ally by Italy, expelled all Italians from his
territory and marched with 30,000 men to join the negus. On returning to
Eritrea, Baratieri mobilized his native reserves and pushed forward
columns under Major Toselli and General Arimondi as far south as Amba
Alagi. Mangashà fell back before the Italians, who obtained several
minor successes; but on the 6th of December Toselli's column, 2000
strong, which through a misunderstanding continued to hold Amba Alagi,
was almost annihilated by the Abyssinian vanguard of 40,000 men. Toselli
and all but three officers and 300 men fell at their posts after a
desperate resistance. Arimondi, collecting the survivors of the Toselli
column, retreated to Makallè and Adigrat. At Makallè, however, he left a
small garrison in the fort, which on the 7th of January 1896 was
invested by the Abyssinian army. Repeated attempts to capture the fort
having failed, Menelek and Makonnen opened negotiations with Baratieri
for its capitulation, and on the 21st of January the garrison, under
Major Galliano, who had heroically defended the position, were permitted
to march out with the honours of war. Meanwhile Baratieri received
reinforcements from Italy, but remained undecided as to the best plan of
campaign. Thus a month was lost, during which the Abyssinian army
advanced to Hausen, a position slightly south of Adowa. The Italian
commander attempted to treat with Menelek, but his negotiations merely
enabled the Italian envoy, Major Salsa, to ascertain that the
Abyssinians were nearly 100,000 strong mostly armed with rifles and well
supplied with artillery. The Italians, including camp-followers,
numbered less than 25,000 men, a force too small for effective action,
but too large to be easily provisioned at 200 m. from its base, in a
roadless, mountainous country, almost devoid of water. For a moment
Baratieri thought of retreat, especially as the hope of creating a
diversion from Zaila towards Harrar had failed in consequence of the
British refusal to permit the landing of an Italian force without the
consent of France. The defection of a number of native allies (who,
however, were attacked and defeated by Colonel Stevani on the 18th of
February) rendered the Italian position still more precarious; but
Baratieri, unable to make up his mind, continued to manoeuvre in the
hope of drawing an Abyssinian attack. These futile tactics exasperated
the home government, which on the 22nd of February despatched General
Baldissera, with strong reinforcements, to supersede Baratieri. On the
25th of February Crispi telegraphed to Baratieri, denouncing his
operations as "mllitary phthisis," and urging him to decide upon some
strategic plan. Baratieri, anxious probably to obtain some success
before the arrival of Baldissera, and alarmed by the rapid diminution of
his stores, which precluded further immobility, called a council of war
(29th of February) and obtained the approval of the divisional
commanders for a plan of attack. During the night the army advanced
towards Adowa in three divisions, under Generals Dabormida, Arimondi and
Albertone, each division being between 4000 and 5000 strong, and a
brigade 5300 strong under General Ellena remaining in reserve. All the
divisions, save that of Albertone, consisted chiefly of Italian troops.
During the march Albertone's native division mistook the road, and found
itself obliged to delay in the Arimondi column by retracing its steps.
Marching rapidly, however, Albertone outdistanced the other columns,
but, in consequence of allowing his men an hour's rest, arrived upon the
scene of action when the Abyssinians, whom it had been hoped to surprise
at dawn, were ready to receive the attack. Pressed by overwhelming
forces, the Italians, after a violent combat, began to give way. The
Dabormida division, unsupported by Albertone, found itself likewise
engaged in a separate combat against superior numbers. Similarly the
Arimondi brigade was attacked by 30,000 Shoans, and encumbered by the
débris of Albertone's troops. Baratieri vainly attempted to push forward
the reserve, but the Italians were already overwhelmed, and the
battle--or rather, series of distinct engagements--ended in a general
rout. The Italian loss is estimated to have been more than 6000, of whom
3125 were whites. Between 3000 and 4000 prisoners were taken by the
Abyssinians, including General Albertone, while Generals Arimondi and
Dabormida were killed and General Ellena wounded. The Abyssinians lost
more than 5000 killed and 8000 wounded. Baratieri, after a futile
attempt to direct the retreat, fled in haste and reached Adi-Cajè before
the débris of his army. Thence he despatched telegrams to Italy throwing
blame for the defeat upon his troops, a proceeding which subsequent
evidence proved to be as unjustifiable as it was unsoldier-like. Placed
under court-martial for his conduct, Baratieri was acquitted of the
charge for having been led to give battle by other than military
considerations, but the sentence "deplored that in such difficult
circumstances the command should have been given to a general so
inferior to the exigencies of the situation."

Abyssinian settlement.

In Italy the news of the defeat of Adowa caused deep discouragement and
dismay. On the 5th of March the Crispi cabinet resigned before an
outburst of indignation which the Opposition had assiduously fomented,
and five days later a new cabinet was formed by General Ricotti-Magnani,
who, however, made over the premiership to the marquis di Rudini. The
latter, though leader of the Right, had long been intriguing with
Cavallotti, leader of the Extreme Left, to overthrow Crispi, but without
the disaster of Adowa his plan would scarcely have succeeded. The first
act of the new cabinet was to confirm instructions given by its
predecessor to General Baldissera (who had succeeded General Baratieri
on the 2nd of March) to treat for peace with Menelek if he thought
desirable. Baldissera opened negotiations with the negus through Major
Salsa, and simultaneously reorganized the Italian army. The negotiations
having failed, he marched to relieve the beleaguered garrison of
Adigrat; but Menelek, discouraged by the heavy losses at Adowa, broke up
his camp and returned southwards to Shoa. At the same time Baldissera
detached Colonel Stevani with four native battalions to relieve Kassala,
then hard pressed by the Mahdists. Kassala was relieved on the 1st of
April, and Stevani a few days later severely defeated the dervishes at
Jebel Mokram and Tucruff. Returning from Kassala Colonel Stevani
rejoined Baldissera, who on the 4th of May relieved Adigrat after a
well-executed march. By adroit negotiations with Mangashà the Italian
general obtained the release of the Italian prisoners in Tigré, and
towards the end of May withdrew his whole force north of the Mareb.
Major Nerazzini was then despatched as special envoy to the negus to
arrange terms of peace. On the 26th of October Nerazzini succeeded in
concluding, at Adis Ababa, a provisional treaty annulling the treaty of
Uccialli; recognizing the absolute independence of Ethiopia; postponing
for one year the definitive delimitation of the Italo-Abyssinian
boundary, but allowing the Italians meanwhile to hold the strong
Mareb-Belesa-Muna line; and arranging for the release of the Italian
prisoners after ratification of the treaty in exchange for an indemnity
of which the amount was to be fixed by the Italian government. The
treaty having been duly ratified, and an indemnity of £400,000 paid to
Menelek, the Shoan prisoners were released, and Major Nerazzini once
more returned to Abyssinia with instructions to secure, if possible,
Menelek's assent to the definitive retention of the Mareb-Belesa-Muna
line by Italy. Before Nerazzini could reach Adis Ababa, Rudini, in order
partially to satisfy the demands of his Radical supporters for the
abandonment of the colony, announced in the Chamber the intention of
Italy to limit her occupation to the triangular zone between the points
Asmarà, Keren and Massawa, and, possibly, to withdraw to Massawa alone.
This declaration, of which Menelek was swiftly apprised by French
agents, rendered it impossible to Nerazzini to obtain more than a
boundary leaving to Italy but a small portion of the high plateau and
ceding to Abyssinia the fertile provinces of Seraè and Okulé-Kusai. The
fall of the Rudini cabinet in June 1898, however, enabled Signor
Ferdinando Martini and Captain Cicco di Cola, who had been appointed
respectively civil governor of Eritrea and minister resident at Adis
Ababa, to prevent the cession of Seraè and Okulé-Kusai, and to secure
the assent of Menelek to Italian retention of the Mareb-Belesa-Muna
frontier. Eritrea has now approximately the same extent as before the
revolt of Bath-Agos, except in regard (1) to Kassala, which was
transferred to the Anglo-Egyptian authorities on the 25th of December
1897, in pursuance of the above-mentioned Anglo-Italian convention; and
(2) to slight rectifications of its northern and eastern boundaries by
conventions concluded between the Eritrean and the Anglo-Egyptian
authorities. Under Signor Ferdinando Martini's able administration
(1898-1906) the cost of the colony to Italy was reduced and its trade
and agriculture have vastly improved.

While marked in regard to Eritrea by vacillation and undignified
readiness to yield to Radical clamour, the policy of the marquis di
Rudini was in other respects chiefly characterized by a desire to
demolish Crispi and his supporters. Actuated by rancour against Crispi,
he, on the 29th of April 1896, authorized the publication of a Green
Book on Abyssinian affairs, in which, without the consent of Great
Britain, the confidential Anglo-Italian negotiations in regard to the
Abyssinian war were disclosed. This publication, which amounted to a
gross breach of diplomatic confidence, might have endangered the
cordiality of Anglo-Italian relations, had not the esteem of the British
government for General Ferrero, Italian ambassador in London, induced it
to overlook the incident. Fortunately for Italy, the marquis Visconti
Venosta shortly afterwards consented to assume the portfolio of foreign
affairs, which had been resigned by Duke Caetani di Sermoneta, and again
to place, after an interval of twenty years, his unrivalled experience
at the service of his country. In September 1896 he succeeded in
concluding with France a treaty with regard to Tunisia in place of the
old Italo-Tunisian treaty, denounced by the French Government a year
previously. During the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 Visconti Venosta
laboured to maintain the European concert, joined Great Britain in
preserving Greece from the worst consequences of her folly, and lent
moral and material aid in establishing an autonomous government in
Crete. At the same time he mitigated the Francophil tendencies of some
of his colleagues, accompanied King Humbert and Queen Margherita on
their visit to Homburg in September 1897, and, by loyal observance of
the spirit of the triple alliance, retained for Italy the confidence of
her allies without forfeiting the goodwill of France.

Riots of May, 1898.

The home administration of the Rudini cabinet compared unfavourably with
that of foreign affairs. Bound by a secret understanding with the
Radical leader Cavallotti, an able but unscrupulous demagogue, Rudini
was compelled to bow to Radical exigencies. He threw all the influence
of the government against Crispi, who was charged with complicity in
embezzlements perpetrated by Favilla, managing director of the Bologna
branch of the Bank of Naples. After being subjected to persecution for
nearly two years, Crispi's character was substantially vindicated by the
report of a parliamentary commission appointed to inquire into his
relations with Favilla. True, the commission proposed and the Chamber
adopted a vote of censure upon Crispi's conduct in 1894, when, as
premier and minister of the interior, he had borrowed £12,000 from
Favilla to replenish | the secret service fund, and had subsequently
repaid the money as instalments for secret service were in due course
furnished by the treasury. Though irregular, his action was to some
extent justified by the depletion of the secret service fund under
Giolitti and by the abnormal circumstances prevailing in 1893-1894, when
he had been obliged to quell the insurrections in Sicily and
Massa-Carrara. But the Rudini-Cavallotti alliance was destined to
produce other results than those of the campaign against Crispi. Pressed
by Cavallotti, Rudini in March 1897 dissolved the Chamber and conducted
the general election in such a way as to crush by government pressure
the partisans of Crispi, and greatly to strengthen the (Socialist,
Republican and Radical) revolutionary parties. More than ever at the
mercy of the Radicals and of their revolutionary allies, Rudini
continued so to administer public affairs that subversive propaganda and
associations obtained unprecedented extension. The effect was seen in
May 1898, when, in consequence of a rise in the price of bread,
disturbances occurred in southern Italy. The corn duty was reduced to
meet the emergency, but the disturbed area extended to Naples, Foggia,
Bari, Minervino-Murge, Molfetta and thence along the line of railway
which skirts the Adriatic coast. At Faenza, Piacenza, Cremona, Pavia and
Milan, where subversive associations were stronger, it assumed the
complexion of a political revolt. From the 7th to the 9th of May Milan
remained practically in the hands of the mob. A palace was sacked,
barricades were erected and for forty-eight hours the troops under
General Bava-Beccaris, notwithstanding the employment of artillery, were
unable to restore order. In view of these occurrences, Rudini authorized
the proclamation of a state of siege at Milan, Florence, Leghorn and
Naples, delegating the suppression of disorder to special military
commissioners. By these means order was restored, though not without
considerable loss of life at Milan and elsewhere. At Milan alone the
official returns confessed to eighty killed and several hundred wounded,
a total generally considered below the real figures. As in 1894,
excessively severe sentences were passed by the military tribunals upon
revolutionary leaders and other persons considered to have been
implicated in the outbreak, but successive royal amnesties obliterated
these condemnations within three years.

Pelloux and obstruction.

Death of King Humbert.

Accession of King Victor Emmanuel III.

No Italian administration since the death of Depretis underwent so many
metamorphoses as that of the marquis di Rudini. Modified a first time
within five months of its formation (July 1896) in connexion with
General Ricotti's Army Reform Bill, and again in December 1897, when
Zanardelli entered the cabinet, it was reconstructed for a third time at
the end of May 1898 upon the question of a Public Safety Bill, but fell
for the fourth and last time on the 18th of June 1898, on account of
public indignation at the results of Rudini's home policy as exemplified
in the May riots. On the 29th of June Rudini was succeeded in the
premiership by General Luigi Pelloux, a Savoyard, whose only title to
office was the confidence of the king. The Pelloux cabinet possessed no
clear programme except in regard to the Public Safety Bill, which it had
taken over from its predecessor. Presented to parliament in November
1898, the bill was read a second time in the following spring, but its
third reading was violently obstructed by the Socialists, Radicals and
Republicans of the Extreme Left. After a series of scenes and scuffles
the bill was promulgated by royal decree, the decree being postdated to
allow time for the third reading. Again obstruction precluded debate,
and on the 22nd of July 1899 the decree automatically acquired force of
law, pending the adoption of a bill of indemnity by the Chamber. In
February 1900 it was, however, quashed by the supreme court on a point
of procedure, and the Public Safety Bill as a whole had again to be
presented to the Chamber. In view of the violence of Extremist
obstruction, an effort was made to reform the standing orders of the
Lower House, but parliamentary feeling ran so high that General Pelloux
thought it expedient to appeal to the country. The general election of
June 1900 not only failed to reinforce the cabinet, but largely
increased the strength of the extreme parties (Radicals, Republicans and
Socialists), who in the new Chamber numbered nearly 100 out of a total
of 508. General Pelloux therefore resigned, and on the 24th of June a
moderate Liberal cabinet was formed by the aged Signor Saracco,
president of the senate. Within five weeks of its formation King Humbert
was shot by an anarchist assassin named Bresci while leaving an athletic
festival at Monza, where his Majesty had distributed the prizes (29th
July 1900). The death of the unfortunate monarch, against whom an
attempt had previously been made by the anarchist Acciarito (22nd April
1897), caused an outburst of profound sorrow and indignation. Though not
a great monarch, King Humbert had, by his unfailing generosity and
personal courage, won the esteem and affection of his people. During the
cholera epidemic at Naples and Busca in 1884, and the Ischia earthquake
of 1885, he, regardless of danger, brought relief and encouragement to
sufferers, and rescued many lives. More than £100,000 of his civil list
was annually devoted to charitable purposes. Humbert was succeeded by
his only son, Victor Emmanuel III. (b. November 11, 1869), a
liberal-minded and well-educated prince, who at the time of his father's
assassination was returning from a cruise in the eastern Mediterranean.
The remains of King Humbert were laid to rest in the Pantheon at Rome
beside those of his father, Victor Emmanuel II. (9th August). Two days
later Victor Emmanuel III. swore fidelity to the constitution before the
assembled Houses of Parliament and in the presence of his consort, Elena
of Montenegro, whom he had married in October 1896.

Foreign affairs.

The later course of Italian foreign policy was marked by many
vicissitudes. Admiral Canevaro, who had gained distinction as commander
of the international forces in Crete (1896-1898), assumed the direction
of foreign affairs in the first period of the Pelloux administration.
His diplomacy, though energetic, lacked steadiness. Soon after taking
office he completed the negotiations begun by the Rudini administration
for a new commercial treaty with France (October 1898), whereby
Franco-Italian commercial relations were placed upon a normal footing
after a breach which had lasted for more than ten years. By the despatch
of a squadron to South America he obtained satisfaction for injuries
inflicted thirteen years previously upon an Italian subject by the
United States of Colombia. In December 1898 he convoked a diplomatic
conference in Rome to discuss secret means for the repression of
anarchist propaganda and crime in view of the assassination of the
empress of Austria by an Italian anarchist (Luccheni), but it is
doubtful whether results of practical value were achieved. The action of
the tsar of Russia in convening the Peace Conference at The Hague in May
1900 gave rise to a question as to the right of the Vatican to be
officially represented, and Admiral Canevaro, supported by Great Britain
and Germany, succeeded in preventing the invitation of a papal delegate.
Shortly afterwards his term of office was brought to a close by the
failure of an attempt to secure for Italy a coaling station at Sanmen
and a sphere of influence in China; but his policy of active
participation in Chinese affairs was continued in a modified form by his
successor, the Marquis Visconti Venosta, who, entering the reconstructed
Pelloux cabinet in May 1899, retained the portfolio of foreign affairs
in the ensuing Saracco administration, and secured the despatch of an
Italian expedition, 2000 strong, to aid in repressing the Chinese
outbreak and in protecting Italian interests in the Far East (July
1900). With characteristic foresight, Visconti Venosta promoted an
exchange of views between Italy and France in regard to the Tripolitan
hinterland, which the Anglo-French convention of 1899 had placed within
the French sphere of influence--a modification of the _status quo ante_
considered highly detrimental to Italian aspirations in Tripoli. For
this reason the Anglo-French convention had caused profound irritation
in Italy, and had tended somewhat to diminish the cordiality of
Anglo-Italian relations. Visconti Venosta is believed, however, to have
obtained from France a formal declaration that France would not
transgress the limits assigned to her influence by the convention.
Similarly, in regard to Albania, Visconti Venosta exchanged notes with
Austria with a view to the prevention of any misunderstanding through
the conflict between Italian and Austrian interests in that part of the
Adriatic coast. Upon the fall of the Saracco cabinet (9th February 1901)
Visconti Venosta was succeeded at the foreign office by Signor Prinetti,
a Lombard manufacturer of strong temperament, but without previous
diplomatic experience. The new minister continued in most respects the
policy of his predecessor. The outset of his administration was marked
by Franco-Italian fêtes at Toulon (10th to 14th April 1901), when the
Italian fleet returned a visit paid by the French Mediterranean squadron
to Cagliari in April 1899; and by the despatch of three Italian warships
to Prevesa to obtain satisfaction for damage done to Italian subjects by
Turkish officials.

Zanardelli-Giolitti Cabinet.

The Saracco administration, formed after the obstructionist crisis of
1899-1900 as a cabinet of transition and pacification, was overthrown in
February 1901 in consequence of its vacillating conduct towards a dock
strike at Genoa. It was succeeded by a Zanardelli cabinet, in which the
portfolio of the interior was allotted to Giolitti. Composed mainly of
elements drawn from the Left, and dependent for a majority upon the
support of the subversive groups of the Extreme Left, the formation of
this cabinet gave the signal for a vast working-class movement, during
which the Socialist party sought to extend its political influence by
means of strikes and the organization of labour leagues among
agricultural labourers and artisans. The movement was confined chiefly
to the northern and central provinces. During the first six months of
1901 the strikes numbered 600, and involved more than 1,000,000 workmen.
(H. W. S.)

G. 1902-1909

Labour troubles.

In 1901-1902 the social economic condition of Italy was a matter of
grave concern. The strikes and other economic agitations at this time
may be divided roughly into three groups: strikes in industrial centres
for higher wages, shorter hours and better labour conditions generally;
strikes of agricultural labourers in northern Italy for better contracts
with the landlords; disturbances among the south Italian peasantry due
to low wages, unemployment (particularly in Apulia), and the claims of
the labourers to public land occupied illegally by the landlords,
combined with local feuds and the struggle for power of the various
influential families. The prime cause in most cases was the
unsatisfactory economic condition of the working classes, which they
realized all the more vividly for the very improvements that had been
made in it, while education and better communications enabled them to
organize themselves. Unfortunately these genuine grievances were taken
advantage of by the Socialists for their own purposes, and strikes and
disorders were sometimes promoted without cause and conciliation impeded
by outsiders who acted from motives of personal ambition or profit.
Moreover, while many strikes were quite orderly, the turbulent character
of a part of the Italian people and their hatred of authority often
converted peaceful demands for better conditions into dangerous riots,
in which the dregs of the urban population (known as _teppisti_ or the
_mala vita_) joined.

Whereas in the past the strikes had been purely local and due to local
conditions, they now appeared of more general and political character,
and the "sympathy" strike came to be a frequent and undesirable addition
to the ordinary economic agitation. The most serious movement at this
time was that of the railway servants. The agitation had begun some
fifteen years before, and the men had at various times demanded better
pay and shorter hours, often with success. The next demand was for
greater fixity of tenure and more regular promotion, as well as for the
recognition by the companies of the railwaymen's union. On the 4th of
January 1902, the employees of the Mediterranean railway advanced these
demands at a meeting at Turin, and threatened to strike if they were not
satisfied. By the beginning of February the agitation had spread all
over Italy, and the government was faced by the possibility of a strike
which would paralyse the whole economic life of the country. Then the
Turin gas men struck, and a general "sympathy" strike broke out in that
city in consequence, which resulted in scenes of violence lasting two
days. The government called out all the railwaymen who were army
reservists, but continued to keep them at their railway work, exercising
military discipline over them and thus ensuring the continuance of the
service. At the same time it mediated between the companies and the
employees, and in June a settlement was formally concluded between the
ministers of public works and of the treasury and the directors of the
companies concerning the grievances of the employees.

One consequence of the agrarian agitations was the increased use of
machinery and the reduction in the number of hands employed, which if it
proved advantageous to the landlord and to the few labourers retained,
who received higher wages, resulted in an increase of unemployment. The
Socialist party, which had grown powerful under a series of weak-kneed
administrations, now began to show signs of division; on the one hand
there was the revolutionary wing, led by Signor Enrico Ferri, the
Mantuan deputy, which advocated a policy of uncompromising class
warfare, and on the other the _riformisti_, or moderate Socialists, led
by Signor Filippo Turati, deputy for Milan, who adopted a more
conciliatory attitude and were ready to ally themselves with other
parliamentary parties. Later the division took another aspect, the
extreme wing being constituted by the _sindacalisti_, who were opposed
to all legislative parliamentary action and favoured only direct
revolutionary propaganda by means of the _sindacati_ or unions which
organized strikes and demonstrations. In March 1902 agrarian strikes
organized by the _leghe_ broke out in the district of Copparo and
Polesine (lower valley of the Po), owing to a dispute about the labour
contracts, and in Apulia on account of unemployment. In August there
were strikes among the dock labourers of Genoa and the iron workers of
Florence; the latter agitation developed into a general strike in that
city, which aroused widespread indignation among the orderly part of the
population and ended without any definite result. At Como 15,000 textile
workers remained on strike for nearly a month, but there were no
disorders.

General strike of 1904.

The year 1903, although not free from strikes and minor disturbances,
was quieter, but in September 1904 a very serious situation was brought
about by a general economic and political agitation. The troubles began
with the disturbances at Buggeru in Sardinia and Castelluzzo in Sicily,
in both of which places the troops were compelled to use their arms and
several persons were killed and wounded; at a demonstration at Sestri
Ponente in Liguria to protest against what was called the Buggeru
"massacre," four carabineers and eleven rioters were injured. The Monza
labour exchange then took the initiative of proclaiming a general strike
throughout Italy (September 15th) as a protest against the government
for daring to maintain order. The strike spread to nearly all the
industrial centres, although in many places it was limited to a few
trades. At Milan it was more serious and lasted longer than elsewhere,
as the movement was controlled by the anarchists under Arturo Labriola;
the hooligans committed many acts of savage violence, especially against
those workmen who refused to strike, and much property was wilfully
destroyed. At Genoa, which was in the hands of the _teppisti_ for a
couple of days, three persons were killed and 50 wounded, including 14
policemen, and railway communications were interrupted for a short time.
Venice was cut off from the mainland for two days and all the public
services were suspended. Riots broke out also in Naples, Florence, Rome
and Bologna. The deputies of the Extreme Left, instead of using their
influence in favour of pacification, could think of nothing better than
to demand an immediate convocation of parliament in order that they
might present a bill forbidding the troops and police to use their arms
in all conflicts between capital and labour, whatever the provocation
might be. This preposterous proposal was of course not even discussed,
and the movement caused a strong feeling of reaction against Socialism
and of hostility to the government for its weakness; for, however much
sympathy there might be with the genuine grievances of the working
classes, the September strikes were of a frankly revolutionary character
and had been fomented by professional agitators and kept going by the
dregs of the people. The mayor of Venice sent a firm and dignified
protest to the government for its inaction, and the people of Liguria
raised a large subscription in favour of the troops, in recognition of
their gallantry and admirable discipline during the troubles.

Unrest of 1905.

Early in 1905 there was a fresh agitation among the railway servants,
who were dissatisfied with the clauses concerning the personnel in the
bill for the purchase of the lines by the state. They initiated a system
of obstruction which hampered and delayed the traffic without altogether
suspending it. On the 17th of April a general railway strike was ordered
by the union, but owing to the action of the authorities, who for once
showed energy, the traffic was carried on. Other disturbances of a
serious character occurred among the steelworkers of Terni, at
Grammichele in Sicily and at Alessandria. The extreme parties now began
to direct especial attention to propaganda in the army, with a view to
destroying its cohesion and thus paralysing the action of the
government. The campaign was conducted on the lines of the
anti-militarist movement in France identified with the name of Hervé.
Fortunately, however, this policy was not successful, as military
service is less unpopular in Italy than in many other countries;
aggressive militarism is quite unknown, and without it anti-militarism
can gain no foothold. No serious mutinies have ever occurred in the
Italian army, and the only results of the propaganda were occasional
meetings of hooligans, where Hervéist sentiments were expressed and
applauded, and a few minor disturbances among reservists unexpectedly
called back to the colours. In the army itself the _esprit de corps_ and
the sense of duty and discipline nullified the work of the
propagandists.

Strikes in 1907.

In June and July 1907 there were again disturbances among the
agricultural labourers of Ferrara and Rovigo, and a widespread strike
organized by the _leghe_ throughout those provinces caused very serious
losses to all concerned. The _leghisti_, moreover, were guilty of much
criminal violence; they committed one murder and established a veritable
reign of terror, boycotting, beating and wounding numbers of peaceful
labourers who would not join the unions, and brutally maltreating
solitary policemen and soldiers. The authorities, however, by arresting
a number of the more prominent leaders succeeded in restoring order.
Almost immediately afterwards an agitation of a still less defensible
character broke out in various towns under the guise of
anti-clericalism. Certain scandals had come to light in a small convent
school at Greco near Milan. This was seized upon as a pretext for
violent anti-clerical demonstrations all over Italy and for brutal and
unprovoked attacks on unoffending priests; at Spezia a church was set on
fire and another dismantled, at Marino Cardinal Merry del Val was
attacked by a gang of hooligans, and at Rome the violence of the
_teppisti_ reached such a pitch as to provoke reaction on the part of
all respectable people, and some of the aggressors were very roughly
handled. The Socialists and the Freemasons were largely responsible for
the agitation, and they filled the country with stories of other
priestly and conventual immoralities, nearly all of which, except the
original case at Greco, proved to be without foundation. In September
1907 disorders in Apulia over the repartition of communal lands broke
out anew, and were particularly serious at Ruvo, Bari, Cerignola and
Satriano del Colle. In some cases there was foundation for the
labourers' claims, but unfortunately the movement got into the hands of
professional agitators and common swindlers, and the leader, a certain
Giampetruzzi, who at one time seemed to be a worthy colleague of
Marcelin Albert, was afterwards tried and condemned for having cheated
his own followers.

In October 1907 there was again a general strike at Milan, which was
rendered more serious on account of the action of the railway servants,
and extended to other cities; traffic was disorganized over a large part
of northern Italy, until the government, being now owner of the
railways, dismissed the ringleaders from the service. This had the
desired effect, and although the _Sindacato dei ferrovieri_ (railway
servants' union) threatened a general railway strike if the dismissed
men were not reinstated, there was no further trouble. In the spring of
1908 there were agrarian strikes at Parma; the labour contracts had
pressed hardly on the peasantry, who had cause for complaint; but while
some improvement had been effected in the new contracts, certain
unscrupulous demagogues, of whom Alceste De Ambris, representing the
"syndacalist" wing of the Socialist party, was the chief, organized a
widespread agitation. The landlords on their part organized an agrarian
union to defend their interests and enrolled numbers of non-union
labourers to carry on the necessary work and save the crops. Conflicts
occurred between the strikers and the independent labourers and the
police; the trouble spread to the city of Parma, where violent scenes
occurred when the labour exchange was occupied by the troops, and many
soldiers and policemen, whose behaviour as usual was exemplary
throughout, were seriously wounded. The agitation ceased in June with
the defeat of the strikers, but not until a vast amount of damage had
been done to the crops and all had suffered heavy losses, including the
government, whose expenses for the maintenance of public order ran into
tens of millions of lire. The failure of the strike caused the
Socialists to quarrel among themselves and to accuse each other of
dishonesty in the management of party funds; it appeared in fact that
the large sums collected throughout Italy on behalf of the strikers had
been squandered or appropriated by the "syndacalist" leaders. The spirit
of indiscipline had begun to reach the lower classes of state employees,
especially the school teachers and the postal and telegraph clerks, and
at one time it seemed as though the country were about to face a
situation similar to that which arose in France in the spring of 1909.
Fortunately, however, the government, by dismissing the ringleader, Dr
Campanozzi, in time nipped the agitation in the bud, and it did attempt
to redress some of the genuine grievances. Public opinion upheld the
government in its attitude, for all persons of common sense realized
that the suspension of the public services could not be permitted for a
moment in a civilized country.

Internal politics, 1902.

In parliamentary politics the most notable event in 1902 was the
presentation of a divorce bill by Signor Zanardelli's government; this
was done not because there was any real demand for it, but to please the
doctrinaire anti-clericals and freemasons, divorce being regarded not as
a social institution but as a weapon against Catholicism. But while the
majority of the deputies were nominally in favour of the bill, the
parliamentary committee reported against it, and public opinion was so
hostile that an anti-divorce petition received 3,500,000 signatures,
including not only those of professing Catholics, but of free-thinkers
and Jews, who regarded divorce as unsuitable to Italian conditions. The
opposition outside parliament was in fact so overwhelming that the
ministry decided to drop the bill. The financial situation continued
satisfactory; a new loan at 3½% was voted by the Chamber in April 1902,
and by June the whole of it had been placed in Italy. In October the
rate of exchange was at par, the premium on gold had disappeared, and by
the end of the year the budget showed a surplus of sixteen millions.

1903-1905.

In January 1903 Signor Prinetti, the minister for foreign affairs,
resigned on account of ill-health, and was succeeded by Admiral Morin,
while Admiral Bettolo took the latter's place as minister of marine. The
unpopularity of the ministry forced Signor Giolitti, the minister of the
interior, to resign (June 1903), and he was followed by Admiral Bettolo,
whose administration had been violently attacked by the Socialists; in
October Signor Zanardelli, the premier, resigned on account of his
health, and the king entrusted the formation of the cabinet to Signor
Giolitti. The latter accepted the task, and the new administration
included Signor Tittoni, late prefect of Naples, as foreign minister,
Signor Luigi Luzzatti, the eminent financier, at the treasury, General
Pedotti at the war office, and Admiral Mirabello as minister of marine.
Almost immediately after his appointment Signor Tittoni accompanied the
king and queen of Italy on a state visit to France and then to England,
where various international questions were discussed, and the cordial
reception which the royal pair met with in London and at Windsor served
to dispel the small cloud which had arisen in the relations of the two
countries on account of the Tripoli agreements and the language question
in Malta. The premier's programme was not well received by the Chamber,
although the treasury minister's financial statement was again
satisfactory. The weakness of the government in dealing with the strike
riots caused a feeling of profound dissatisfaction, and the so-called
"experiment of liberty," conducted with the object of conciliating the
extreme parties, proved a dismal failure. In October 1904, after the
September strikes, the Chamber was dissolved, and at the general
elections in November a ministerial majority was returned, while the
deputies of the Extreme Left (Socialists, Republicans and Radicals) were
reduced from 107 to 94, and a few mild clericals elected. The municipal
elections in several of the larger cities, which had hitherto been
regarded as strongholds of socialism, marked an overwhelming triumph for
the constitutional parties, notably in Milan, Turin and Genoa, for the
strikes had wrought as much harm to the working classes as to the
bourgeoisie. In spite of its majority the Giolitti cabinet, realizing
that it had lost its hold over the country, resigned in March 1905.

1905-1906.

Signor Fortis then became premier and minister of the interior, Signor
Maiorano finance minister and Signor Carcano treasury minister, while
Signor Tittoni, Admiral Mirabello and General Pedotti retained the
portfolios they had held in the previous administration. The new
government was colourless in the extreme, and the premier's programme
aroused no enthusiasm in the House, the most important bill presented
being that for the purchase of the railways, which was voted in June
1905. But the ministry never had any real hold over the country or
parliament, and the dissatisfaction caused by the _modus vivendi_ with
Spain, which would have wrought much injury to the Italian wine-growers,
led to demonstrations and riots, and a hostile vote in the Chamber
produced a cabinet crisis (December 17, 1905); Signor Fortis, however,
reconstructed the ministry, inducing the marquis di San Giuliano to
accept the portfolio of foreign affairs. This last fact was significant,
as the new foreign secretary, a Sicilian deputy and a specialist on
international politics, had hitherto been one of Signor Sonnino's
staunchest adherents; his defection, which was but one of many, showed
that the more prominent members of the Sonnino party were tired of
waiting in vain for their chief's access to power. Even this cabinet was
still-born, and a hostile vote in the Chamber on the 30th of January
1906 brought about its fall.

1906-1909.

Now at last, after waiting so long, Signor Sonnino's hour had struck,
and he became premier for the first time. This result was most
satisfactory to all the best elements in the country, and great hopes
were entertained that the advent of a rigid and honest statesman would
usher in a new era of Italian parliamentary life. Unfortunately at the
very outset of its career the composition of the new cabinet proved
disappointing; for while such men as Count Guicciardini, the minister
for foreign affairs, and Signor Luzzatti at the treasury commanded
general approval, the choice of Signor Sacchi as minister of justice and
of Signor Pantano as minister of agriculture and trade, both of them
advanced and militant Radicals, savoured of an unholy compact between
the premier and his erstwhile bitter enemies, which boded ill for the
success of the administration. For this unfortunate combination Signor
Sonnino himself was not altogether to blame; having lost many of his
most faithful followers, who, weary of waiting for office, had gone over
to the enemy, he had been forced to seek support among men who had
professed hostility to the existing order of things and thus to secure
at least the neutrality of the Extreme Left and make the public realize
that the "reddest" of Socialists, Radicals and Republicans may be tamed
and rendered harmless by the offer of cabinet appointments. A similar
experiment had been tried in France not without success. Unfortunately
in the case of Signor Sonnino public opinion expected too much and did
not take to the idea of such a compromise. The new premier's first act
was one which cannot be sufficiently praised: he suppressed all
subsidies to journalists, and although this resulted in bitter attacks
against him in the columns of the "reptile press" it commanded the
approval of all right-thinking men. Signor Sonnino realized, however,
that his majority was not to be counted on: "The country is with me," he
said to a friend, "but the Chamber is against me." In April 1906 an
eruption of Mount Etna caused the destruction of several villages and
much loss of life and damage to property; in appointing a committee to
distribute the relief funds the premier refused to include any of the
deputies of the devastated districts among its members, and when asked
by them for the reason of this omission, he replied, with a frankness
more characteristic of the man than politic, that he knew they would
prove more solicitous in the distribution of relief for their own
electors than for the real sufferers. A motion presented by the
Socialists in the Chamber for the immediate discussion of a bill to
prevent "the massacres of the proletariate" having been rejected by an
enormous majority, the 28 Socialist deputies resigned their seats; on
presenting themselves for re-election their number was reduced to 25. A
few days later the ministry, having received an adverse vote on a
question of procedure, sent in its resignation (May 17).

The fall of Signor Sonnino, the disappointment caused by the
non-fulfilment of the expectations to which his advent to power had
given rise throughout Italy and the dearth of influential statesmen,
made the return to power of Signor Giolitti inevitable. An appeal to the
country might have brought about a different result, but it is said that
opposition from the highest quarters rendered this course practically
impossible. The change of government brought Signor Tittoni back to the
foreign office; Signor Maiorano became treasury minister, General Viganò
minister of war, Signor Cocco Ortu, whose chief claim to consideration
was the fact of his being a Sardinian (the island had rarely been
represented in the cabinet) minister of agriculture, Signor Gianturco of
justice, Signor Massimini of finance, Signor Schanzer of posts and
telegraphs and Signor Fusinato of education. The new ministry began
auspiciously with the conversion of the public debt from 4% to 3¾%, to
be eventually reduced to 3½%. This operation had been prepared by Signor
Luzzatti under Signor Sonnino's leadership, and although carried out by
Signor Maiorano it was Luzzatti who deservedly reaped the honour and
glory; the bill was presented, discussed and voted by both Houses on the
29th of June, and by the 7th of July the conversion was completed most
successfully, showing on how sound a basis Italian finance was now
placed. The surplus for the year amounted to 65,000,000 lire. In
November Signor Gianturco died, and Signor Pietro Bertolini took his
place as minister of public works; the latter proved perhaps the ablest
member of the cabinet, but the acceptance of office under Giolitti of a
man who had been one of the most trusted and valuable lieutenants of
Signor Sonnino marked a further step in the _dégringolade_ of that
statesman's party, and was attributed to the fact that Signor Bertolini
resented not having had a place in the late Sonnino ministry. General
Viganò was succeeded in December by Senator Casana, the first civilian
to become minister of war in Italy. He made various reforms which were
badly wanted in army administration, but on the whole the experiment of
a civilian "War Lord" was not a complete success, and in April 1909
Senator Casana retired and was succeeded by General Spingardi, an
appointment which received general approval.

The elections of March 1909 returned a chamber very slightly different
from its predecessor. The ministerial majority was over three hundred,
and although the Extreme Left was somewhat increased in numbers it was
weakened in tone, and many of the newly elected "reds" were hardly more
than pale pink.

Church and State.

Meanwhile, the relations between Church and State began to show signs of
change. The chief supporters of the claims of the papacy to temporal
power were the clericals of France and Austria, but in the former
country they had lost all influence, and the situation between the
Church and the government was becoming every day more strained. With the
rebellion of her "Eldest Daughter," the Roman Church could not continue
in her old attitude of uncompromising hostility towards United Italy,
and the Vatican began to realize the folly of placing every Italian in
the dilemma of being _either_ a good Italian _or_ a good Catholic, when
the majority wished to be both. Outside of Rome relations between the
clergy and the authorities were as a rule quite cordial, and in May 1903
Cardinal Sarto, the patriarch of Venice, asked for and obtained an
audience with the king when he visited that city, and the meeting which
followed was of a very friendly character. In July following Leo XIII.
died, and that same Cardinal Sarto became pope under the style of Pius
X. The new pontiff, although nominally upholding the claims of the
temporal power, in practice attached but little importance to it. At the
elections for the local bodies the Catholics had already been permitted
to vote, and, availing themselves of the privilege, they gained seats in
many municipal councils and obtained the majority in some. At the
general parliamentary elections of 1904 a few Catholics had been elected
as such, and the encyclical of the 11th of June 1905 on the political
organization of the Catholics, practically abolished the _non expedit_.
In September of that year a number of religious institutions in the Near
East, formerly under the protectorate of the French government, in view
of the rupture between Church and State in France, formally asked to be
placed under Italian protection, which was granted in January 1907. The
situation thus became the very reverse of what it had been in Crispi's
time, when the French government, even when anti-clerical, protected the
Catholic Church abroad for political purposes, whereas the conflict
between Church and State in Italy extended to foreign countries, to the
detriment of Italian political interests. A more difficult question was
that of religious education in the public elementary schools. Signor
Giolitti wished to conciliate the Vatican by facilitating religious
education, which was desired by the majority of the parents, but he did
not wish to offend the Freemasons and other anti-clericals too much, as
they could always give trouble at awkward moments. Consequently the
minister of education, Signor Rava, concocted a body of rules which, it
was hoped, would satisfy every one: religious instruction was to be
maintained as a necessary part of the curriculum, but in communes where
the majority of the municipal councillors were opposed to it it might be
suppressed; the council in that case must, however, facilitate the
teaching of religion to those children whose parents desire it. In
practice, however, when the council has suppressed religious instruction
no such facilities are given. At the general elections of March 1909,
over a score of Clerical deputies were returned, Clericals of a very
mild tone who had no thought of the temporal power and were supporters
of the monarchy and anti-socialists; where no Clerical candidate was in
the field the Catholic voters plumped for the constitutional candidate
against all representatives of the Extreme Left. On the other hand, the
attitude of the Vatican towards Liberalism within the Church was one of
uncompromising reaction, and under the new pope the doctrines of
Christian Democracy and Modernism were condemned in no uncertain tone.
Don Romolo Murri, the Christian Democratic leader, who exercised much
influence over the younger and more progressive clergy, having been
severely censured by the Vatican, made formal submission, and declared
his intention of retiring from the struggle. But he appeared again on
the scene in the general elections of 1909, as a Christian Democratic
candidate; he was elected, and alone of the Catholic deputies took his
seat in the Chamber on the Extreme Left, where all his neighbours were
violent anti-clericals.

Earthquake of December 1908.

At 5 A.M. on the 28th of December 1908, an earthquake of appalling
severity shook the whole of southern Calabria and the eastern part of
Sicily, completely destroying the cities of Reggio and Messina, the
smaller towns of Canitello, Scilla, Villa San Giovanni, Bagnara, Palmi,
Melito, Porto Salvo and Santa Eufemia, as well as a large number of
villages. In the case of Messina the horror of the situation was
heightened by a tidal wave. The catastrophe was the greatest of its kind
that has ever occurred in any country; the number of persons killed was
approximately 150,000, while the injured were beyond calculation.

Foreign affairs.

The characteristic feature of Italy's foreign relations during this
period was the weakening of the bonds of the Triple Alliance and the
improved relations with France, while the traditional friendship with
England remained unimpaired. Franco-Italian friendship was officially
cemented by the visit of King Victor Emmanuel and Queen Elena in October
1903 to Paris where they received a very cordial welcome. The visit was
returned in April 1904 when M. Loubet, the French president, came to
Rome; this action was strongly resented by the pope, who, like his
predecessor since 1870, objected to the presence of foreign Catholic
rulers in Rome, and led to the final rupture between France and the
Vatican. The Franco-Italian understanding had the effect of raising
Italy's credit, and the Italian _rente_, which had been shut out of the
French bourses, resumed its place there once more, a fact which
contributed to increase its price and to reduce the unfavourable rate of
exchange. That agreement also served to clear up the situation in
Tripoli; while Italian aspirations towards Tunisia had been ended by the
French occupation of that territory, Tripoli and Bengazi were now
recognized as coming within the Italian "sphere of influence." The
Tripoli hinterland, however, was in danger of being absorbed by other
powers having large African interests; the Anglo-French declaration of
the 21st of March 1899 in particular seemed likely to interfere with
Italian activity.

The Triple Alliance was maintained and renewed as far as paper documents
were concerned (in June 1902 it was reconfirmed for 12 years), but
public opinion was no longer so favourably disposed towards it.
Austria's petty persecutions of her Italian subjects in the _irredente_
provinces, her active propaganda incompatible with Italian interests in
the Balkans, and the anti-Italian war talk of Austrian military circles,
imperilled the relations of the two "allies"; it was remarked, indeed,
that the object of the alliance between Austria and Italy was to prevent
war between them. Austria had persistently adopted a policy of
pin-pricks and aggravating police provocation towards the Italians of
the Adriatic Littoral and of the Trentino, while encouraging the
Slavonic element in the former and the Germans in the latter. One of the
causes of ill-feeling was the university question; the Austrian
government had persistently refused to create an Italian university for
its Italian subjects, fearing lest it should become a hotbed of
"irredentism," the Italian-speaking students being thus obliged to
attend the German-Austrian universities. An attempt at compromise
resulted in the institution of an Italian law faculty at Innsbruck, but
this aroused the violent hostility of the German students and populace,
who gave proof of their superior civilization by an unprovoked attack on
the Italians in October 1902. Further acts of violence were committed by
the Germans in 1903, which led to anti-Austrian demonstrations in Italy.
The worst tumults occurred in November 1904, when Italian students and
professors were attacked at Innsbruck without provocation; being
outnumbered by a hundred to one the Italians were forced to use their
revolvers in self-defence, and several persons were wounded on both
sides. Anti-Italian demonstrations occurred periodically also at Vienna,
while in Dalmatia and Croatia Italian fishermen and workmen (Italian
citizens, not natives) were subject to attacks by gangs of half-savage
Croats, which led to frequent diplomatic "incidents." A further cause of
resentment was Austria's attitude towards the Vatican, inspired by the
strong clerical tendencies of the imperial family, and indeed of a large
section of the Austrian people. But the most serious point at issue was
the Balkan question. Italian public opinion could not view without
serious misgivings the active political propaganda which Austria was
conducting in Albania. The two governments frequently discussed the
situation, but although they had agreed to a self-denying ordinance
whereby each bound itself not to occupy any part of Albanian territory,
Austria's declarations and promises were hardly borne out by the
activity of her agents in the Balkans. Italy, therefore, instituted a
counter-propaganda by means of schools and commercial agencies. The
Macedonian troubles of 1903 again brought Austria and Italy into
conflict. The acceptance by the powers of the Mürzsteg programme and the
appointment of Austrian and Russian financial agents in Macedonia was an
advantage for Austria and a set-back for Italy; but the latter scored a
success in the appointment of General de Giorgis as commander of the
international Macedonian gendarmerie; she also obtained, with the
support of Great Britain, France and Russia, the assignment of the
partly Albanian district of Monastir to the Italian officers of that
corps.

In October 1908 came the bombshell of the Austrian annexation of Bosnia,
announced to King Victor Emmanuel and to other rulers by autograph
letters from the emperor-king. The news caused the most widespread
sensation, and public opinion in Italy was greatly agitated at what it
regarded as an act of brigandage on the part of Austria, when Signor
Tittoni in a speech at Carate Brianza (October 6th) declared that "Italy
might await events with serenity, and that these could find her neither
unprepared nor isolated." These words were taken to mean that Italy
would receive compensation to restore the balance of power upset in
Austria's favour. When it was found that there was to be no direct
compensation for Italy a storm of indignation was aroused against
Austria, and also against Signor Tittoni.

On the 29th of October, however, Austria abandoned her military posts in
the sandjak of Novibazar, and the frontier between Austria and Turkey,
formerly an uncertain one, which left Austria a half-open back door to
the Aegean, was now a distinct line of demarcation. Thus the danger of a
"pacific penetration" of Macedonia by Austria became more remote.
Austria also gave way on another point, renouncing her right to police
the Montenegrin coast and to prevent Montenegro from having warships of
its own (paragraphs 5, 6 and 11 of art. 29 of the Berlin Treaty) in a
note presented to the Italian foreign office on the 12th of April 1909.
Italy had developed some important commercial interests in Montenegro,
and anything which strengthened the position of that principality was a
guarantee against further Austrian encroachments. The harbour works in
the Montenegrin port of Antivari, commenced in March 1905 and completed
early in 1909, were an Italian concern, and Italy became a party to the
agreement for the Danube-Adriatic Railway (June 2, 1908) together with
Russia, France and Servia; Italy was to contribute 35,000,000 lire out
of a total capital of 100,000,000, and to be represented by four
directors out of twelve. But the whole episode was a warning to Italy,
and the result was a national movement for security. Credits for the
army and navy were voted almost without a dissentient voice; new
battleships were laid down, the strength of the army was increased, and
the defences of the exposed eastern border were strengthened. It was
clear that so long as Austria, bribed by Germany, could act in a way so
opposed to Italian interests in the Balkans, the Triple Alliance was a
mockery, and Italy could only meet the situation by being prepared for
all contingencies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--It is difficult to indicate in a short space the most
important sources of general Italian history. Muratori's great
collection, the _Rerum Italicarum scriptores_ in combination with his
_Dissertationes_, the chronicles and other historical material
published by the _Archivio Storico Italiano_, and the works of
detached annalists of whom the Villani are the most notable, take
first rank. Next we may mention Muratori's _Annali d' Italia_,
together with Guicciardini's _Storia d' Italia_ and its modern
continuation by Carlo Botta. Among the more recent contributions S. de
Sismondi's _Républiques italiennes_ (Brussels, 1838) and Carlo Troya's
_Storia d' Italia nel medio evo_ are among the most valuable general
works, while the large _Storia Politica d' Italia_ by various authors,
published at Milan, is also important--F. Bertolini, _I Barbari_; F.
Lanzani, _Storia dei comuni italiani dalle origini fino al 1313_
(1882); C. Cipolla, _Storia delle Signorie Italiane dal 1313 al 1530_
(1881); A. Cosci, _L' Italia durante le preponderanze straniere,
1530-1789_ (1875); A. Franchetti, _Storia d' Italia dal 1789 al 1799_;
G. de Castro, _Storia d' Italia dal 1789 al 1814_ (1881). For the
beginnings of Italian history the chief works are T. Hodgkin's _Italy
and her Invaders_ (Oxford, 1892-1899) and P. Villari's _Le Invasioni
barbariche_ (Milan, 1900), both based on original research and sound
scholarship. The period from 1494 to modern times is dealt with in
various volumes of the _Cambridge Modern History_, especially in vol.
i., "The Renaissance," which contains valuable bibliographies.
Giuseppe Ferrari's _Rivoluzioni d' Italia_ (1858) deserves notice as a
work of singular vigour, though no great scientific importance, and
Cesare Balbo's _Sommario_ (Florence, 1856) presents the main outlines
of the subject with brevity and clearness. For the period of the
French revolution and the Napoleonic wars see F. Lemmi's _Le Origini
del risorgimento italiano_ (Milan, 1906); E. Bonnal de Ganges, _La
Chute d'une république [Venise]_ (Paris, 1885); D. Carutti, _Storia
della corte di Savoia durante la rivoluzione e l' impero francese_ (2
vols., Turin, 1892); G. de Castro, _Storia d' Italia dal 1797 al 1814_
(Milan, 1881); A. Dufourcq, _Le Régime jacobin en Italie, 1796-1799_
(Paris, 1900); A. Franchetti, _Storia d' Italia dal 1789 al 1799_
(Milan, 1878); P. Gaffarel, _Bonaparte et les républiques italiennes_
(1796-1799) (Paris, 1895); R. M. Johnston, _The Napoleonic Empire in
Southern Italy_ (2 vols., with full bibliography, London, 1904); E.
Ramondini, _L' Italia durante la dominazione francese_ (Naples, 1882);
E. Ruth, _Geschichte des italienischen Volkes unter der napoleonischen
Herrschaft_ (Leipzig, 1859). For modern times, see Bolton King's
_History of Italian Unity_ (1899) and Bolton King and Thomas Okey's
_Italy To-day_ (1901). With regard to the history of separate
provinces it may suffice to notice N. Machiaveili's _Storia
fiorentina_, B. Corio's _Storia di Milano_, G. Capponi's _Storia della
repubblica di Firenze_ (Florence, 1875), P. Villari's _I primi due
secoli della storia di Firenze_ (Florence, 1905), F. Pagano's _Istoria
del regno di Napoli_ (Palermo-Naples, 1832, &c.), P. Romanin's _Storia
documentata di Venezia_ (Venice, 1853), M. Amari's _Musulmani di
Sicilia_ (1854-1875), F. Gregorovius's _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_
(Stuttgart, 1881), A. von Reumont's _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_
(Berlin, 1867), L. Cibrario's _Storia della monarchia piemontese_
(Turin, 1840), and D. Carutti's _Storia della diplomazia della corte
di Savoia_ (Rome, 1875). The _Archivii storici_ and _Deputazioni di
storia patria_ of the various Italian towns and provinces contain a
great deal of valuable material for local history. From the point of
view of papal history, L. von Ranke's _History of the Popes_ (English
edition, London, 1870), M. Creighton's _History of the Papacy_
(London, 1897) and L. Pastor's _Geschichte der Päpste_ (Freiburg i.
B., 1886-1896), should be mentioned. From the point of view of general
culture, Jacob Burckhardt's _Cultur der Renaissance in Italien_
(Basel, 1860), E. Guinet's _Révolutions d' Italie_ (Paris, 1857), and
J. A. Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_ (5 vols., London, 1875, &c.)
should be consulted. (L. V.*)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] On the derivation see below, _History_, section A, _ad. init_.

[2] The actually highest point is the Maschio delle Faete (3137 ft.).
(See ALBANUS MONS.)

[3] On the influence of malaria on the population of Early Italy see
W. H. S. Jones in _Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology_, ii. 97
sqq. (Liverpool, 1909).

[4] The 2nd category of the 1875 law had practically ceased to exist.

[5] This may be reduced, in consequence of the adoption of the new
Q.F. gun, 1 to 6.

[6] "Movement of capital" consists, as regards "income," of the
proceeds of the sale of buildings, Church or Crown lands, old
prisons, barracks, &c., or of moneys derived from sale of
consolidated stock. Thus "income" really signifies diminution of
patrimony or increase of debt. In regard to "expenditure," "movement
of capital" refers to extinction of debt by amortization or
otherwise, to purchases of buildings or to advances made by the
state. Thus "expenditure" really represents a patrimonial
improvement, a creation of credit or a decrease of indebtedness. The
items referring to "railway construction" represent, on the one hand,
repayments made to the exchequer by the communes and provinces of
money disbursed on their account by the State Treasury; and, on the
other, the cost of new railways incurred by the Treasury. The items
of the "_partite di giro_" are inscribed both on the credit and debit
sides of the budget, and have merely a figurative value.

[7] Financial operations (mainly in connexion with railway purchase)
figure on each side of the account for about £22,000,000.

[8] For example, wheat, the price of which was in 1902 26 lire per
cwt., pays a tax of 7½ lire; sugar pays four times its wholesale
value in tax; coffee twice its wholesale value.

[9] "Privileges" assure to creditors priority of claim in case of
foreclosure for debt or mortgage. Prior to the law of the 23rd of
January 1887 harvested produce and agricultural implements were
legally exempt from "privilege."

[10] At the beginning of 1902 the Italian parliament sanctioned a
bill providing for the abolition of municipal duties on bread and
farinaceous products within three years of the promulgation of the
bill on 1st July 1902.

[11] Among the insurgents of Romagna was Louis Napoleon, afterwards
emperor of the French.

[12] In Rome itself a certain Angelo Brunetti, known as Ciceruacchio,
a forage merchant of lowly birth and a Carbonaro, exercised great
influence over the masses and kept the peace where the authorities
would have failed.

[13] The popular cry of "Viva Verdi!" did not merely express
enthusiasm for Italy's most eminent musician, but signified, in
initials: "Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re d' Italia!"

[14] La Farina's _Epistolario_, ii. 426.

[15] In reality the emperor was contemplating an Etrurian kingdom
with the prince at its head.

[16] N. Bianchi, _Cavour_, p. 118.

[17] He asked for the Neapolitan viceroyalty for life, which the king
very wisely refused.

[18] The counterblast of Pius IX. to this convention was the
encyclical _Quanta Cura_ of Dec. 8, 1864, followed by the famous
_Syllabus_.

ITEM (a Latin adverb meaning "also," "likewise"), originally used
adverbially in English at the beginning of each separate head in a list
of articles, or each detail in an account book or ledger or in a legal
document. The word is thus applied, as a noun, to the various heads in
any such enumeration and also to a piece of information or news.

ITHACA ([Greek: Ithakê]), vulgarly Thiaki ([Greek: Thiakê]), next to
Paxo the smallest of the seven Ionian Islands, with an area of about 44
sq. m. It forms an eparchy of the nomos of Cephalonia in the kingdom of
Greece, and its population, which was 9873 in 1870, is now about 13,000.
The island consists of two mountain masses, connected by a narrow
isthmus of hills, and separated by a wide inlet of the sea known as the
Gulf of Molo. The northern and greater mass culminates in the heights of
Anoi (2650 ft.), and the southern in Hagios Stephanos, or Mount
Merovigli (2100 ft.). Vathy ([Greek: Bathu] = "deep"), the chief town
and port of the island, lies at the northern foot of Mount Stephanos,
its whitewashed houses stretching for about a mile round the deep bay in
the Gulf of Molo, to which it owes its name. As there are only one or
two small stretches of arable land in Ithaca, the inhabitants are
dependent on commerce for their grain supply; and olive oil, wine and
currants are the principal products obtained by the cultivation of the
thin stratum of soil that covers the calcareous rocks. Goats are fed in
considerable number on the brushwood pasture of the hills; and hares (in
spite of Aristotle's supposed assertion of their absence) are
exceptionally abundant. The island is divided into four districts:
Vathy, Aeto (or Eagle's Cliff), Anoge (Anoi) or Upland, and Exoge (Exoi)
or Outland.

The name has remained attached to the island from the earliest
historical times with but little interruption of the tradition; though
in Brompton's travels (12th century) and in the old Venetian maps we
find it called Fale or Val de Compar, and at a later date it not
unfrequently appears as Little Cephalonia. This last name indicates the
general character of Ithacan history (if history it can be called) in
modern and indeed in ancient times; for the fame of the island is almost
solely due to its position in the Homeric story of Odysseus. Ithaca,
according to the Homeric epos, was the royal seat and residence of King
Odysseus. The island is incidentally described with no small variety of
detail, picturesque and topographical; the Homeric localities for which
counterparts have been sought are Mount Neritos, Mount Neion, the
harbour of Phorcys, the town and palace of Odysseus, the fountain of
Arethusa, the cave of the Naiads, the stalls of the swineherd Eumaeus,
the orchard of Laertes, the Korax or Raven Cliff and the island Asteris,
where the suitors lay in ambush for Telemachus. Among the
"identificationists" there are two schools, one placing the town at
Polis on the west coast in the northern half of the island (Leake,
Gladstone, &c.), and the other at Aeto on the isthmus. The latter site,
which was advocated by Sir William Gell (_Topography and Antiquities of
Ithaca_, London, 1807), was supported by Dr H. Schliemann, who carried
on excavations in 1873 and 1878 (see H. Schliemann, _Ithaque, le
Péloponnèse, Troie_, Paris, 1869, also published in German; his letter
to _The Times_, 26th of September, 1878; and the author's life prefixed
to _Ilios_, London, 1880). But his results were mainly negative. The
fact is that no amount of ingenuity can reconcile the descriptions given
in the _Odyssey_ with the actual topography of this island. Above all,
the passage in which the position of Ithaca is described offers great
difficulties. "Now Ithaca lies low, farthest up the sea line towards the
darkness, but those others face the dawning and the sun" (Butcher and
Lang). Such a passage fits very ill an island lying, as Ithaca does,
just to the east of Cephalonia. Accordingly Professor W. Dörpfeld has
suggested that the Homeric Ithaca is not the island which was called
Ithaca by the later Greeks, but must be identified with Leucas (Santa
Maura, q.v.). He succeeds in fitting the Homeric topography to this
latter island, and suggests that the name may have been transferred in
consequence of a migration of the inhabitants. There is no doubt that
Leucas fits the Homeric descriptions much better than Ithaca; but, on
the other hand, many scholars maintain that it is a mistake to treat the
imaginary descriptions of a poet as if they were portions of a
guide-book, or to look, in the author of the _Odyssey_, for a close
familiarity with the geography of the Ionian islands.

See, besides the works already referred to, the separate works on
Ithaca by Schreiber (Leipzig, 1829); Rühle von Lilienstern (Berlin,
1832); N. Karavias Grivas ([Greek: Historia tês nêsou Ithakês])
(Athens, 1849); Bowen (London, 1851); and Gandar, (Paris, 1854);
Hercher, in _Hermes_ (1866); Leake's _Northern Greece_; Mure's _Tour
in Greece_; Bursian's _Geogr. von Griechenland_; Gladstone, "The
Dominions of Ulysses," in _Macmillan's Magazine_ (1877). A history of
the discussions will be found in Buchholz, _Die Homerischen Realien_
(Leipzig, 1871); Partsch, _Kephallenia und Ithaka_ (1890); W. Dörpfeld
in _Mélanges Perrot_, pp. 79-93 (1903); P. Goessler, _Leukas-Ithaka_
(Stuttgart, 1904). (E. Gr.)

ITHACA, a city and the county-seat of Tompkins county, New York, U.S.A.,
at the southern end of Cayuga Lake, 60 m. S.W. of Syracuse. Pop. (1890)
11,079, (1900) 13,136, of whom 1310 were foreign-born, (1910 census)
14,802. It is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and the
Lehigh Valley railways and by inter-urban electric line; and steamboats
ply on the lake. Most of the city is in the level valley, from which it
spreads up the heights on the south, east and west. The finest
residential district is East Hill, particularly Cornell and Cayuga
Heights (across Fall Creek from the Cornell campus). Renwick Beach, at
the head of the lake, is a pleasure resort. The neighbouring region is
one of much beauty, and is frequented by summer tourists. Near the city
are many waterfalls, the most notable being Taughannock Falls (9 m. N.),
with a fall of 215 ft. Through the city from the east run Fall,
Cascadilla and Six Mile Creeks, the first two of which have cut deep
gorges and have a number of cascades and waterfalls, the largest, Ithaca
Fall in Fall Creek, being 120 ft. high. Six Mile Creek crosses the south
side of the city and empties into Cayuga Inlet, which crosses the
western and lower districts, often inundated in the spring. The Inlet
receives the waters of a number of small streams descending from the
south-western hills. Among the attractions in this direction are
Buttermilk Falls and ravine, on the outskirts of the city, Lick Brook
Falls and glen and Enfield Falls and glen, the last 7 m. distant. Fall
Creek furnishes good water-power. The city has various manufactures,
including fire-arms, calendar clocks, traction engines, electrical
appliances, patent chains, incubators, autophones, artesian well drills,
salt, cement, window glass and wall-paper. The value of the factory
product increased from $1,500,604 in 1900 to $2,080,002 in 1905, or
38.6%. Ithaca is also a farming centre and coal market, and much fruit
is grown in the vicinity. The city is best known as the seat of Cornell
University (q.v.). It has also the Ezra Cornell Free Library of about
28,000 volumes, the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, the Cascadilla School
and the Ithaca High School. Ithaca was settled about 1789, the name
being given to it by Simeon De Witt in 1806. It was incorporated as a
village in 1821, and was chartered as a city in 1888. At Buttermilk
Falls stood the principal village of the Tutelo Indians, Coreorgonel,
settled in 1753 and destroyed in 1779 by a detachment of Sullivan's
force.

ITINERARIUM (i.e. road-book, from Lat. _iter_, road), a term applied to
the extant descriptions of the ancient Roman roads and routes of
traffic, with the stations and distances. It is usual to distinguish two
classes of these, _Itineraria adnotata_ or _scripta_ and _Itineraria
picta_--the former having the character of a book, and the latter being
a kind of travelling map. Of the Itineraria Scripta the most important
are: (1) _It. Antonini_ (see ANTONINI ITINERARIUM), which consists of
two parts, the one dealing with roads in Europe, Asia and Africa, and
the other with familiar sea-routes--the distances usually being measured
from Rome; (2) _It. Hierosolymitanum_ or _Burdigalense_, which belongs
to the 4th century, and contains the route of a pilgrimage from Bordeaux
to Jerusalem and from Heraclea by Rome to Milan (ed. G. Parthey and M.
Pinder, 1848, with the _Itinerarium Antonini_); (3) _It. Alexandria_
containing a sketch of the march-route of Alexander the Great, mainly
derived from Arrian and prepared for Constantius's expedition in A.D.
340-345 against the Persians (ed. D. Volkmann, 1871). A collected
edition of the ancient itineraria, with ten maps, was issued by Fortia
d'Urban, _Recueil des itinéraires anciens_ (1845). Of the Itineraria
Picta only one great example has been preserved. This is the famous
_Tabula Peutingeriana_, which, without attending to the shape or
relative position of the countries, represents by straight lines and
dots of various sizes the roads and towns of the whole Roman world
(facsimile published by K. Miller, 1888; see also MAP).

ITIUS PORTUS, the name given by Caesar to the chief harbour which he
used when embarking for his second expedition to Britain in 54 B.C. (_De
bello Gallico_, v. 2). It was certainly near the uplands round Cape
Grisnez (_Promuntorium Itium_), but the exact site has been violently
disputed ever since the renaissance of learning. Many critics have
assumed that Caesar used the same port for his first expedition, but the
name does not appear at all in that connexion (_B. G._ iv. 21-23). This
fact, coupled with other considerations, makes it probable that the two
expeditions started from different places. It is generally agreed that
the first embarked at Boulogne. The same view was widely held about the
second, but T. Rice Holmes in an article in the _Classical Review_ (May
1909) gave strong reasons for preferring Wissant, 4 m. east of Grisnez.
The chief reason is that Caesar, having found he could not set sail from
the small harbour of Boulogne with even 80 ships simultaneously, decided
that he must take another point for the sailing of the "more than 800"
ships of the second expedition. Holmes argues that, allowing for change
in the foreshore since Caesar's time, 800 specially built ships could
have been hauled above the highest spring-tide level, and afterwards
launched simultaneously at Wissant, which would therefore have been
"commodissimus" (v. 2) or opposed to "brevissimus traiectus" (iv. 21).

See T. R. Holmes in _Classical Review_ (May 1909), in which he
partially revises the conclusions at which he arrived in his _Ancient
Britain_ (1907), pp. 552-594; that the first expedition started from
Boulogne is accepted, e.g. by H. Stuart Jones, in _English Historical
Review_ (1909), xxiv. 115; other authorities in Holmes's article.

ITO, HIROBUMI, PRINCE (1841-1909), Japanese statesman, was born in 1841,
being the son of Ito Juzo, and (like his father) began life as a
retainer of the lord of Choshu, one of the most powerful nobles of
Japan. Choshu, in common with many of his fellow Daimyos, was bitterly
opposed to the rule of the shôgun or tycoon, and when this rule resulted
in the conclusion of the treaty with Commodore M. C. Perry in 1854, the
smouldering discontent broke out into open hostility against both
parties to the compact. In these views Ito cordially agreed with his
chieftain, and was sent on a secret mission to Yedo to report to his
lord on the doings of the government. This visit had the effect of
causing Ito to turn his attention seriously to the study of the British
and of other military systems. As a result he persuaded Choshu to
remodel his army, and to exchange the bows and arrows of his men for
guns and rifles. But Ito felt that his knowledge of foreigners, if it
was to be thorough, should be sought for in Europe, and with the
connivance of Choshu he, in company with Inouye and three other young
men of the same rank as himself, determined to risk their lives by
committing the then capital offence of visiting a foreign country. With
great secrecy they made their way to Nagasaki, where they concluded an
arrangement with the agent of Messrs Jardine, Matheson & Co. for
passages on board a vessel which was about to sail for Shanghai (1863).
At that port the adventurers separated, three of their number taking
ship as passengers to London, while Ito and Inouye preferred to work
their passages before the mast in the "Pegasus," bound for the same
destination. For a year these two friends remained in London studying
English methods, but then events occurred in Japan which recalled them
to their country. The treaties lately concluded by the shôgun with the
foreign powers conceded the right to navigate the strait of Shimonoseki,
leading to the Inland Sea. On the northern shores of this strait
stretched the feudal state ruled over by Prince Choshu, who refused to
recognize the clause opening the strait, and erected batteries on the
shore, from which he opened fire on all ships which attempted to force
the passage. The shôgun having declared himself unable in the
circumstances to give effect to the provision, the treaty powers
determined to take the matter into their own hands. Ito, who was better
aware than his chief of the disproportion between the fighting powers of
Europe and Japan, memorialized the cabinets, begging that hostilities
should be suspended until he should have had time to use his influence
with Choshu in the interests of peace. With this object Ito hurried back
to Japan. But his efforts were futile. Choshu refused to give way, and
suffered the consequences of his obstinacy in the destruction of his
batteries and in the infliction of a heavy fine. The part played by Ito
in these negotiations aroused the animosity of the more reactionary of
his fellow-clansmen, who made repeated attempts to assassinate him. On
one notable occasion he was pursued by his enemies into a tea-house,
where he was concealed by a young lady beneath the floor of her room.
Thus began a romantic acquaintance, which ended in the lady becoming the
wife of the fugitive. Subsequently (1868) Ito was made governor of
Hiogo, and in the course of the following year became vice-minister of
finance. In 1871 he accompanied Iwakura on an important mission to
Europe, which, though diplomatically a failure, resulted in the
enlistment of the services of European authorities on military, naval
and educational systems.

After his return to Japan Ito served in several cabinets as head of the
bureau of engineering and mines, and in 1886 he accepted office as prime
minister, a post which, when he resigned in 1901, he had held four
times. In 1882 he was sent on a mission to Europe to study the various
forms of constitutional government; on this occasion he attended the
coronation of the tsar Alexander III. On his return to Japan he was
entrusted with the arduous duty of drafting a constitution. In 1890 he
reaped the fruits of his labours, and nine years later he was destined
to witness the abrogation of the old treaties, and the substitution in
their place of conventions which place Japan on terms of equality with
the European states. In all the great reforms in the Land of the Rising
Sun Ito played a leading part. It was mainly due to his active interest
in military and naval affairs that he was able to meet Li Hung-chang at
the end of the Chinese and Japanese War (1895) as the representative of
the conquering state, and the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance
in 1902 testified to his triumphant success in raising Japan to the
first rank among civilized powers. As a reward for his conspicuous
services in connexion with the Chinese War Ito was made a marquis, and
in 1897 he accompanied Prince Arisugawa as a joint representative of the
Mikado at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. At the close of 1901 he
again, though in an unofficial capacity, visited Europe and the United
States; and in England he was created a G.C.B. After the Russo-Japanese
War (1905) he was appointed resident general in Korea, and in that
capacity he was responsible for the steps taken to increase Japanese
influence in that country. In September 1907 he was advanced to the rank
of prince. He retired from his post in Korea in July 1909, and became
president of the privy council in Japan. But on the 26th of October,
when on a visit to Harbin, he was shot dead by a Korean assassin.

He is to be distinguished from Admiral Count Yuko Ito (b. 1843), the
distinguished naval commander.

ITRI, a town of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, 6 m. by
road N.W. of Formia. Pop. (1901) 5797. The town is picturesquely
situated 690 ft. above sea-level, in the mountains which the Via Appia
traverses between Fondi and Formia. Interesting remains of the
substruction wall supporting the ancient road are preserved in Itri
itself; and there are many remains of ancient buildings near it. The
brigand Fra Diavolo, the hero of Auber's opera, was a native of Itri,
and the place was once noted for brigandage.

ITURBIDE (or YTURBIDE), AUGUSTIN DE (1783-1824), emperor of Mexico from
May 1822 to March 1823, was born on the 27th of September 1783, at
Valladolid, now Morelia, in Mexico, where his father, an Old Spaniard
from Pampeluna, had settled with his creole wife. After enjoying a
better education than was then usual in Mexico, Iturbide entered the
military service, and in 1810 held the post of lieutenant in the
provincial regiment of his native city. In that year the insurrection
under Hidalgo broke out, and Iturbide, more from policy, it would seem,
than from principle, served in the royal army. Possessed of splendid
courage and brilliant military talents, which fitted him especially for
guerilla warfare, the young creole did signal service, and rapidly rose
in military rank. In December 1813 Colonel Iturbide, along with General
Llano, dealt a crushing blow to the revolt by defeating Morelos, the
successor of Hidalgo, in the battle of Valladolid; and the former
followed it up by another decisive victory at Puruaran in January 1814.
Next year Don Augustin was appointed to the command of the army of the
north and to the governorship of the provinces of Valladolid and
Guanajuato, but in 1816 grave charges of extortion and violence were
brought against him, which led to his recall. Although the general was
acquitted, or at least although the inquiry was dropped, he did not
resume his commands, but retired into private life for four years,
which, we are told, he spent in a rigid course of penance for his former
excesses. In 1820 Apodaca, viceroy of Mexico, received instructions from
the Spanish cortes to proclaim the constitution promulgated in Spain in
1812, but although obliged at first to submit to an order by which his
power was much curtailed, he secretly cherished the design of reviving
the absolute power for Ferdinand VII. in Mexico. Under pretext of
putting down the lingering remains of revolt, he levied troops, and,
placing Iturbide at their head, instructed him to proclaim the absolute
power of the king. Four years of reflection, however, had modified the
general's views, and now, led both by personal ambition and by patriotic
regard for his country, Iturbide resolved to espouse the cause of
national independence. His subsequent proceedings--how he issued the
_Plan of Iguala_, on the 24th of February 1821, how by the refusal of
the Spanish cortes to ratify the treaty of Cordova, which he had signed
with O'Donoju, he was transformed from a mere champion of monarchy into
a candidate for the crown, and how, hailed by the soldiers as Emperor
Augustin I. on the 18th of May 1822, he was compelled within ten months,
by his arrogant neglect of constitutional restraints, to tender his
abdication to a congress which he had forcibly dissolved--will be found
detailed under Mexico. Although the congress refused to accept his
abdication on the ground that to do so would be to recognize the
validity of his election, it permitted the ex-emperor to retire to
Leghorn in Italy, while in consideration of his services in 1820 a
yearly pension of £5000 was conferred upon him. But Iturbide resolved to
make one more bid for power; and in 1824, passing from Leghorn to
London, he published a _Statement_, and on the 11th of May set sail for
Mexico. The congress immediately issued an act of outlawry against him,
forbidding him to set foot on Mexican soil on pain of death. Ignorant of
this, the ex-emperor landed in disguise at Soto la Marina on the 14th of
July. He was almost immediately recognized and arrested, and on the 19th
of July 1824 was shot at Padilla, by order of the state of Tamaulipas,
without being permitted an appeal to the general congress. Don Augustin
de Iturbide is described by his contemporaries as being of handsome
figure and ingratiating manner. His brilliant courage and wonderful
success made him the idol of his soldiers, though towards his prisoners
he displayed the most cold-blooded cruelty, boasting in one of his
despatches of having honoured Good Friday by shooting three hundred
excommunicated wretches. Though described as amiable in his private
life, he seems in his public career to have been ambitious and
unscrupulous, and by his haughty Spanish temper, impatient of all
resistance or control, to have forfeited the opportunity of founding a
secure imperial dynasty. His grandson Augustin was chosen by the
ill-fated emperor Maximilian as his successor.

See _Statement of some of the principal events in the public life of
Augustin de Iturbide_, written by himself (Eng. trans., 1824).

ITZA, an American-Indian people of Mayan stock, inhabiting the country
around Lake Peten in northern Guatemala. Chichen-Itza, among the most
wonderful of the ruined cities of Yucatan, was the capital of the Itzas.
Thence, according to their traditions they removed, on the breaking up
of the Mayan kingdom in 1420, to an island in the lake where another
city was built. Cortes met them in 1525, but they preserved their
independence till 1697, when the Spaniards destroyed the city and
temples, and a library of sacred books, written in hieroglyphics on bark
fibre. The Itzas were one of the eighteen semi-independent Maya states,
whose incessant internecine wars at length brought about the
dismemberment of the empire of Xibalba and the destruction of Mayan
civilization.

ITZEHOE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of
Schleswig-Holstein, on the Stör, a navigable tributary of the Elbe, 32
m. north-west of Hamburg and 15 m. north of Glückstadt. Pop. (1900)
15,649. The church of St Lawrence, dating from the 12th century, and the
building in which the Holstein estates formerly met, are noteworthy. The
town has a convent founded in 1256, a high school, a hospital and other
benevolent institutions. Itzehoe is a busy commercial place. Its sugar
refineries are among the largest in Germany. Ironfounding, shipbuilding
and wool-spinning are also carried on, and the manufactures include
machinery, tobacco, fishing-nets, chicory, soap, cement and beer.
Fishing employs some of the inhabitants, and the markets for cattle and
horses are important. A considerable trade is carried on in agricultural
products and wood, chiefly with Hamburg and Altona.

Itzehoe is the oldest town in Holstein. Its nucleus was a castle, built
in 809 by Egbert, one of Charlemagne's counts, against the Danes. The
community which sprang up around it was diversely called Esseveldoburg,
Eselsfleth and Ezeho. In 1201 the town was destroyed, but it was
restored in 1224. To the new town the Lübeck rights were granted by
Adolphus IV. in 1238, and to the old town in 1303. During the Thirty
Years' War Itzehoe was twice destroyed by the Swedes, in 1644 and 1657,
but was rebuilt on each occasion. It passed to Prussia in 1867, with the
duchy of Schleswig-Holstein.

IUKA, the county-seat of Tishomingo county, Mississippi, U.S.A., about
25 m. S.E. of Corinth in the N.E. corner of the state and 8 m. S. of the
Tennessee river. Pop. (1900) 882; (1910) 1221. It is served by the
Southern railway, and has a considerable trade in cotton and farm
products. Its mineral springs make it a health resort. In the American
Civil War, a Confederate force under General Sterling Price occupied the
town on the 14th of September 1862, driving out a small Union garrison;
and on the 19th of September a partial engagement took place between
Price and a Federal column commanded by General Rosecrans, in which the
Confederate losses were 700 and the Union 790. Price, whose line of
retreat was threatened by superior forces under General Grant, withdrew
from Iuka on the morning of the 20th of September.

IULUS, in Roman legend: (a) the eldest son of Ascanius and grandson of
Aeneas, founder of the Julian gens (_gens Iulia_), deprived of his
kingdom of Latium by his younger brother Silvius (Dion. Halic. i. 70);
(b) another name for, or epithet of, Ascanius.

IVAN (JOHN), the name of six grand dukes of Muscovy and tsars of Russia.

IVAN I., called _Kalita_, or Money-Bag (d. 1341), grand duke of
Vladimir, was the first _sobiratel_, or "gatherer" of the scattered
Russian lands, thereby laying the foundations of the future autocracy as
a national institution. This he contrived to do by adopting a policy of
complete subserviency to the khan of the Golden Horde, who, in return
for a liberal and punctual tribute, permitted him to aggrandize himself
at the expense of the lesser grand dukes. Moscow and Tver were the first
to fall. The latter Ivan received from the hand of the khan, after
devastating it with a host of 50,000 Tatars (1327). When Alexander of
Tver fled to the powerful city of Pskov, Ivan, not strong enough to
attack Pskov, procured the banishment of Alexander by the aid of the
metropolitan, Theognost, who threatened Pskov with an interdict. In 1330
Ivan extended his influence over Rostov by the drastic methods of
blackmail and hanging. But Great Novgorod was too strong for him, and
twice he threatened that republic in vain. In 1340 Ivan assisted the
khan to ravage the domains of Prince Ivan of Smolensk, who had refused
to pay the customary tribute to the Horde. Ivan's own domains, at any
rate during his reign, remained free from Tatar incursions, and
prospered correspondingly, thus attracting immigrants and their wealth
from the other surrounding principalities. Ivan was a most careful, not
to say niggardly economist, keeping an exact account of every village or
piece of plate that his money-bags acquired, whence his nickname. The
most important event of his reign was the transference of the
metropolitan see from Vladimir to Moscow, which gave Muscovy the
pre-eminence over all the other Russian states, and made the
metropolitan the ecclesiastical police-superintendent of the grand duke.
The Metropolitan Peter built the first stone cathedral of Moscow, and
his successor, Theognost, followed suit with three more stone churches.
Simultaneously Ivan substituted stone walls for the ancient wooden ones
of the Kreml', or citadel, which made Moscow a still safer place of
refuge.

See S. M. Solov'ev, _History of Russia_ (Rus.), vol. iii. (St
Petersburg, 1895); Polezhaev, _The Principality of Moscow in the first
half of the 14th Century_ (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1878).

IVAN II. (1326-1359), grand duke of Vladimir, a younger son of Ivan
Kalita, was born in 1326. In 1353 he succeeded his elder brother Simeon
as grand duke, despite the competition of Prince Constantine of Suzdal,
the Khan Hanibek preferring to bestow the _yarluik_, or letter of
investiture, upon Ivan rather than upon Constantine. At first the
principalities of Suzdal, Ryazan and the republic of Novgorod refused to
recognize him as grand duke, and waged war with him till 1354. The
authority of the grand duchy sensibly diminished during the reign of
Ivan II. The surrounding principalities paid but little attention to
Moscow, and Ivan, "a meek, gentle and merciful prince," was ruled to a
great extent by the _tuisyatsky_, or chiliarch, Alexis Khvost, and,
after his murder by the jealous boyars in 1357, by Bishop Alexis. He
died in 1359. Like most of his predecessors, Ivan, by his last will,
divided his dominions among his children.

See Dmitry Ilovaisky, _History of Russia_ (Rus.), vol. ii. (Moscow,
1876-1894).

IVAN III. (1440-1505), grand duke of Muscovy, son of Vasily (Basil)
Vasilievich the Blind, grand duke of Moscow, and Maria Yaroslavovna, was
born in 1440. He was co-regent with his father during the latter years
of his life and succeeded him in 1462. Ivan tenaciously pursued the
unifying policy of his predecessors. Nevertheless, cautious to timidity,
like most of the princes of the house of Rurik, he avoided as far as
possible any violent collision with his neighbours until all the
circumstances were exceptionally favourable, always preferring to attain
his ends gradually, circuitously and subterraneously. Muscovy had by
this time become a compact and powerful state, whilst her rivals had
grown sensibly weaker, a condition of things very favourable to the
speculative activity of a statesman of Ivan III.'s peculiar character.
His first enterprise was a war with the republic of Novgorod, which,
alarmed at the growing dominancy of Muscovy, had placed herself beneath
the protection of Casimir IV., king of Poland, an alliance regarded at
Moscow as an act of apostasy from orthodoxy. Ivan took the field against
Novgorod in 1470, and after his generals had twice defeated the forces
of the republic, at Shelona and on the Dvina, during the summer of 1471,
the Novgorodians were forced to sue for peace, which they obtained on
engaging to abandon for ever the Polish alliance, ceding a considerable
portion of their northern colonies, and paying a war indemnity of 15,500
roubles. From henceforth Ivan sought continually a pretext for
destroying Novgorod altogether; but though he frequently violated its
ancient privileges in minor matters, the attitude of the republic was so
wary that his looked-for opportunity did not come till 1477. In that
year the ambassadors of Novgorod played into his hands by addressing him
in public audience as "Gosudar" (sovereign) instead of "Gospodin"
("Sir") as heretofore. Ivan at once seized upon this as a recognition of
his sovereignty, and when the Novgorodians repudiated their ambassadors,
he marched against them. Deserted by Casimir IV., and surrounded on
every side by the Muscovite armies, which included a Tatar contingent,
the republic recognized Ivan as autocrat, and surrendered (January 14,
1478) all her prerogatives and possessions (the latter including the
whole of northern Russia from Lapland to the Urals) into his hands.
Subsequent revolts (1479-1488) were punished by the removal _en masse_
of the richest and most ancient families of Novgorod to Moscow, Vyatka
and other central Russian cities. After this, Novgorod, as an
independent state, ceased to exist. The rival republic of Pskov owed the
continuance of its own political existence to the readiness with which
it assisted Ivan against its ancient enemy. The other principalities
were virtually absorbed, by conquest, purchase or marriage
contract--Yaroslavl in 1463, Rostov in 1474, Tver in 1485.

Ivan's refusal to share his conquests with his brothers, and his
subsequent interference with the internal politics of their inherited
principalities, involved him in several wars with them, from which,
though the princes were assisted by Lithuania, he emerged victorious.
Finally, Ivan's new rule of government, formally set forth in his last
will to the effect that the domains of all his kinsfolk, after their
deaths, should pass directly to the reigning grand duke instead of
reverting, as hitherto, to the princes' heirs, put an end once for all
to these semi-independent princelets. The further extension of the
Muscovite dominion was facilitated by the death of Casimir IV. in 1492,
when Poland and Lithuania once more parted company. The throne of
Lithuania was now occupied by Casimir's son Alexander, a weak and
lethargic prince so incapable of defending his possessions against the
persistent attacks of the Muscovites that he attempted to save them by a
matrimonial compact, and wedded Helena, Ivan's daughter. But the clear
determination of Ivan to appropriate as much of Lithuania as possible at
last compelled Alexander in 1499 to take up arms against his
father-in-law. The Lithuanians were routed at Vedrosha (July 14, 1500),
and in 1503 Alexander was glad to purchase peace by ceding to Ivan
Chernigov, Starodub, Novgorod-Syeversk and sixteen other towns.

It was in the reign of Ivan III. that Muscovy rejected the Tatar yoke.
In 1480 Ivan refused to pay the customary tribute to the grand Khan
Ahmed. When, however, the grand khan marched against him, Ivan's courage
began to fail, and only the stern exhortations of the high-spirited
bishop of Rostov, Vassian, could induce him to take the field. All
through the autumn the Russian and Tatar hosts confronted each other on
opposite sides of the Ugra, till the 11th of November, when Ahmed
retired into the steppe. In the following year the grand khan, while
preparing a second expedition against Moscow, was suddenly attacked,
routed and slain by Ivak, the khan of the Nogai Tatars, whereupon the
Golden Horde suddenly fell to pieces. In 1487 Ivan reduced the khanate
of Kazan (one of the offshoots of the Horde) to the condition of a
vassal-state, though in his later years it broke away from his
suzerainty. With the other Mahommedan powers, the khan of the Crimea and
the sultan of Turkey, Ivan's relations were pacific and even amicable.
The Crimean khan, Mengli Girai, helped him against Lithuania and
facilitated the opening of diplomatic intercourse between Moscow and
Constantinople, where the first Russian embassy appeared in 1495.

The character of the government of Muscovy under Ivan III. changed
essentially and took on an autocratic form which it had never had
before. This was due not merely to the natural consequence of the
hegemony of Moscow over the other Russian lands, but even more to the
simultaneous growth of new and exotic principles falling upon a soil
already prepared for them. After the fall of Constantinople, orthodox
canonists were inclined to regard the Muscovite grand dukes as the
successors by the Byzantine emperors. This movement coincided with a
change in the family circumstances of Ivan III. After the death of his
first consort, Maria of Tver (1467), at the suggestion of Pope Paul II.
(1469), who hoped thereby to bind Russia to the holy see, Ivan III.
wedded the Catholic Zoe Palaeologa (better known by her orthodox name of
Sophia), daughter of Thomas, despot of the Morea, who claimed the throne
of Constantinople as the nearest relative of the last Greek emperor. The
princess, however, clave to her family traditions, and awoke imperial
ideas in the mind of her consort. It was through her influence that the
ceremonious etiquette of Constantinople (along with the imperial
double-headed eagle and all that it implied) was adopted by the court of
Moscow. The grand duke henceforth held aloof from his boyars. The old
patriarchal systems of government vanished. The boyars were no longer
consulted on affairs of state. The sovereign became sacrosanct, while
the boyars were reduced to the level of slaves absolutely dependent on
the will of the sovereign. The boyars naturally resented so insulting a
revolution, and struggled against it, at first with some success. But
the clever Greek lady prevailed in the end, and it was her son Vasily,
not Maria of Tver's son, Demetrius, who was ultimately crowned co-regent
with his father (April 14, 1502). It was in the reign of Ivan III. that
the first Russian "Law Book," or code, was compiled by the scribe Gusev.
Ivan did his utmost to promote civilization in his realm, and with that
object invited many foreign masters and artificers to settle in Muscovy,
the most noted of whom was the Italian Ridolfo di Fioravante, nicknamed
Aristotle because of his extraordinary knowledge, who built the
cathedrals of the Assumption (Uspenski) and of Saint Michael or the Holy
Archangels in the Kreml.

See P. Pierling, _Mariage d'un tsar au Vatican, Ivan III. et Sophie
Paléologue_ (Paris, 1891); E. I. Kashprovsky, _The Struggle of Ivan
III. with Sigismund I._ (Rus.) (Nizhni, 1899); S. M. Solov'ev,
_History of Russia_ (Rus.), vol. v. (St Petersburg, 1895).

IVAN IV., called "the Terrible" (1530-1584), tsar of Muscovy, was the
son of Vasily [Basil] III. Ivanovich, grand duke of Muscovy, by his
second wife, Helena Glinska. Born on the 25th of August 1530, he was
proclaimed grand duke on the death of his father (1533), and took the
government into his own hands in 1544, being then fourteen years old.
Ivan IV. was in every respect precocious; but from the first there was
what we should now call a neurotic strain in his character. His father
died when he was three, his mother when he was only seven, and he grew
up in a brutal and degrading environment where he learnt to hold human
life and human dignity in contempt. He was maltreated by the leading
boyars whom successive revolutions placed at the head of affairs, and
hence he conceived an inextinguishable hatred of their whole order and a
corresponding fondness for the merchant class, their natural enemies. At
a very early age he entertained an exalted idea of his own divine
authority, and his studies were largely devoted to searching in the
Scriptures and the Slavonic chronicles for sanctions and precedents for
the exercise and development of his right divine. He first asserted his
power by literally throwing to the dogs the last of his boyar tyrants,
and shortly afterwards announced his intention of assuming the title of
tsar, a title which his father and grandfather had coveted but never
dared to assume publicly. On the 16th of January 1547, he was crowned
the first Russian tsar by the metropolitan of Moscow; on the 3rd of
February in the same year he selected as his wife from among the virgins
gathered from all parts of Russia for his inspection, Anastasia
Zakharina-Koshkina, the scion of an ancient and noble family better
known by its later name of Romanov.

Hitherto, by his own showing, the private life of the young tsar had
been unspeakably abominable, but his sensitive conscience (he was
naturally religious) induced him, in 1550, to summon a _Zemsky Sobor_ or
national assembly, the first of its kind, to which he made a curious
public confession of the sins of his youth, and at the same time
promised that the realm of Russia (for whose dilapidation he blamed the
boyar regents) should henceforth be governed justly and mercifully. In
1551 the tsar submitted to a synod of prelates a hundred questions as to
the best mode of remedying existing evils, for which reason the decrees
of this synod are generally called _stoglav_ or _centuria_. The
decennium extending from 1550 to 1560 was the good period of Ivan IV.'s
reign, when he deliberately broke away from his disreputable past and
surrounded himself with good men of lowly origin. It was not only that
he hated and distrusted the boyars, but he was already statesman enough
to discern that they could not be fitted into the new order of things
which he aimed at introducing. Ivan meditated the regeneration of
Muscovy, and the only men who could assist him in his task were men who
could look steadily forward to the future because they had no past to
look back upon, men who would unflinchingly obey their sovereign because
they owed their whole political significance to him alone. The chief of
these men of good-will were Alexis Adashev and the monk Sylvester, men
of so obscure an origin that almost every detail of their lives is
conjectural, but both of them, morally, the best Muscovites of their
day. Their influence upon the young tsar was profoundly beneficial, and
the period of their administration coincides with the most glorious
period of Ivan's reign--the period of the conquest of Kazan and
Astrakhan.

In the course of 1551 one of the factions of Kazan offered the whole
khanate to the young tsar, and on the 20th of August 1552 he stood
before its walls with an army of 150,000 men and 50 guns. The siege was
long and costly; the army suffered severely; and only the tenacity of
the tsar kept it in camp for six weeks. But on the 2nd of October the
fortress, which had been heroically defended, was taken by assault. The
conquest of Kazan was an epoch-making event in the history of eastern
Europe. It was not only the first territorial conquest from the Tatars,
before whom Muscovy had humbled herself for generations; at Kazan Asia,
in the name of Mahomet, had fought behind its last trench against
Christian Europe marshalled beneath the banner of the tsar of Muscovy.
For the first time the Volga became a Russian river. Nothing could now
retard the natural advance of the young Russian state towards the east
and the south-east. In 1554 Astrakhan fell almost without a blow. By
1560 all the Finnic and Tatar tribes between the Oka and the Kama had
become Russian subjects. Ivan was also the first tsar who dared to
attack the Crimea. In 1555 he sent Ivan Sheremetev against Perekop, and
Sheremetev routed the Tatars in a great two days' battle at
Sudbishenska. Some of Ivan's advisers, including both Sylvester and
Adashev, now advised him to make an end of the Crimean khanate, as he
had already made an end of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. But
Ivan, wiser in his generation, knew that the thing was impossible, in
view of the immense distance to be traversed, and the predominance of
the Grand Turk from whom it would have to be wrested. It was upon
Livonia that his eyes were fixed, which was comparatively near at hand
and promised him a seaboard and direct communication with western
Europe. Ivan IV., like Peter I. after him, clearly recognized the
necessity of raising Muscovy to the level of her neighbours. He proposed
to do so by promoting a wholesale immigration into his tsardom of
master-workmen and skilled artificers. But all his neighbours,
apprehensive of the consequences of a civilized Muscovy, combined to
thwart him. Charles V. even went so far as to disperse 123 skilled
Germans whom Ivan's agent had collected and brought to Lübeck for
shipment to a Baltic port. After this, Ivan was obliged to help himself
as best he could. His opportunity seemed to have come when, in the
middle of the 16th century, the Order of the Sword broke up, and the
possession of Livonia was fiercely contested between Sweden, Poland and
Denmark. Ivan intervened in 1558 and quickly captured Narva, Dorpat and
a dozen smaller fortresses; then, in 1560, Livonia placed herself
beneath the protection of Poland, and King Sigismund II. warned Ivan off
the premises.

By this time, Ivan had entered upon the second and evil portion of his
reign. As early as 1553 he had ceased to trust Sylvester and Adashev,
owing to their extraordinary backwardness in supporting the claims of
his infant son to the throne while he himself lay at the point of death.
The ambiguous and ungrateful conduct of the tsar's intimate friends and
protégés on this occasion has never been satisfactorily explained, and
he had good reason to resent it. Nevertheless, on his recovery, much to
his credit, he overlooked it, and they continued to direct affairs for
six years longer. Then the dispute about the Crimea arose, and Ivan
became convinced that they were mediocre politicians as well as
untrustworthy friends. In 1560 both of them disappeared from the scene,
Sylvester into a monastery at his own request, while Adashev died the
same year, in honourable exile as a general in Livonia. The death of his
deeply beloved consort Anastasia and his son Demetrius, and the
desertion of his one bosom friend Prince Kurbsky, about the same time,
seem to have infuriated Ivan against God and man. During the next ten
years (1560-1570) terrible and horrible things happened in the realm of
Muscovy. The tsar himself lived in an atmosphere of apprehension,
imagining that every man's hand was against him. On the 3rd of December
1564 he quitted Moscow with his whole family. On the 3rd of January 1565
he declared in an open letter addressed to the metropolitan his
intention to abdicate. The common people, whom he had always favoured at
the expense of the boyars, thereupon implored him to come back on his
own terms. He consented to do so, but entrenched himself within a
peculiar institution, the _oprichina_ or "separate estate." Certain
towns and districts all over Russia were separated from the rest of the
realm, and their revenues were assigned to the maintenance of the tsar's
new court and household, which was to consist of 1000 carefully selected
boyars and lower dignitaries, with their families and suites, in the
midst of whom Ivan henceforth lived exclusively. The _oprichina_ was no
constitutional innovation. The _duma_, or council, still attended to all
the details of the administration; the old boyars still retained their
ancient offices and dignities. The only difference was that the tsar had
cut himself off from them, and they were not even to communicate with
him except on extraordinary and exceptional occasions. The _oprichniki_,
as being the exclusive favourites of the tsar, naturally, in their own
interests, hardened the tsar's heart against all outsiders, and trampled
with impunity upon every one beyond the charmed circle. Their first and
most notable victim was Philip, the saintly metropolitan of Moscow, who
was strangled for condemning the _oprichina_ as an unchristian
institution, and refusing to bless the tsar (1569). Ivan had stopped at
Tver, to murder St Philip, while on his way to destroy the second
wealthiest city in his tsardom--Great Novgorod. A delator of infamous
character, one Peter, had accused the authorities of the city to the
tsar of conspiracy; Ivan, without even confronting the Novgorodians with
their accuser, proceeded at the end of 1569 to punish them. After
ravaging the land, his own land, like a wild beast, he entered the city
on the 8th of January 1570, and for the next five weeks, systematically
and deliberately, day after day, massacred batches of every class of the
population. Every monastery, church, manor-house, warehouse and farm
within a circuit of 100 m. was then wrecked, plundered and left
roofless, all goods were pillaged, all cattle destroyed. Not till the
13th of February were the miserable remnants of the population permitted
to rebuild their houses and cultivate their fields once more.

An intermittent and desultory war, with Sweden and Poland
simultaneously, for the possession of Livonia and Esthonia, went on from
1560 to 1582. Ivan's generals (he himself rarely took the field) were
generally successful at first, and bore down their enemies by sheer
numbers, capturing scores of fortresses and towns. But in the end the
superior military efficiency of the Swedes and Poles invariably
prevailed. Ivan was also unfortunate in having for his chief antagonist
Stephen Báthory, one of the greatest captains of the age. Thus all his
strenuous efforts, all his enormous sacrifices, came to nothing. The
West was too strong for him. By the peace of Zapoli (January 15th, 1582)
he surrendered Livonia with Polotsk to Báthory, and by the truce of
Ilyusa he at the same time abandoned Ingria to the Swedes. The Baltic
seaboard was lost to Muscovy for another century and a half. In his
latter years Ivan cultivated friendly relations with England, in the
hope of securing some share in the benefits of civilization from the
friendship of Queen Elizabeth, one of whose ladies, Mary Hastings, he
wished to marry, though his fifth wife, Martha Nagaya, was still alive.
Towards the end of his life Ivan was partially consoled for his failure
in the west by the unexpected acquisition of the kingdom of Siberia in
the east, which was first subdued by the Cossack hetman Ermak or Yermak
in 1581.

In November 1580 Ivan in a fit of ungovernable fury at some
contradiction or reproach, struck his eldest surviving son Ivan, a
prince of rare promise, whom he passionately loved, a blow which proved
fatal. In an agony of remorse, he would now have abdicated "as being
unworthy to reign longer"; but his trembling boyars, fearing some dark
ruse, refused to obey any one but himself. Three years later, on the
18th of March 1584, while playing at chess, he suddenly fell backwards
in his chair and was removed to his bed in a dying condition. At the
last moment he assumed the hood of the strictest order of hermits, and
died as the monk Jonah.

Ivan IV. was undoubtedly a man of great natural ability. His political
foresight was extraordinary. He anticipated the ideals of Peter the
Great, and only failed in realizing them because his material resources
were inadequate. But admiration of his talents must not blind us to his
moral worthlessness, nor is it right to cast the blame for his excesses
on the brutal and vicious society in which he lived. The same society
which produced his infamous favourites also produced St Philip of
Moscow, and by refusing to listen to St Philip Ivan sank below even the
not very lofty moral standard of his own age. He certainly left
Muscovite society worse than he found it, and so prepared the way for
the horrors of "the Great Anarchy." Personally, Ivan was tall and
well-made, with high shoulders and a broad chest. His eyes were small
and restless, his nose hooked, he had a beard and moustaches of imposing
length. His face had a sinister, troubled expression; but an enigmatical
smile played perpetually around his lips. He was the best educated and
the hardest worked man of his age. His memory was astonishing, his
energy indefatigable. As far as possible he saw to everything
personally, and never sent away a petitioner of the lower orders.

See S. M. Solov'ev, _History of Russia_ (Rus.) vol. v. (St Petersburg,
1895); A. Brückner, _Geschichte Russlands bis zum Ende des 18ten
Jahrhunderts_ (Gotha, 1896); E. Tikhomirov, _The first Tsar of
Moscovy, Ivan IV._ (Rus.) (Moscow, 1888); L. G. T. Tidander, _Kriget
mellan Sverige och Ryssland åren 1555-1557_ (Vesterås, 1888); P.
Pierling, _Un Arbitrage pontifical au XVI^e siècle entre la Pologne et
la Russie_ (Bruxelles, 1890); V. V. Novodvorsky, _The Struggle for
Livonia, 1570-1582_ (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1904); K. Waliszewski,
_Ivan le terrible_ (Paris, 1904); R. N. Bain, _Slavonic Europe_, ch. 5
(Cambridge, 1907).

IVAN V.[1] (1666-1696), tsar of Russia, was the son of Tsar Alexius
Mikhailovich and his first consort Miloslavzkoya. Physically and
mentally deficient, Ivan was the mere tool of the party in Muscovy who
would have kept the children of the tsar Alexis, by his second consort
Natalia Naruishkina, from the throne. In 1682 the party of progress,
headed by Artamon Matvyeev and the tsaritsa Natalia, passed Ivan over
and placed his half-brother, the vigorous and promising little tsarevich
Peter, on the throne. On the 23rd of May, however, the Naruishkin
faction was overthrown by the _stryeltsi_ (musketeers), secretly worked
upon by Ivan's half-sister Sophia, and Ivan was associated as tsar with
Peter. Three days later he was proclaimed "first tsar," in order still
further to depress the Naruishkins, and place the government in the
hands of Sophia exclusively. In 1689 the name of Ivan was used as a
pretext by Sophia in her attempt to oust Peter from the throne
altogether. Ivan was made to distribute beakers of wine to his sister's
adherents with his own hands, but subsequently, beneath the influence of
his uncle Prozorovsky, he openly declared that "even for his sister's
sake, he would quarrel no longer with his dear brother." During the
reign of his colleague Peter, Ivan V. took no part whatever in affairs,
but devoted himself "to incessant prayer and rigorous fasting." On the
9th of January 1684 he married Praskovia Saltuikova, who bore him five
daughters, one of whom, Anne, ultimately ascended the Russian throne. In
his last years Ivan was a paralytic. He died on the 29th of January
1696.

See R. Nisbet Bain, _The First Romanovs_ (London, 1905); M. P.
Pogodin, _The First Seventeen Years of the Life of Peter the Great_
(Rus.) (Moscow, 1875).

IVAN VI. (1740-1764), emperor of Russia, was the son of Prince Antony
Ulrich of Brunswick, and the princess Anna Leopoldovna of Mecklenburg,
and great-nephew of the empress Anne, who adopted him and declared him
her successor on the 5th of October 1740, when he was only eight weeks
old. On the death of Anne (October 17th) he was proclaimed emperor, and
on the following day Ernest Johann Biren, duke of Courland, was
appointed regent. On the fall of Biren (November 8th), the regency
passed to the baby tsar's mother, though the government was in the hands
of the capable vice-chancellor, Andrei Osterman. A little more than
twelve months later, a _coup d'état_ placed the tsesarevna Elizabeth on
the throne (December 6, 1741), and Ivan and his family were imprisoned
in the fortress of Dünamünde (Ust Dvinsk) (December 13, 1742) after a
preliminary detention at Riga, from whence the new empress had at first
decided to send them home to Brunswick. In June 1744 they were
transferred to Kholmogory on the White Sea, where Ivan, isolated from
his family, and seeing nobody but his gaoler, remained for the next
twelve years. Rumours of his confinement at Kholmogory having leaked
out, he was secretly transferred to the fortress of Schlüsselburg
(1756), where he was still more rigorously guarded, the very commandant
of the fortress not knowing who "a certain arrestant" committed to his
care really was. On the accession of Peter III. the condition of the
unfortunate prisoner seemed about to be ameliorated, for the
kind-hearted emperor visited and sympathized with him; but Peter himself
was overthrown a few weeks later. In the instructions sent to Ivan's
guardian, Prince Churmtyev, the latter was ordered to chain up his
charge, and even scourge him should he become refractory. On the
accession of Catherine still more stringent orders were sent to the
officer in charge of "the nameless one." If any attempt were made from
outside to release him, the prisoner was to be put to death; in no
circumstances was he to be delivered alive into any one's hands, even if
his deliverers produced the empress's own sign-manual authorizing his
release. By this time, twenty years of solitary confinement had
disturbed Ivan's mental equilibrium, though he does not seem to have
been actually insane. Nevertheless, despite the mystery surrounding him,
he was well aware of his imperial origin, and always called himself
_gosudar_ (sovereign). Though instructions had been given to keep him
ignorant, he had been taught his letters and could read his Bible. Nor
could his residence at Schlüsselburg remain concealed for ever, and its
discovery was the cause of his ruin. A sub-lieutenant of the garrison,
Vasily Mirovich, found out all about him, and formed a plan for freeing
and proclaiming him emperor. At midnight on the 5th of July 1764,
Mirovich won over some of the garrison, arrested the commandant,
Berednikov, and demanded the delivery of Ivan, who there and then was
murdered by his gaolers in obedience to the secret instructions already
in their possession.

See R. Nisbet Bain, _The Pupils of Peter the Great_ (London, 1897); M.
Semevsky, _Ivan VI. Antonovich_ (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1866); A.
Brückner, _The Emperor Ivan VI. and his Family_ (Rus.) (Moscow, 1874);
V. A. Bilbasov, _Geschichte Catherine II._ (vol. ii., Berlin,
1891-1893). (R. N. B.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Ivan V., if we count from the first grand duke of that name, as
most Russian historians do; Ivan II., if, with the minority, we
reckon from Ivan the Terrible as the first Russian tsar.

IVANGOROD, a fortified town of Russian Poland, in the government of
Lublin, 64 m. by rail S.E. from Warsaw, at the confluence of the Wieprz
with the Vistula. It is defended by nine forts on the right bank of the
Vistula and by three on the left bank, and, with Warsaw, Novo-Georgievsk
and Brest-Litovsk, forms the Polish "quadrilateral."

IVANOVO-VOZNESENSK, a town of middle Russia, in the government of
Vladimir, 86 m. by rail N. of the town of Vladimir. Pop. (1887) 22,000;
(1900) 64,628. It consists of what were originally two villages--Ivanovo,
dating from the 16th century, and Voznesensk, of much more recent
date--united into a town in 1861. Of best note among the public buildings
are the cathedral, and the church of the Intercession of the Virgin,
formerly associated with an important monastery founded in 1579 and
abandoned in 1754. One of the colleges of the town contains a public
library. Linen-weaving was introduced in 1751, and in 1776 the
manufacture of chintzes was brought from Schlüsselburg. The town has
cotton factories, calico print-works, iron-works and chemical works.

IVARR, BEINLAUSI (d. 873), son of Ragnar Lothbrok, the great Viking
chieftain, is known in English and Continental annals as Inuaer, Ingwar
or Hingwar. He was one of the Danish leaders in the Sheppey expedition
of 855 and was perhaps present at the siege of York in 867. The chief
incident in his life was his share in the martyrdom of St Edmund in 870.
He seems to have been the leader of the Danes on that occasion, and by
this act he probably gained the epithet "crudelissimus" by which he is
usually described. It is probable that he is to be identified with
Imhar, king of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain, who was active
in Ireland between the years 852 and 873, the year of his death.

IVIZA, IBIZA or IVIÇA, an island in the Mediterranean Sea, belonging to
Spain, and forming part of the archipelago known as the Balearic Islands
(q.v.). Pop. (1900) 23,524; area 228 sq. m. Iviza lies 50 m. S.W. of
Majorca and about 60 m. from Cape San Martin on the coast of Spain. Its
greatest length from north-east to south-west is about 25 m. and its
greatest breadth about 13 m. The coast is indented by numerous small
bays, the principal of which are those of San Antonio on the north-west,
and of Iviza on the south-east. Of all the Balearic group, Iviza is the
most varied in its scenery and the most fruitful. The hilly parts which
culminate in the Pico de Atalayasa (1560 ft.), are richly wooded. The
climate is for the most part mild and agreeable, though the hot winds
from the African coast are sometimes troublesome. Oil, corn and fruits
(of which the most important are the fig, prickly pear, almond and
carob-bean) are the principal products; hemp and flax are also grown,
but the inhabitants are rather indolent, and their modes of culture are
very primitive. There are numerous salt-pans along the coast, which were
formerly worked by the Spanish government. Fruit, salt, charcoal, lead
and stockings of native manufacture are exported. The imports are rice,
flour, sugar, woollen goods and cotton. The capital of the island, and,
indeed, the only town of much importance--for the population is
remarkably scattered--is Iviza or La Ciudad (6527), a fortified town on
the south-east coast, consisting of a lower and upper portion, and
possessing a good harbour, a 13th-century Gothic collegiate church and
an ancient castle. Iviza was the see of a bishop from 1782 to 1851.

South of Iviza lies the smaller and more irregular island of Formentera
(pop., 1900, 2243; area, 37 sq. m.), which is said to derive its name
from the production of wheat. With Iviza it agrees both in general
appearance and in the character of its products, but it is altogether
destitute of streams. Goats and sheep are found in the mountains, and
the coasts are greatly frequented by flamingoes. Iviza and Formentera
are the principal islands of the lesser or western Balearic group,
formerly known as the Pityusae or Pine Islands.

IVORY, SIR JAMES (1765-1842), Scottish mathematician, was born in Dundee
in 1765. In 1779 he entered the university of St Andrews, distinguishing
himself especially in mathematics. He then studied theology; but, after
two sessions at St Andrews and one at Edinburgh, he abandoned all idea
of the church, and in 1786 he became an assistant-teacher of mathematics
and natural philosophy in a newly established academy at Dundee. Three
years later he became partner in and manager of a flax-spinning company
at Douglastown in Forfarshire, still, however, prosecuting in moments of
leisure his favourite studies. He was essentially a self-trained
mathematician, and was not only deeply versed in ancient and modern
geometry, but also had a full knowledge of the analytical methods and
discoveries of the continental mathematicians. His earliest memoir,
dealing with an analytical expression for the rectification of the
ellipse, is published in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh_ (1796); and this and his later papers on "Cubic Equations"
(1799) and "Kepler's Problem" (1802) evince great facility in the
handling of algebraic formulae. In 1804 after the dissolution of the
flax-spinning company of which he was manager, he obtained one of the
mathematical chairs in the Royal Military College at Marlow (afterwards
removed to Sandhurst); and till the year 1816, when falling health
obliged him to resign, he discharged his professional duties with
remarkable success. During this period he published in the
_Philosophical Transactions_ several important memoirs, which earned for
him the Copley medal in 1814 and ensured his election as a Fellow of the
Royal Society in 1815. Of special importance in the history of
attractions is the first of these earlier memoirs (_Phil. Trans._,
1809), in which the problem of the attraction of a homogeneous ellipsoid
upon an external point is reduced to the simpler case of the attraction
of another but related ellipsoid upon a corresponding point interior to
it. This theorem is known as Ivory's theorem. His later papers in the
_Philosophical Transactions_ treat of astronomical refractions, of
planetary perturbations, of equilibrium of fluid masses, &c. For his
investigations in the first named of these he received a royal medal in
1826 and again in 1839. In 1831, on the recommendation of Lord Brougham,
King William IV. granted him a pension of £300 per annum, and conferred
on him the Hanoverian Guelphic order of knighthood. Besides being
directly connected with the chief scientific societies of his own
country, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Irish Academy, &c.,
he was corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences both of
Paris and Berlin, and of the Royal Society of Göttingen. He died at
London on the 21st of September 1842.

A list of his works is given in the _Catalogue of Scientific Papers of
the Royal Society of London_.

IVORY (Fr. _ivoire_, Lat. _ebur_), strictly speaking a term confined to
the material represented by the tusk of the elephant, and for commercial
purposes almost entirely to that of the male elephant. In Africa both
the male and female elephant produce good-sized tusks; in the Indian
variety the female is much less bountifully provided, and in Ceylon
perhaps not more than 1% of either sex have any tusks at all. Ivory is
in substance very dense, the pores close and compact and filled with a
gelatinous solution which contributes to the beautiful polish which may
be given to it and makes it easy to work. It may be placed between bone
and horn; more fibrous than bone and therefore less easily torn or
splintered. For a scientific definition it would be difficult to find a
better one than that given by Sir Richard Owen. He says:[1] "The name
ivory is now restricted to that modification of dentine or tooth
substance which in transverse sections or fractures shows lines of
different colours, or striae, proceeding in the arc of a circle and
forming by their decussations minute curvilinear lozenge-shaped spaces."
These spaces are formed by an immense number of exceedingly minute tubes
placed very close together, radiating outwards in all directions. It is
to this arrangement of structure that ivory owes its fine grain and
almost perfect elasticity, and the peculiar marking resembling the
engine-turning on the case of a watch, by which many people are guided
in distinguishing it from celluloid or other imitations. Elephants'
tusks are the upper incisor teeth of the animal, which, starting in
earliest youth from a semi-solid vascular pulp, grow during the whole of
its existence, gathering phosphates and other earthy matters and
becoming hardened as in the formation of teeth generally. The tusk is
built up in layers, the inside layer being the last produced. A large
proportion is embedded in the bone sockets of the skull, and is hollow
for some distance up in a conical form, the hollow becoming less and
less as it is prolonged into a narrow channel which runs along as a
thread or as it is sometimes called, nerve, towards the point of the
tooth. The outer layer, or bark, is enamel of similar density to the
central part. Besides the elephant's tooth or tusk we recognize as
ivory, for commercial purposes, the teeth of the hippopotamus, walrus,
narwhal, cachalot or sperm-whale and of some animals of the wild boar
class, such as the warthog of South Africa. Practically, however,
amongst these the hippo and walrus tusks are the only ones of importance
for large work, though boars' tusks come to the sale-rooms in
considerable quantities from India and Africa.

Generally speaking, the supply of ivory imported into Europe comes from
Africa; some is Asiatic, but much that is shipped from India is really
African, coming by way of Zanzibar and Mozambique to Bombay. A certain
amount is furnished by the vast stores of remains of prehistoric animals
still existing throughout Russia, principally in Siberia in the
neighbourhood of the Lena and other rivers discharging into the Arctic
Ocean. The mammoth and mastodon seem at one time to have been common
over the whole surface of the globe. In England tusks have been recently
dug up--for instance at Dungeness--as long as 12 ft. and weighing 200
lb. The Siberian deposits have been worked for now nearly two centuries.
The store appears to be as inexhaustible as a coalfield. Some think that
a day may come when the spread of civilization may cause the utter
disappearance of the elephant in Africa, and that it will be to these
deposits that we may have to turn as the only source of animal ivory. Of
late years in England the use of mammoth ivory has shown signs of
decline. Practically none passed through the London sale-rooms during
1903-1906. Before that, parcels of 10 to 20 tons were not uncommon. Not
all of it is good; perhaps about half of what comes to England is so,
the rest rotten; specimens, however, are found as perfect and in as fine
condition as if recently killed, instead of having lain hidden and
preserved for thousands of years in the icy ground. There is a
considerable literature (see Shooting) on the subject of big-game
hunting, which includes that of the elephant, hippopotamus and smaller
tusk-bearing animals. Elephants until comparatively recent times roamed
over the whole of Africa from the northern deserts to the Cape of Good
Hope. They are still abundant in Central Africa and Uganda, but
civilization has gradually driven them farther and farther into the
wilds and impenetrable forests of the interior.

The quality of ivory varies according to the districts whence it is
obtained, the soft variety of the eastern parts of the continent being
the most esteemed. When in perfect condition African ivory should be if
recently cut of a warm, transparent, mellow tint, with as little as
possible appearance of grain or mottling. Asiatic ivory is of a denser
white, more open in texture and softer to work. But it is apt to turn
yellow sooner, and is not so easy to polish. Unlike bone, ivory requires
no preparation, but is fit for immediate working. That from the
neighbourhood of Cameroon is very good, then ranks the ivory from
Loango, Congo, Gabun and Ambriz; next the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and
Cape Coast Castle. That of French Sudan is nearly always "ringy," and
some of the Ambriz variety also. We may call Zanzibar and Mozambique
varieties soft; Angola and Ambriz all hard. Ambriz ivory was at one time
much esteemed, but there is comparatively little now. Siam ivory is
rarely if ever soft. Abyssinian has its soft side, but Egypt is
practically the only place where both descriptions are largely
distributed. A drawback to Abyssinian ivory is a prevalence of a rather
thick bark. Egyptian is liable to be cracked, from the extreme
variations of temperature; more so formerly than now, since better
methods of packing and transit are used. Ivory is extremely sensitive to
sudden extremes of temperature; for this reason billiard balls should be
kept where the temperature is fairly equable.

The market terms by which descriptions of ivory are distinguished are
liable to mislead. They refer to ports of shipment rather than to places
of origin. For instance, "Malta" ivory is a well-understood term, yet
there are no ivory producing animals in that island.

Tusks should be regular and tapering in shape, not very curved or
twisted, for economy in cutting; the coat fine, thin, clear and
transparent. The substance of ivory is so elastic and flexible that
excellent riding-whips have been cut longitudinally from whole tusks.
The size to which tusks grow and are brought to market depends on race
rather than on size of elephants. The latter run largest in equatorial
Africa. Asiatic bull elephant tusks seldom exceed 50 lb. in weight,
though lengths of 9 ft. and up to 150 lb. weight are not entirely
unknown. Record lengths for African tusks are the one presented to
George V., when prince of Wales, on his marriage (1893), measuring 8 ft.
7½ in. and weighing 165 lb., and the pair of tusks which were brought to
the Zanzibar market by natives in 1898, weighing together over 450 lb.
One of the latter is new in the Natural History Museum at South
Kensington; the other is in Messrs Rodgers & Co.'s collection at
Sheffield. For length the longest known are those belonging to Messrs
Rowland Ward, Piccadilly, which measure 11 ft. and 11 ft. 5 in.
respectively, with a combined weight of 293 lb. Osteodentine, resulting
from the effects of injuries from spearheads or bullets, is sometimes
found in tusks. This formation, resembling stalactites, grows with the
tusk, the bullets or iron remaining embedded without trace of their
entry.

The most important commercial distinction of the qualities of ivory is
that of the _hard_ and _soft_ varieties. The terms are difficult to
define exactly. Generally speaking, hard or bright ivory is distinctly
harder to cut with the saw or other tools. It is, as it were, glassy and
transparent. Soft contains more moisture, stands differences of climate
and temperature better, and does not crack so easily. The expert is
guided by the shape of the tooth, by the colour and quality of the bark
or skin, and by the transparency when cut, or even before, as at the
point of the tooth. Roughly, a line might be drawn almost centrally down
the map of Africa, on the west of which the hard quality prevails, on the
east the soft. In choosing ivory for example for knife-handles--people
rather like to see a pretty grain, strongly marked; but the finest
quality in the hard variety, which is generally used for them, is the
closest and freest from grain. The curved or canine teeth of the
hippopotamus are valuable and come in considerable quantities to the
European markets. Owen describes this variety as "an extremely dense,
compact kind of dentine, partially defended on the outside by a thin
layer of enamel as hard as porcelain; so hard as to strike fire with
steel." By reason of this hardness it is not at all liked by the turner
and ivory workers, and before being touched by them the enamel has to be
removed by acid, or sometimes by heating and sudden cooling, when it can
be scaled off. The texture is slightly curdled, mottled or damasked.
Hippo ivory was at one time largely used for artificial teeth, but now
mostly for umbrella and stick-handles; whole (in their natural form) for
fancy door-handles and the like. In the trade the term is not
"riverhorse" but "seahorse teeth." Walrus ivory is less dense and coarser
than hippo, but of fine quality--what there is of it, for the oval centre
which has more the character of coarse bone unfortunately extends a long
way up. At one time a large supply came to the market, but of late years
there has been an increasing scarcity, the animals having been almost
exterminated by the ruthless persecution to which they have been
subjected in their principal haunts in the northern seas. It is little
esteemed now, though our ancestors thought highly of it. Comparatively
large slabs are to be found in medieval sculpture of the 11th and 12th
centuries, and the grips of most oriental swords, ancient and modern, are
made from it. The ivory from the single tusk or horn of the narwhal is
not of much commercial value except as an ornament or curiosity. Some
horns attain a length of 8 to 10 ft., 4 in. thick at the base. It is
dense in substance and of a fair colour, but owing to the central cavity
there is little of it fit for anything larger than napkin-rings.

_Ivory in Commerce, and its Industrial Applications._--Almost the whole
of the importation of ivory to Europe was until recent years confined to
London, the principal distributing mart of the world. But the opening up
of the Congo trade has placed the port of Antwerp in a position which
has equalled and, for a time, may surpass that of London. Other
important markets are Liverpool and Hamburg; and Germany, France and
Portugal have colonial possessions in Africa, from which it is imported.
America is a considerable importer for its own requirements. From the
German Cameroon alone, according to Schilling, there were exported
during the ten years ending 1905, 452,100 kilos of ivory. Mr Buxton
estimates the amount of ivory imported into the United Kingdom at about
500 tons. If we give the same to Antwerp we have from these two ports
alone no less than 1000 tons a year to be provided. Allowing a weight so
high as 30 lb. per pair of tusks (which is far too high, perhaps twice
too high) we should have here alone between thirty and forty thousand
elephants to account for. It is true that every pair of tusks that comes
to the market represents a dead elephant, but not necessarily by any
means a slain or even a recently killed one, as is popularly supposed
and unfortunately too often repeated. By far the greater proportion is
the result of stores accumulated by natives, a good part coming from
animals which have died a natural death. Not 20% is _live_ ivory or
recently killed; the remainder is known in the trade as _dead_ ivory.

In 1827 the principal London ivory importers imported 3000 cwt. in
1850, 8000 cwt. The highest price up to 1855 was £55 per cwt. At the
July sales in 1905 a record price was reached for billiard-ball teeth
of £167 per cwt. The total imports into the United Kingdom were,
according to Board of Trade returns, in 1890, 14,349 cwt.; in 1895,
10,911 cwt.; in 1900, 9889 cwt.; in 1904, 9045 cwt.

From Messrs Hale & Son's (ivory brokers, 10 Fenchurch Avenue) Ivory
Report of the second quarterly sales in London, April 1906, it appears
that the following were offered:--

Tons.

From Zanzibar, Bombay, Mozambique and Siam 17
Egyptian 19¼
West Coast African 11
Lisbon 1
Abyssinian 6¾
---
55

Sea horse (hippopotamus teeth) 1¾
Walrus ¼
Waste ivory 10¼
---
67¼

Hard ivory was scarce. West Coast African was principally of the Gabun
description, and some of very fine quality. There was very little
inquiry for walrus. The highest prices ranged as follows: Soft East
Coast tusks (Zanzibar, Mozambique, Bombay and Siam), 102 to 143 lb.
each £66, 10s. to £75, 10s. per cwt. Billiard-ball scrivelloes, £104
per cwt. Cut points for billiard-balls (3(1/8) in. to 2(3/8) to 3 in.)
£114 to £151 per cwt. Seahorse (for best), 3s. 6d. to 4s. 1d. per lb.
Boars' tusks, 6d. to 7d. per lb.

_Quantities of ivory offered to Public auction (from Messrs Hale &
Son's Reports)._

+--------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
| | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. |
+--------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
| | Tons. | Tons. | Tons. |
| Zanzibar, Bombay, Mozambique and Siam| 81 | 75 | 76 |
| Egyptian | 49¾ | 72¾ | 81¾ |
| Abyssinian | 22¾ | 9¾ | 23¼ |
| West Coast African | 46¾ | 39½ | 41½ |
| Lisbon | 3 | 3 | 1¾ |
| +-------+-------+-------+
| | 203¼ | 200 | 224¼ |
| Seahorse teeth and Boars' tusks | 7 | 9¾ | 7 |
| +-------+-------+-------+
| | 210¼ | 209¾ | 231½ |
+--------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+

_Fluctuations in prices of ivory at the London Sale-Room (from Messrs
Hale & Son's Charts, which show the prices at each quarterly sale from
1870)._

+--------------------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| |1870.|1880.|1890.|1900.|1905.|
| +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Billiard Ball pieces | £55 | £90 |£112 | £68 |£167 |
|Averages-- | | | | | |
| Hard Egyptian 36 to 50 lb. | 30 | 38 | 50 | 29 | 48 |
| Soft East Indian 50 to 70 lb. | 67 | 55 | 88 | 57 | 72 |
| West Coast African 50 to 70 lb.| 36 | 57 | 65 | 48 | 61 |
| Hard East African 50 to 70 lb. | 37 | 49 | 64 | 48 | 61 |
+--------------------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

In October 1889 soft East Indian fetched an average of £82 per cwt.,
but in several instances higher prices were realized, and one lot
reached £88 per cwt. At the Liverpool April sales 1906 about 7¼ tons
were offered from Gabun, Angola, and Cameroon (from the last 5¾ tons).
To the port of Antwerp the imports were 6830 cwt. in 1904 and 6570
cwt. in 1905; of which 5310 cwt. and 4890 cwt. respectively were from
the Congo State.

The leading London sales are held quarterly in Mincing Lane, a very
interesting and wonderful display of tusks and ivory of all kinds
being laid out previously for inspection in the great warehouses known
as the "Ivory Floor" in the London docks. The quarterly Liverpool
sales follow the London ones, with a short interval.

The important part which ivory plays in the industrial arts not only for
decorative, but also for domestic applications is hardly sufficiently
recognized. Nothing is wasted of this valuable product. Hundreds of
sacks full of cuttings and shavings, and scraps returned by
manufacturers after they have used what they require for their
particular trade, come to the mart. The dust is used for polishing, and
in the preparation of Indian ink, and even for food in the form of ivory
jelly. The scraps come in for inlaying and for the numberless purposes
in which ivory is used for small domestic and decorative objects. India,
which has been called the backbone of the trade, takes enormous
quantities of the rings left in the turning of billiard-balls, which
serve as women's bangles, or for making small toys and models, and in
other characteristic Indian work. Without endeavouring to enumerate all
the applications, a glance may be cast at the most important of those
which consume the largest quantity. Chief among these is the manufacture
of billiard-balls, of cutlery handles, of piano-keys and of brushware
and toilet articles. Billiard-balls demand the highest quality of ivory;
for the best balls the soft description is employed, though recently,
through the competition of bonzoline and similar substitutes, the hard
has been more used in order that the weight may be assimilated to that
of the artificial kind. Therefore the most valuable tusks of all are
those adapted for the billiard-ball trade. The term used is
"scrivelloes," and is applied to teeth proper for the purpose, weighing
not over about 7 lb. The division of the tusk into smaller pieces for
subsequent manufacture, in order to avoid waste, is a matter of
importance.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

The accompanying diagrams (figs. 1 and 2) show the method; the cuts
are made radiating from an imaginary centre of the curve of the tusk.
In after processes the various trades have their own particular
methods for making the most of the material. In making a billiard-ball
of the English size the first thing to be done is to rough out, from
the cylindrical section, a sphere about 2¼ in. in diameter, which will
eventually be 2(1/16) or sometimes for professional players a little
larger. One hemisphere--as shown in the diagrams (fig. 2)--is first
turned, and the resulting ring detached with a parting tool. The
diameter is accurately taken and the subsequent removals taken off in
other directions. The ball is then fixed in a wooden chuck, the half
cylinder reversed, and the operation repeated for the other
hemisphere. It is now left five years to season and then turned dead
true. The rounder and straighter the tusk selected for ball-making the
better. Evidently, if the tusk is oval and the ball the size of the
least diameter, its sides which come nearer to the bark or rind will
be coarser and of a different density from those portions further
removed from this outer skin. The matching of billiard-balls is
important, for extreme accuracy in weight is essential. It is usual to
bleach them, as the purchaser--or at any rate the distributing
intermediary--likes to have them of a dead white. But this is a
mistake, for bleaching with chemicals takes out the gelatine to some
extent, alters the quality and affects the density; it also makes them
more liable to crack, and they are not nearly so nice-looking.
Billiard-balls should be bought in summer time when the temperature is
most equable, and gently used till the winter season. On an average
three balls of fine quality are got out of a tooth. The stock of more
than one great manufacturer surpasses at times 30,000 in number. But
although ball teeth rose in 1905 to £167 a cwt., the price of
billiard-balls was the same in 1905 as it was in 1885. Roughly
speaking, there are about twelve different qualities and prices of
billiard-balls, and eight of pyramid- and pool-balls, the latter
ranging from half a guinea to two guineas each.

The ivory for piano-keys is delivered to the trade in the shape of what
are known as heads and tails, the former for the parts which come under
the fingers, the latter for that running up between the black keys. The
two are joined afterwards on the keyboard with extreme accuracy.
Piano-keys are bleached, but organists for some reason or other prefer
unbleached keys. The soft variety is mostly used for high-class work and
preferably of the Egyptian type.

The great centres of the ivory industry for the ordinary objects of
common domestic use are in England, for cutlery handles Sheffield, for
billiard-balls and piano-keys London. For cutlery a large firm such as
Rodgers & Sons uses an average of some twenty tons of ivory annually,
mostly of the hard variety. But for billiard-balls and piano-keys
America is now a large producer, and a considerable quantity is made in
France and Germany. Brush backs are almost wholly in English hands.
Dieppe has long been famous for the numberless little ornaments and
useful articles such as statuettes, crucifixes, little bookcovers,
paper-cutters, combs, serviette-rings and _articles de Paris_ generally.
And St Claude in the Jura, and Geislingen in Würtemberg, and Erbach in
Hesse, Germany, are amongst the most important centres of the industry.
India and China supply the multitude of toys, models, chess and
draughtsmen, puzzles, workbox fittings and other curiosities.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

_Vegetable Ivory, &c._--Some allusion may be made to vegetable ivory
and artificial substitutes. The plants yielding the vegetable ivory of
commerce represent two or more species of an anomalous genus of palms,
and are known to botanists as _Phytelephas_. They are natives of
tropical South America, occurring chiefly on the banks of the river
Magdalena, Colombia, always found in damp localities, not only,
however, on the lower coast region as in Darien, but also at a
considerable elevation above the sea. They are mostly found in
separate groves, not mixed with other trees or shrubs. The plant is
severally known as the "tagua" by the Indians on the banks of the
Magdalena, as the "anta" on the coast of Darien, and as the
"pulli-punta" and "homero" in Peru. It is stemless or short-stemmed,
and crowned with from twelve to twenty very long pinnatifid leaves.
The plants are dioecious, the males forming higher, more erect and
robust trunks than the females. The male inflorescence is in the form
of a simple fleshy cylindrical spadix covered with flowers; the female
flowers are also in a single spadix, which, however, is shorter than
in the male. The fruit consists of a conglomerated head composed of
six or seven drupes, each containing from six to nine seeds, and the
whole being enclosed in a walled woody covering forming altogether a
globular head as large as that of a man. A single plant sometimes
bears at the same time from six to eight of these large heads of
fruit, each weighing from 20 to 25 lb. In its very young state the
seed contains a clear insipid fluid, which travellers take advantage
of to allay thirst. As it gets older this fluid becomes milky and of a
sweet taste, and it gradually continues to change both in taste and
consistence until it becomes so hard as to make it valuable as a
substitute for animal ivory. In their young and fresh state the fruits
are eaten with avidity by bears, hogs and other animals. The seeds, or
nuts as they are usually called when fully ripe and hard, are used by
the American Indians for making small ornamental articles and toys.
They are imported into Britain in considerable quantities, frequently
under the name of "Corozo" nuts, a name by which the fruits of some
species of _Attalea_ (another palm with hard ivory-like seeds) are
known in Central America--their uses being chiefly for small articles
of turnery. Of vegetable ivory Great Britain imported in 1904 1200
tons, of which about 400 tons were re-exported, principally to
Germany. It is mainly and largely used for coat buttons.

Many artificial compounds have, from time to time, been tried as
substitutes for ivory; amongst them potatoes treated with sulphuric
acid. Celluloid is familiar to us nowadays. In the form of bonzoline,
into which it is said to enter, it is used largely for billiard balls;
and a new French substitute--a caseine made from milk, called
gallalith--has begun to be much used for piano keys in the cheaper
sorts of instrument. Odontolite is mammoth ivory, which through lapse
of time and from surroundings becomes converted into a substance known
as fossil or blue ivory, and is used occasionally in jewelry as
turquoise, which it very much resembles. It results from the tusks of
antediluvian mammoths buried in the earth for thousands of years,
during which time under certain conditions the ivory becomes slowly
penetrated with the metallic salts which give it the peculiar vivid
blue colour of turquoise.

_Ivory Sculpture and the Decorative Arts._--The use of ivory as a
material peculiarly adapted for sculpture and decoration has been
universal in the history of civilization. The earliest examples which
have come down to us take us back to prehistoric times, when, so far as
our knowledge goes, civilization as we understand it had attained no
higher degree than that of the dwellers in caves, or of the most
primitive races. Throughout succeeding ages there is continued evidence
that no other substance--except perhaps wood, of which we have even
fewer ancient examples--has been so consistently connected with man's
art-craftsmanship. It is hardly too much to say that to follow properly
the history of ivory sculpture involves the study of the whole world's
art in all ages. It will take us back to the most remote antiquity, for
we have examples of the earliest dynasties of Egypt and Assyria. Nor is
there entire default when we come to the periods of the highest
civilization of Greece and Rome. It has held an honoured place in all
ages for the adornment of the palaces of the great, not only in
sculpture proper but in the rich inlay of panelling, of furniture,
chariots and other costly articles. The Bible teems with references to
its beauty and value. And when, in the days of Pheidias, Greek sculpture
had reached the highest perfection, we learn from ancient writers that
colossal statues were constructed--notably the "Zeus of Olympia" and the
"Athena of the Parthenon." The faces, hands and other exposed portions
of these figures were of ivory, and the question, therefore, of the
method of production of such extremely large slabs as perhaps were used
has been often debated. A similar difficulty arises with regard to other
pieces of considerable size, found, for example, amongst consular
diptychs. It has been conjectured that some means of softening and
moulding ivory was known to the ancients, but as a matter of fact though
it may be softened it cannot be again restored to its original
condition. If up to the 4th century we are unable to point to a large
number of examples of sculpture in ivory, from that date onwards the
chain is unbroken, and during the five or six hundred years of unrest
and strife from the decline of the Roman empire in the 5th century to
the dawn of the Gothic revival of art in the 11th or 12th, ivory
sculpture alone of the sculptural arts carries on the preservation of
types and traditions of classic times in central Europe. Most important
indeed is the rôle which existing examples of ivory carving play in the
history of the last two centuries of the consulates of the Western and
Eastern empires. Though the evidences of decadence in art may be marked,
the close of that period brings us down to the end of the reign of
Justinian (527-563). Two centuries later the iconoclastic persecutions
in the Eastern empire drive westward and compel to settle there numerous
colonies of monks and artificers. Throughout the Carlovingian period,
the examples of ivory sculpture which we possess in not inconsiderable
quantity are of extreme importance in the history of the early
development of Byzantine art in Europe. And when the Western world of
art arose from its torpor, freed itself from Byzantine shackles and
traditions, and began to think for itself, it is to the sculptures in
ivory of the Gothic art of the 13th and 14th centuries that we turn with
admiration of their exquisite beauty of expression. Up to about the 14th
century the influence of the church was everywhere predominant in all
matters relating to art. In ivories, as in mosaics, enamels or miniature
painting it would be difficult to find a dozen examples, from the age of
Constantine onwards, other than sacred ones or of sacred symbolism. But
as the period of the Renaissance approached, the influence of romantic
literature began to assert itself, and a feeling and style similar to
those which are characteristic of the charming series of religious art
in ivory, so touchingly conceived and executed, meet us in many objects
in ivory destined for ordinary domestic uses and ornament. Mirror cases,
caskets for jewelry or toilet purposes, combs, the decoration of arms,
or of saddlery or of weapons of the chase, are carved and chased with
scenes of real life or illustrations of the romances, which bring home
to us in a vivid manner details of the manners and customs, amusements,
dresses and domestic life of the times. With the Renaissance and a
return to classical ideas, joined with a love of display and of gorgeous
magnificence, art in ivory takes a secondary place. There is a want of
simplicity and of originality. It is the period of the commencement of
decadence. Then comes the period nicknamed _rococo_, which persisted so
long. Ivory carving follows the vulgar fashion, is content with copying
or adapting, and until the revival in our own times is, except in rare
instances, no longer to be classed as a fine art. It becomes a trade and
is in the hands of the mechanic of the workshop. In this necessarily
brief and condensed sketch we have been concerned mainly with ivory
carving in Europe. It will be necessary to give also, presently, some
indications enabling the inquirer to follow the history--or at least to
put him on the track of it--not only in the different countries of the
West but also in India, China and Japan.

_Prehistoric Ivory Carvings._--These are the result of investigations
made about the middle of the 19th century in the cave dwellings of the
Dordogne in France and also of the lake dwellings of Switzerland. As
records they are unique in the history of art. Further than this our
wonderment is excited at finding these engravings or sculptures in the
round, these chiselled examples of the art of the uncultivated savage,
conceived and executed with a feeling of delicacy and restraint which
the most modern artist might envy. Who they were who executed them must
be left to the palaeontologist and geologist to decide. We can only be
certain that they were contemporary with the period when the mammoth and
the reindeer still roved freely in southern France. The most important
examples are the sketch of the mammoth (see PAINTING, Plate I.), on a
slab of ivory now in the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, the head and
shoulders of an ibex carved in the round on a piece of reindeer horn,
and the figure of a woman (instances of representations of the human
form are most rare) naked and wearing a necklace and bracelet. Many of
the originals are in the museum at St Germain-en-Laye, and casts of a
considerable number are in the British Museum.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Panel with Cartouche, Nineveh.]

_Ancient Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman Ivories._--We know from
ancient writers that the Egyptians were skilled in ivory carving and
that they procured ivory in large quantities from Ethiopia. The Louvre
possesses examples of a kind of flat castanets or clappers, in the form
of the curve of the tusks themselves, engraved in outline, beautifully
modelled hands forming the tapering points; and large quantities of
small objects, including a box of plain form and simple decoration
identified from the inscribed praenomen as the fifth dynasty, about 4000
B.C. The British Museum and the museum at Cairo are also comparatively
rich. But no other collection in the world contains such an interesting
collection of ancient Assyrian ivories as that in the British Museum.
Those exhibited number some fifty important pieces, and many other
fragments are, on account of their fragility or state of decay, stowed
away. The collection is the result of the excavations by Layard about
1840 on the supposed site of Nineveh opposite the modern city of Mosul.
When found they were so decomposed from the lapse of time as scarcely to
bear touching or the contact of the external air. Layard hit upon the
ingenious plan of boiling in a solution of gelatine and thus restoring
to them the animal matter which had dried up in the course of centuries.
Later, the explorations of Flinders Petrie and others at Abydos brought
to light a considerable number of sculptured fragments which may be even
two thousand years older than those of Nineveh. They have been exhibited
in London and since distributed amongst various museums at home and
abroad.

[Illustration: From photo by W. A. Mansell & Co.

FIG. 4.--Leaf of diptych showing combats with stags; in the Liverpool
Museum.]

_Consular and Official and Private Diptychs._--About fifty of the
remarkable plaques called "consular diptychs," of the time of the three
last centuries of the consulates of the Roman and Greek empire have been
preserved. They range in date from perhaps mid-fourth to mid-sixth
centuries, and as with two or three exceptions the dates are certain it
would be difficult to overestimate their historic or intrinsic value.
The earliest of absolutely certain date is the diptych of Aosta (A.D.
408), the first after the recognition of Christianity; or, if the Monza
diptych represents, as some think, the Consul Stilicon, then we may
refer back six years earlier. At any rate the edict of Theodosius in
A.D. 384, concerning the restriction of the use of ivory to the diptychs
of the regular consuls, is evidence that the custom must have been long
established. According to some authorities the beautiful leaf of diptych
in the Liverpool Museum (fig. 4) is a consular one and to be ascribed to
Marcus Julius Philippus (A.D. 248). Similarly the Gherardesca leaf in
the British Museum may be accepted as of the Consul Marcus Aurelius
(A.D. 308). But the whole question of the half dozen earliest examples
is conjectural. With a few notable exceptions they show decadence in
art. Amongst the finest may be cited the leaf with the combats with
stags at Liverpool, the diptych of Probianus at Berlin and the two
leaves, one of Anastasius, the other of Orestes, in the Victoria and
Albert Museum. The literature concerning these diptychs is voluminous,
from the time of the erudite treatise by Gori published in 1759 to the
present day. The latest of certain date is that of Basilius, consul of
the East in 541, the last of the consuls. The diptychs of private
individuals or of officials number about sixteen, and in the case of the
private ones have a far greater artistic value. Of these the Victoria
and Albert Museum possesses the most beautiful leaf of perhaps the
finest example of ancient ivory sculpture which has come down to us,
diptychon Meleretense, representing a Bacchante (fig. 5). The other
half, which is much injured, is in the Cluny Museum. Other important
pieces are the Aesculapius and Hygeia at Liverpool, the Hippolytus and
Phaedra at Brescia, the Barberini in the Bargello and at Vienna and the
Rufius Probianus at Berlin. Besides the diptychs ancient Greek and Roman
ivories before the recognition of Christianity are comparatively small
in number and are mostly in the great museums of the Vatican, Naples,
the British Museum, the Louvre and the Cluny Museum. Amongst them are
the statuette of Penthea, perhaps of the 3rd century (Cluny), a large
head of a woman (museum of Vienna) and the Bellerophon (British Museum),
nor must those of the Roman occupation in England and other countries be
forgotten. Notable instances are the plaque and ivory mask found at
Caerleon. Others are now in the Guildhall and British Museums, and most
continental European museums have examples connected with their own
history.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Leaf of Roman diptych, representing a Bacchante;
in the Victoria and Albert Museum.]

[Illustration: From photo by W. A. Mansell & Co.

FIG. 6.--Leaf of Diptych, representing Archangel; in the British Museum.]

_Early Christian and Early Byzantine Ivories._--The few examples we
possess of Christian ivories previous to the time of Constantine are not
of great importance from the point of view of the history of art. But
after that date the ivories which we may ascribe to the centuries from
the end of the 4th to at least the end of the 9th become of considerable
interest, on account of their connexion with the development of
Byzantine art in western Europe. With regard to exact origins and dates
opinions are largely divergent. In great part they are due to the
carrying on of traditions and styles by which the makers of the
sarcophagi were inspired, and the difficulties of ascription are
increased when in addition to the primitive elements the influence of
Byzantine systems introduced many new ideas derived from many extraneous
sources. The questions involved are of no small archaeological,
iconographical and artistic importance, but it must be admitted that we
are reduced to conjecture in many cases, and compelled to theorize. And
it would seem to be impossible to be more precise as to dates than
within a margin of sometimes three centuries. Then, again, we are met by
the question how far these ivories are connected with Byzantine art;
whether they were made in the West by immigrant Greeks, or indigenous
works, or purely imported productions. Some German critics have
endeavoured to construct a system of schools, and to form definite
groups, assigning them to Rome, Ravenna, Milan and Monza. Not only so,
but they claim to be precise in dating even to a certain decade of a
century. But it is certainly more than doubtful whether there is
sufficient evidence on which to found such assumptions. It is at least
probable that a considerable number of the ivories whose dates are given
by such a number of critics so wide a range as from the 4th to the 10th
century are nothing more than the work of the monks of the numerous
monasteries founded throughout the Carlovingian empire, copying and
adapting from whatever came into their hands. Many of them were Greek
immigrants exiled at the time of the iconoclastic persecutions. To these
must be added the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon missionaries, who brought with
them and disseminated their own national feeling and technique. We have
to take into account also the relations which existed not only with
Constantinople but also with the great governing provinces of Syria and
Egypt. Where all our information is so vague, and in the face of so much
conflicting opinion amongst authorities, it is not unreasonable to hold
with regard to very many of these ivories that instead of assigning them
to the age of Justinian or even the preceding century we ought rather to
postpone their dating from one to perhaps three centuries later and to
admit that we cannot be precise even within these limits. It would be
impossible to follow here the whole of the arguments relating to this
most important period of the development of ivory sculpture or to
mention a tithe of the examples which illustrate it. Amongst the most
striking the earliest is the very celebrated leaf of a diptych in the
British Museum representing an archangel (fig. 6). It is generally
admitted that we have no ivory of the 5th or 6th centuries or in fact of
any early medieval period which can compare with it in excellence of
design and workmanship. There is no record (it is believed) from whence
the museum obtained the ivory. There are at least plausible grounds for
surmising that it is identical with the "Angelus longus eburneus" of a
book-cover among the books brought to England by St Augustine which is
mentioned in a list of things belonging to Christchurch, Canterbury (see
Dart, _App._ p. xviii.). The dating of the four Passion plaques, also in
the British Museum, varies from the 5th to the 7th century. But although
most recent authorities accept the earlier date, the present writer
holds strongly that they are not anterior to, at earliest, the 7th
century. Even then they will remain, with the exception of the Monza oil
flask and perhaps the St Sabina doors, the earliest known representation
of the crucifixion. The ivory vase, with cover, in the British Museum,
appears to possess defined elements of the farther East, due perhaps to
the relations between Syria and Christian India or Ceylon. Other
important early Christian ivories are the series of pyxes, the diptych
in the treasury of St Ambrogio at Milan, the chair of Maximian at
Ravenna (most important as a type piece), the panel with the "Ascension"
in the Bavarian National Museum, the Brescia casket, the "Lorsch"
bookcovers of the Vatican and Victoria and Albert Museum, the Bodleian
and other bookcovers, the St Paul diptych in the Bargello at Florence
and the "Annunciation" plaque in the Trivulzio collection. So far as
unquestionably oriental specimens of Byzantine art are concerned they
are few in number, but we have in the famous Harbaville triptych in the
Louvre a super-excellent example.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Mirror Case, illustrating the Storming of the
Castle of Love; in the Victoria and Albert Museum.]

_Gothic Ivories._--The most generally charming period of ivory sculpture
is unquestionably that which, coincident with the Gothic revival in art,
marked the beginning of a great and lasting change. The formalism
imposed by Byzantine traditions gave place to a brighter, more delicate
and tenderer conception. This golden age of the ivory carver--at its
best in the 13th century--was still in evidence during the 14th, and
although there is the beginning of a transition in style in the 15th
century, the period of neglect and decadence which set in about the
beginning of the 16th hardly reached the acute stage until well on into
the 17th. To review the various developments both of religious art which
reigned almost alone until the 14th century, or of the secular side as
exemplified in the delightful mirror cases and caskets carved with
subjects from the romantic stories which were so popular, would be
impossible here. Almost every great museum and famous private collection
abounds in examples of the well-known diptychs and triptychs and little
portable oratories of this period. Some, as in a famous panel in the
British Museum, are marvels of minute workmanship, others of delicate
openwork and tracery. Others, again, are remarkable for the wonderful
way in which, in the compass of a few inches, whole histories and
episodes of the scriptural narratives are expressed in the most vivid
and telling manner. Charming above all are the statuettes of the Virgin
and Child which French and Flemish art, especially, have handed down to
us. Of these the Victoria and Albert Museum possesses a representative
collection. Another series of interest is that of the croziers or
pastoral staves, the development of which the student of ivories will be
careful to study in connexion with the earlier ones and the tau-headed
staves. In addition there are shrines, reliquaries, bookcovers,
liturgical combs, portable altars, pyxes, holy water buckets and
sprinklers, _flabella_ or liturgical fans, rosaries, _memento mori_,
paxes, small figures and groups, and almost every conceivable adjunct of
the sanctuary or for private devotion. It is to French or Flemish art
that the greater number and the most beautiful must be referred. At the
same time, to take one example only--the diptych and triptych of Bishop
Grandison in the British Museum--we have evidence that English ivory
carvers were capable of rare excellence of design and workmanship. Nor
can crucifixes be forgotten, though they are of extreme rarity before
the 17th century. A most beautiful 13th-century figure for one--though
only a fragment--is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Amongst secular
objects of this period, besides the mirror cases (fig. 7) and caskets,
there are hunting horns (the earlier ones probably oriental, or more or
less faithfully copied from oriental models), chess and draughtsmen
(especially the curious set from the isle of Lewis), combs, marriage
coffers (at one period remarkable Italian ones of bone), memorandum
tablets, seals, the pommels and cantles of saddles and a unique harp now
in the Louvre. The above enumeration will alone suffice to show that the
inquirer must be referred for details to the numerous works which treat
of medieval ivory sculpture.

_Ivory Sculpture from the 16th to the 19th Century._--Compared with the
wealth of ivory carving of the two preceding centuries, the 15th, and
especially the 16th, centuries are singularly poor in really fine work.
But before we arrive at the period of real decadence we shall come
across such things as the knife of Diana of Poitiers in the Louvre, the
sceptre of Louis XIII., the Rothschild hunting horn, many Italian powder
horns, the German Psyche in the Louvre, or the "Young Girl and Death" in
the Munich Museum, in which there is undoubtedly originality and talent
of the first order. The practice of ivory carving became extremely
popular throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in the
Netherlands and in Germany, and the amount of ivory consumed must have
been very great. But, with rare exceptions, and these for the most part
Flemish, it is art of an inferior kind, which seems to have been
abandoned to second-rate sculptors and the artisans of the workshop.
There is little originality, the rococo styles run riot, and we seem to
be condemned to wade through an interminable series of gods and
goddesses, bacchanalians and satyrs, pseudo-classical copies from the
antique and imitations of the schools of Rubens. As a matter of fact few
great museums, except the German ones, care to include in their
collections examples of these periods. Some exceptions are made in the
case of Flemish sculptors of such talent as François Duquesnoy
(Fiammingo), Gerard van Obstal or Lucas Fayd'herbe. In a lesser degree,
in Germany, Christoph Angermair, Leonhard Kern, Bernhard Strauss,
Elhafen, Kruger and Rauchmiller; and, in France, Jean Guillermin, David
le Marchand and Jean Cavalier. Crucifixes were turned out in enormous
numbers, some of not inconsiderable merit, but, for the most part, they
represent anatomical exercises varying but slightly from a pattern of
which a celebrated one attributed to Faistenberger may be taken as a
type. Tankards abound, and some, notably the one in the Jones
collection, than which perhaps no finer example exists, are also of a
high standard. Duquesnoy's work is well illustrated by the charming
series of six plaques in the Victoria and Albert Museum known as the
"Fiammingo boys." Amongst the crowd of objects in ivory of all
descriptions of the early 18th century, the many examples of the curious
implements known as _rappoirs_, or tobacco graters, should be noticed.
It may perhaps be necessary to add that although the character of art in
ivory in these periods is not of the highest, the subject is not one
entirely unworthy of attention and study, and there are a certain number
of remarkable and even admirable examples.

_Ivory Sculpture of Spain, Portugal, India, China and Japan._--Generally
speaking, with regard to Spain and Portugal, there is little reason to
do otherwise than confine our attention to a certain class of important
Moorish or Hispano-Moresque ivories of the time of the Arab occupation
of the Peninsula, from the 8th to the 15th centuries. Some fine examples
are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Of Portuguese work there is
little except the hybrid productions of Goa and the Portuguese
settlements in the East. Some mention must be made also of the
remarkable examples of mixed Portuguese and savage art from Benin, now
in the British Museum. Of Indian ivory carving the India Museum at
Kensington supplies a very large and varied collection which has no
equal elsewhere. But there is little older than the 17th century, nor
can it be said that Indian art in ivory can occupy a very high place in
the history of the art. What we know of Chinese carving in ivory is
confined to those examples which are turned out for the European market,
and can hardly be considered as appealing very strongly to cultivated
tastes. A brief reference to the well-known delightful _netsukés_ and
the characteristic inlaid work must suffice here for the ivories of
Japan (see JAPAN: _Art_).

_Ivory Sculpture in the 19th Century and of the Present Day._--Few
people are aware of the extent to which modern ivory sculpture is
practised by distinguished artists. Year by year, however, a certain
amount is exhibited in the Royal Academy and in most foreign salons, but
in England the works--necessarily not very numerous--are soon absorbed
in private collections. On the European continent, on the contrary, in
such galleries as the Belgian state collections or the Luxembourg,
examples are frequently acquired and exhibited. In Belgium the
acquisition of the Congo and the considerable import of ivory therefrom
gave encouragement to a definite revival of the art. Important
exhibitions have been held in Belgium, and a notable one in Paris in
1904. Though ivory carving is as expensive as marble sculpture, all
sculptors delight in following it, and the material entails no special
knowledge or training. Of 19th-century artists there were in France
amongst the best known, besides numerous minor workers of Dieppe and St
Claude, Augustin Moreau, Vautier, Soitoux, Belleteste, Meugniot,
Pradier, Triqueti and Gerôme; and in the first decade of the 20th
century, besides such distinguished names in the first rank as Jean
Dampt and Théodore Rivière, there were Vever, Gardet, Caron, Barrias,
Allouard, Ferrary and many others. Nor must the decorative work of René
Lalique be omitted. No less than forty Belgian sculptors exhibited work
in ivory at the Brussels exhibition of 1887. The list included artists
of such distinction as J. Dillens, Constantin Meunier, van der Stappen,
Khnopff, P. Wolfers, Samuel and Paul de Vigne, and amongst contemporary
Belgian sculptors are also van Beurden, G. Devreese, Vincotte, de Tombay
and Lagae. In England the most notable work includes the "Lamia" of
George Frampton, the "St Elizabeth" of Alfred Gilbert, the "Mors Janua
Vitae" of Harry Bates, the "Launcelot" of W. Reynolds-Stephens and the
use of ivory in the applied arts by Lynn Jenkins, A. G. Walker,
Alexander Fisher and others.

AUTHORITIES.--See generally A. Maskell, _Ivories_ (1906), and the
bibliography there given.

On Early Christian and Early Byzantine ivories, the following works
may be mentioned: Abbé Cabrol, _Dictionnaire de l'archéologie
chrétienne_ (in progress); O. M. Dalton, _Catalogue of Early Christian
Antiquities in British Museum_ (1902); E. Dobbert, _Zur Geschichte der
Elfenbeinsculptur_ (1885); H. Graeven, _Antike Schnitzereien_ (1903);
R. Kanzler, _Gli avori ... Vaticana_ (1903); Kondakov, _L'Art
byzantin_; A. Maskell, _Cantor Lectures_, Soc. of Arts (1906) (lecture
II., "Early Christian and Early Byzantine Ivories"); Strzygowski,
_Byzantinische Denkmäler_ (1891); V. Schulze, _Archäologie der
altchristlichen Kunst_ (1895); G. Stuhlfauth, _Die altchristl.
Elfenbeinplastik_ (1896).

On the consular diptychs, see H. F. Clinton, _Fasti Romani_
(1845-1850); A. Gori, _Thesaurus veterum diptychorum_ (1759); C.
Lenormant, _Trésor de numismatique et de glyptique_ (1834-1846); F.
Pulszky, _Catalogue of the Féjérváry Ivories_ (1856).

On the artistic interest generally, see also C. Alabaster, _Catalogue
of Chinese Objects in the South Kensington Museum_; Sir R. Alcock,
_Art and Art Industries in Japan_ (1878); Barraud et Martin, _Le Bâton
pastoral_ (1856); Bouchot, _Les Reliures d'art à la Bibliothèque
Nationale_; Bretagne, _Sur les peignes liturgiques_; H. Cole, _Indian
Art at Delhi_ (1904); R. Garrucci, _Storia dell' arte Christiana_
(1881); A. Jacquemart, _Histoire du mobilier_ (1876); J. Labarte,
_Histoire des arts industriels_ (1864); C. Lind, _Über den Krummstab_
(1863); Sir F. Madden, "Lewis Chessmen" (in _Archaeologia_, vol. xxiv.
1832); W. Maskell, _Ivories, Ancient and Medieval in the South
Kensington Museum_ (1872); A. Michel, _Histoire de l'art_; E.
Molinier, _Histoire générale des arts_ (1896); E. Oldfield, _Catalogue
of Fictile Ivories sold by the Arundel Society_ (1855); A. H. Pitt
Rivers, _Antique Works of Art from Benin_ (1900); A. C. Quatremère de
Quincy, _Le Jupiter Olympien_ (1815); Charles Scherer,
_Elfenbeinplastik seit der Renaissance_ (1903); E. du Sommerard, _Les
Arts au moyen âge_ (1838-1846); G. Stephens, _Runic Caskets_
(1866-1868); A. Venturi, _Storia dell' arte Italiana_ (1901); Sir G.
Watt, _Indian Art at Delhi_ (1904); J. O. Westwood, _Fictile Ivories
in the South Kensington Museum_ (1876). Sir M. D. Wyatt, _Notices of
Sculpture in Ivory_ (1856). (A. Ml.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Lecture before the Society of Arts (1856).

IVORY COAST (_Côte d'Ivoire_), a French West African colony, bounded S.
by the Gulf of Guinea, W. by Liberia and French Guinea, N. by the colony
of Upper Senegal and Niger, E. by the Gold Coast. Its area is
approximately 120,000 sq. m., and its population possibly 2,000,000, of
whom some 600 are Europeans. Official estimates (1908) placed the native
population as low as 980,000.

_Physical Features._--The coast-line extends from 70° 30´ to 3° 7´ W.
and has a length of 380 m. It forms an arc of a circle of which the
convexity turns slightly to the north; neither bay nor promontory
breaks the regularity of its outline. The shore is low, bordered in
its eastern half with lagoons, and difficult of access on account of
the submarine bar of sand which stretches along nearly the whole of
the coast, and also because of the heavy surf caused by the great
Atlantic billows. The principal lagoons, going W. to E. are those of
Grand Lahou, Grand Bassam or Ebrié and Assini. The coast plains extend
inland about 40 m. Beyond the ground rises in steep slopes to a
general level of over 1000 ft., the plateau being traversed in several
directions by hills rising 2000 ft. and over, and cut by valleys with
a general south-eastern trend. In the north-east, in the district of
Kong (q.v.), the country becomes mountainous, Mt. Kommono attaining a
height of 4757 ft. In the north-west, by the Liberian frontier, the
mountains in the Gon region rise over 6000 ft. Starting from the
Liberian frontier, the chief rivers are the Cavalla (or Kavalli), the
San Pedro, the Sassandra (240 m. long), the Bandama (225 m.), formed
by the White and the Red Bandama, the Komoe (360 m.) and the Bia. All
these streams are interrupted by rapids as they descend from the
highlands to the plain and are unnavigable by steamers save for a few
miles from their mouths. The rivers named all drain to the Gulf of
Guinea; the rivers in the extreme north of the colony belong to the
Niger system, being affluents of the Bani or Mahel Balevel branch of
that river. The watershed runs roughly from 9° N. in the west to 10°
N. in the east, and is marked by a line of hills rising about 650 ft.
above the level of the plateau. The climate is in general very hot and
unhealthy, the rainfall being very heavy. In some parts of the plateau
healthier conditions prevail. The fauna and flora are similar to those
of the Gold Coast and Liberia. Primeval forest extends from the coast
plains to about 8° N., covering nearly 50,000 sq. m.

_Inhabitants._--The coast districts are inhabited by Negro tribes allied
on the one hand to the Krumen (q.v.) and on the other to the people of
Ashanti (q.v.). The Assinis are of Ashanti origin, and chiefly of the
Ochin and Agni tribes. Farther west are found the "Jack-Jacks" and the
"Kwa-Kwas," sobriquets given respectively to the Aradian and Avikom by
the early European traders. The Kwa-Kwa are said to be so called because
their salutation "resembles the cry of a duck." In the interior the
Negro strain predominates but with an admixture of Hamitic or Berber
blood. The tribes represented include Jamans, Wongaras and Mandingos
(q.v.), some of whom are Moslems. The Mandingos have intermarried
largely with the Bambara or Sienuf, an agricultural people of more than
average intelligence widely spread over the country, of which they are
considered to be the indigenous race. The Bambara themselves are perhaps
only a distinct branch of the original Mandingo stock. The Baulé, who
occupy the central part of the colony, are of Agni-Ashanti origin. The
bulk of the inhabitants are fetish worshippers. On the northern confines
of the great forest belt live races of cannibals, whose existence was
first made known by Captain d'Ollone in 1899. In general the coast
tribes are peaceful. They have the reputation of being neither
industrious nor intelligent. The traders are chiefly Fanti, Sierra
Leonians, Senegalese and Mandingos.

_Towns._--The chief towns on the coast are Grand and Little Bassam,
Jackville and Assini in the east and Grand Lahou, Sassandra and Tabu
in the west. Grand and Little Bassam are built on the strip of sand
which separates the Grand Bassam or Ebrié lagoon from the sea. This
lagoon forms a commodious harbour, once the bar has been crossed.
Grand Bassam is situated at the point where the lagoon and the river
Komoe enter the sea and there is a minimum depth of 12 ft. of water
over the bar. The town (pop. 5000, including about 100 Europeans) is
the seat of the customs administration and of the judicial department,
and is the largest centre for the trade of the colony. A wharf
equipped with cranes extends beyond the surf line and the town is
served by a light railway. It is notoriously unhealthy; yellow fever
is endemic. Little Bassam, renamed by the French Port Bouet, possesses
an advantage over the other ports on the coast, as at this point there
is no bar. The sea floor is here rent by a chasm, known as the
"Bottomless Pit," the waters having a depth of 65 ft. Abijean
(Abidjan), on the north side of the lagoon opposite Port Bouet is the
starting-point of a railway to the oil and rubber regions. The
half-mile of foreshore separating the port from the lagoon was in
1904-1907 pierced by a canal, but the canal silted up as soon as cut,
and in 1908 the French decided to make Grand Bassam the chief port of
the colony. Assini is an important centre for the rubber trade of
Ashanti. On the northern shore of the Bassam lagoon, and 19 m. from
Grand Bassam, is the capital of the colony, the native name Adjame
having been changed into Bingerville, in honour of Captain L. G.
Binger (see below). The town is built on a hill and is fairly healthy.

In the interior are several towns, though none of any size
numerically. The best known are Koroko, Kong and Bona, entrepôts for
the trade of the middle Niger, and Bontuku, on the caravan route to
Sokoto and the meeting-place of the merchants from Kong and Timbuktu
engaged in the kola-nut trade with Ashanti and the Gold Coast. Bontuku
is peopled largely by Wongara and Hausa, and most of the inhabitants,
who number some 3000, are Moslems. The town, which was founded in the
15th century or earlier, is walled, contains various mosques and
generally presents the appearance of an eastern city.

_Agriculture and Trade._--The natives cultivate maize, plantains,
bananas, pineapples, limes, pepper, cotton, &c., and live easily on
the products of their gardens, with occasional help from fishing and
hunting. They also weave cloth, make pottery and smelt iron. Europeans
introduced the cultivation of coffee, which gives good results. The
forests are rich in palm-tree products, rubber and mahogany, which
constitute the chief articles of export. The rubber goes almost
exclusively to England, as does also the mahogany. The palm-oil and
palm kernels are sent almost entirely to France. The value of the
external trade of the colony exceeded £1,000,000 for the first time in
1904. About 50% of the trade is with Great Britain. The export of
ivory, for which the country was formerly famous, has almost ceased,
the elephants being largely driven out of the colony. Cotton goods, by
far the most important of the imports, come almost entirely from Great
Britain. Gold exists and many native villages have small "placer"
mines. In 1901 the government of the colony began the granting of
mining concessions, in which British capital was largely invested.
There are many ancient mines in the country, disused since the close
of the 18th century, if not earlier.

_Communications._--The railway from Little Bassam serves the east
central part of the colony and runs to Katiola, in Kong, a total
distance of 250 m. The line is of metre gauge. The cutting of two
canals, whereby communication is effected by lagoon between Assini and
Grand Lahou via Bassam, followed the construction of the railway.
Grand and Little Bassam are in regular communication by steamer with
Bordeaux, Marseilles, Liverpool, Antwerp and Hamburg. Grand Bassam is
connected with Europe by submarine cable via Dakar. Telegraph lines
connect the coast with all the principal stations in the interior,
with the Gold Coast, and with the other French colonies in West
Africa.

_Administration, &c._--The colony is under the general superintendence
of the government general of French West Africa. At the head of the
local administration is a lieutenant-governor, who is assisted by a
council on which nominated unofficial members have seats. To a large
extent the native forms of government are maintained under European
administrators responsible for the preservation of order, the colony
for this purpose being divided into a number of "circles" each with
its local government. The colony has a separate budget and is
self-supporting. Revenue is derived chiefly from customs receipts and
a capitation tax of frs. 2.50 (2s.), instituted in 1901 and levied on
all persons over ten years old. The budget for 1906 balanced at
£120,400.

_History._--The Ivory Coast is stated to have been visited by Dieppe
merchants in the 14th century, and was made known by the Portuguese
discoveries towards the end of the 15th century. It was thereafter
frequented by traders for ivory, slaves and other commodities. There was
a French settlement at Assini, 1700-1704, and a French factory was
maintained at Grand Bassam from 1700 to 1707. In the early part of the
19th century several French traders had established themselves along the
coast. In 1830 Admiral (then Commandant) Bouët-Willaumez (1808-1871)
began a series of surveys and expeditions which yielded valuable
results. In 1842 he obtained from the native chiefs cessions of
territory at Assini and Grand Bassam to France and the towns named were
occupied in 1843. From that time French influence gradually extended
along the coast, but no attempt was made to penetrate inland. As one
result of the Franco-Prussian War, France in 1872 withdrew her
garrisons, handing over the care of the establishments to a merchant
named Verdier, to whom an annual subsidy of £800 was paid. This merchant
sent an agent into the interior who made friendly treaties between
France and some of the native chiefs. In 1883, in view of the claims of
other European powers to territory in Africa, France again took over the
actual administration of Assini and Bassam. Between 1887 and 1889
Captain Binger (an officer of marine infantry, and subsequently director
of the African department at the colonial ministry) traversed the whole
region between the coast and the Niger, visited Bontuku and the Kong
country, and signed protectorate treaties with the chiefs. The kingdom
of Jaman, it may be mentioned, was for a few months included in the Gold
Coast hinterland. In January 1889 a British mission sent by the governor
of the Gold Coast concluded a treaty with the king of Jaman at Bontuku,
placing his dominions under British protection. The king had, however,
previously concluded treaties of "commerce and friendship" with the
French, and by the Anglo-French agreement of August 1889 Jaman, with
Bontuku, was recognized as French territory. In 1892 Captain Binger made
further explorations in the interior of the Ivory Coast, and in 1893 he
was appointed the first governor of the colony on its erection into an
administration distinct from that of Senegal. Among other famous
explorers who helped to make known the hinterland was Colonel (then
Captain) Marchand. It was to the zone between the Kong states and the
hinterland of Liberia that Samory (see SENEGAL) fled for refuge before
he was taken prisoner (1898), and for a short time he was master of
Kong. The boundary of the colony on the west was settled by
Franco-Liberian agreements of 1892 and subsequent dates; that on the
east by the Anglo-French agreements of 1893 and 1898. The northern
boundary was fixed in 1899 on the division of the middle Niger
territories (up to that date officially called the French Sudan) among
the other French West African colonies. The systematic development of
the colony, the opening up of the hinterland and the exploitation of its
economic resources date from the appointment of Captain Binger as
governor, a post he held for over three years. The work he began has
been carried on zealously and effectively by subsequent governors, who
have succeeded in winning the co-operation of the natives.

In the older books of travel are often found the alternative names for
this region, Tooth Coast (_Côte des Dents_) or Kwa-Kwa Coast, and, less
frequently, the Coast of the Five and Six Stripes (alluding to a kind of
cotton fabric in favour with the natives). The term Côte des Dents
continued in general use in France until the closing years of the 19th
century.

See _Dix ans à la Côte d'Ivoire_ (Paris, 1906) by F. J. Clozel,
governor of the colony, and _Notre colonie de la Côte d'Ivoire_
(Paris, 1903) by R. Villamur and Richaud. These two volumes deal with
the history, geography, zoology and economic condition of the Ivory
Coast. _La Côte d'Ivoire_ by Michellet and Clement describes the
administrative and land systems, &c. Another volume also called _La
Côte d'Ivoire_ (Paris, 1908) is an official monograph on the colony.
For ethnology consult _Coutumes indigènes de la Côte d'Ivoire_ (Paris,
1902) by F. J. Clozel and R. Villamur, and _Les Coutumes Agni_, by R.
Villamur and Delafosse. Of books of travel see _Du Niger au Golfe de
Guinée par Kong_ (Paris, 1892) by L. G. Binger, and _Mission
Hostains-d'Ollone 1890-1900_ (Paris, 1901) by Captain d'Ollone. A
_Carte de la Côte d'Ivoire_ by A. Meunier, on the scale of 1:500,000
(6 sheets), was published in Paris, 1905. Annual reports on the colony
are published by the French colonial and the British foreign offices.

IVREA (anc. _Eporedia_), a town and episcopal see of Piedmont, Italy, in
the province of Turin, from which it is 38 m. N.N.E. by rail and 27 m.
direct, situated 770 ft. above sea-level, on the Dora Baltea at the
point where it leaves the mountains. Pop. (1901) 6047 (town), 11,696
(commune). The cathedral was built between 973 and 1005; the gallery
round the back of the apse and the crypt have plain cubical capitals of
this period. The two _campanili_ flanking the apse at each end of the
side aisle are the oldest example of this architectural arrangement. The
isolated tower, which is all that remains of the ancient abbey of S.
Stefano, is slightly later. The hill above the town is crowned by the
imposing Castello delle Quattro Torri, built in 1358, and now a prison.
One of the four towers was destroyed by lightning in 1676. A tramway
runs to Santhià.

The ancient Eporedia, standing at the junction of the roads from Augusta
Taurinorum and Vercellae, at the point where the road to Augusta
Praetoria enters the narrow valley of the Duria (Dora Baltea), was a
military position of considerable importance belonging to the Salassi
who inhabited the whole upper valley of the Duria. The importance of the
gold-mines of the district led to its seizure by the Romans in 143 B.C.
The centre of the mining industry seems to have been Victumulae (see
TICINUM), until in 100 B.C. a colony of Roman citizens was founded at
Eporedia itself; but the prosperity of this was only assured when the
Salassi were finally defeated in 25 B.C. and Augusta Praetoria founded.
There are remains of a theatre of the time of the Antonines and the
Ponte Vecchio rests on Roman foundations.

In the middle ages Ivrea was the capital of a Lombard duchy, and later
of a marquisate; both Berengar II. (950) and Arduin (1002) became kings
of Italy for a short period. Later it submitted to the marquises of
Monferrato, and in the middle of the 14th century passed to the house of
Savoy. (T. As.)

IVRY-SUR-SEINE, a town of northern France, in the department of Seine,
near the left bank of the Seine, less than 1 m. S.S.E. of the
fortifications of Paris. Pop. (1906) 30,532. Ivry has a large hospital
for incurables. It manufactures organs, earthenware, wall-paper and
rubber, and has engineering works, breweries, and oil-works, its trade
being facilitated by a port on the Seine. The town is dominated by a
fort of the older line of defence of Paris.

IVY (A.S. _ifig_, Ger. _Epheu_, perhaps connected with _apium_, [Greek:
apion]), the collective designation of certain species and varieties of
_Hedera_, a member of the natural order Araliaceae. There are fifty
species of ivy recorded in modern books, but they may be reduced to two,
or at the most, three. The European ivy, _Hedera Helix_ (fig. 1), is a
plant subject to infinite variety in the forms and colours of its
leaves, but the tendency of which is always to a three- to five-lobed
form when climbing and a regular ovate form of leaf when producing
flower and fruit. The African ivy, _H. canariensis_, often regarded as a
variety of _H. Helix_ and known as the Irish ivy, is a native of North
Africa and the adjacent islands. It is the common large-leaved climbing
ivy, and also varies, but in a less degree than _H. Helix_, from which
its leaves differ in their larger size, rich deep green colour, and a
prevailing tendency to a five-lobed outline. When in fruit the leaves
are usually three-lobed, but they are sometimes entire and broadly
ovate. The Asiatic ivy, _H. colchica_ (fig. 2), now considered to be a
form of _H. Helix_, has ovate, obscurely three-lobed leaves of a
coriaceous texture and a deep green colour; in the tree or fruiting form
the leaves are narrower than in the climbing form, and without any trace
of lobes. Distinctive characters are also to be found in the appendages
of the pedicels and calyx, _H. Helix_ having six-rayed stellate hairs,
_H. canariensis_ fifteen-rayed hairs and _H. colchica_ yellowish
two-lobed scales.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Ivy (_Hedera Helix_) fruiting branch. 1. Flower.
2. Fruit.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--_Hedera colchica._]

The Australian ivy, _H. australiana_, is a small glabrous shrub with
pinnate leaves. It is a native of Queensland, and is practically unknown
in cultivation.

It is of the utmost importance to note the difference of characters of
the same species of ivy in its two conditions of climbing and fruiting.
The first stage of growth, which we will suppose to be from the seed, is
essentially scandent, and the leaves are lobed more or less. This stage
is accompanied with a plentiful production of the claspers or modified
roots by means of which the plant becomes attached and obtains support.
When it has reached the summit of the tree or tower, the stems, being no
longer able to maintain a perpendicular attitude, fall over and become
horizontal or pendent. Coincidently with this change they cease to
produce claspers, and the leaves are strikingly modified in form, being
now narrower and less lobed than on the ascending stems. In due time
this tree-like growth produces terminal umbels of greenish flowers,
which have the parts in fives, with the styles united into a very short
one. These flowers are succeeded by smooth black or yellow berries,
containing two to five seeds. The yellow-berried ivy is met with in
northern India and in Italy, but in northern Europe it is known only as
a curiosity of the garden, where, if sufficiently sheltered and
nourished, it becomes an exceedingly beautiful and fruitful tree.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Climbing Shoot of Ivy.]

It is stated in books that some forms of sylvestral ivy never flower,
but a negative declaration of this kind is valueless. Sylvestral ivies
of great age may be found in woods on the western coasts of Britain that
have apparently never flowered, but this is probably to be explained by
their inability to surmount the trees supporting them, for until the
plant can spread its branches horizontally in full daylight, the
flowering or tree-like growth is never formed.

A question of great practical importance arises out of the relation of
the plant to its means of support. A moderate growth of ivy is not
injurious to trees; still the tendency is from the first inimical to the
prosperity of the tree, and at a certain stage it becomes deadly.
Therefore the growth of ivy on trees should be kept within reasonable
bounds, more especially in the case of trees that are of special value
for their beauty, history, or the quality of their timber. In regard to
buildings clothed with ivy, there is nothing to be feared so long as the
plant does not penetrate the substance of the wall by means of any
fissure. Should it thrust its way in, the natural and continuous
expansion of its several parts will necessarily hasten the decay of the
edifice. But a fair growth of ivy on sound walls that afford no entrance
beyond the superficial attachment of the claspers is, without any
exception whatever, beneficial. It promotes dryness and warmth, reduces
to a minimum the corrosive action of the atmosphere, and is altogether
as conservative as it is beautiful.

The economical uses of the ivy are not of great importance. The leaves
are eaten greedily by horses, deer, cattle and sheep, and in times of
scarcity have proved useful. The flowers afford a good supply of honey
to bees; and, as they appear in autumn, they occasionally make amends
for the shortcomings of the season. The berries are eaten by wood
pigeons, blackbirds and thrushes. From all parts of the plant a balsamic
bitter may be obtained, and this in the form of _hederic acid_ is the
only preparation of ivy known to chemists.

In the garden the uses of the ivy are innumerable, and the least known
though not the least valuable of them is the cultivation of the plant as
a bush or tree, the fruiting growth being selected for this purpose. The
variegated tree forms of _H. Helix_, with leaves of creamy white, golden
green or rich deep orange yellow, soon prove handsome miniature trees,
that thrive almost as well in smoky town gardens as in the pure air of
the country, and that no ordinary winter will injure in the least. The
tree-form of the Asiatic ivy (_H. colchica_) is scarcely to be equalled
in beauty of leafage by any evergreen shrub known to English gardens,
and, although in the course of a few years it will attain to a stature
of 5 or 6 ft., it is but rarely we meet with it, or indeed with tree
ivies of any kind, but little attention having been given to this
subject until recent years. The scandent forms are more generally
appreciated, and are now much employed in the formation of marginal
lines, screens and trained pyramids, as well as for clothing walls. A
very striking example of the capabilities of the commonest ivies, when
treated artistically as garden plants, may be seen in the Zoological
Gardens of Amsterdam, where several paddocks are enclosed with wreaths,
garlands and bands of ivy in a most picturesque manner.

About sixty varieties known in gardens are figured and described in _The
Ivy, a Monograph_, by Shirley Hibberd (1872). To cultivate these is an
extremely simple matter, as they will thrive in a poor soil and endure a
considerable depth of shade, so that they may with advantage be planted
under trees. The common Irish ivy is often to be seen clothing the
ground beneath large yew trees where grass would not live, and it is
occasionally planted in graveyards in London to form an imitation of
grass turf, for which purpose it is admirably suited.

The ivy, like the holly, is a scarce plant on the American continent. In
the northern United States and British America the winters are not more
severe than the ivy can endure, but the summers are too hot and dry, and
the requirements of the plant have not often obtained attention. In
districts where native ferns abound the ivy will be found to thrive, and
the varieties of _Hedera Helix_ should have the preference. But in the
drier districts ivies might often be planted on the north side of
buildings, and, if encouraged with water and careful training for three
or four years, would then grow rapidly and train themselves. A strong
light is detrimental to the growth of ivy, but this enhances its value,
for we have no hardy plants that may be compared with it for variety and
beauty that will endure shade with equal patience.

The North American poison ivy (poison oak), _Rhus Toxicodendron_ (nat.
order Anacardiaceae), is a climber with pinnately compound leaves, which
are very attractive in their autumn colour but poisonous to the touch to
some persons, while others can handle the plant without injury. The
effects are redness and violent itching followed by fever and a
vesicular eruption.

The ground ivy, _Nepeta Glechoma_ (nat. order Labiatae), is a small
creeping plant with rounded crenate leaves and small blue-purple
flowers, occurring in hedges and thickets.

IWAKURA, TOMOMI, PRINCE (1835-1883), Japanese statesman, was born in
Kioto. He was one of the court nobles (_kuge_) of Japan, and he traced
his descent to the emperor Murakami (A.D. 947-967). A man of profound
ability and singular force of character, he acted a leading part in the
complications preceding the fall of the Tokugawa _shogunate_, and was
obliged to fly from Kioto accompanied by his coadjutor, Prince Sanjo.
They took refuge with the _Daimyo_ of Choshu, and, while there,
established relations which contributed greatly to the ultimate union of
the two great fiefs, Satsuma and Choshu, for the work of the
Restoration. From 1867 until the day of his death Iwakura was one of the
most prominent figures on the political stage. In 1871 he proceeded to
America and Europe at the head of an imposing embassy of some fifty
persons, the object being to explain to foreign governments the actual
conditions existing in Japan, and to pave the way for negotiating new
treaties consistent with her sovereign rights. Little success attended
the mission. Returning to Japan in 1873, Iwakura found the cabinet
divided as to the manner of dealing with Korea's insulting attitude. He
advocated peace, and his influence carried the day, thus removing a
difficulty which, though apparently of minor dimensions, might have
changed the whole course of Japan's modern history.

IXION, in Greek legend, son of Phlegyas, king of the Lapithae in
Thessaly (or of Ares), and husband of Dia. According to custom he
promised his father-in-law, Deïoneus, a handsome bridal present, but
treacherously murdered him when he claimed the fulfilment of the
promise. As a punishment, Ixion was seized with madness, until Zeus
purified him of his crime and admitted him as a guest to Olympus. Ixion
abused his pardon by trying to seduce Hera; but the goddess substituted
for herself a cloud, by which he became the father of the Centaurs. Zeus
bound him on a fiery wheel, which rolls unceasingly through the air or
(according to the later version) in the underworld (Pindar, _Pythia_,
ii. 21; Ovid, _Metam._ iv. 461; Virgil, Aeneid, vi. 601). Ixion is
generally taken to represent the eternally moving sun. Another
explanation connects the story with the practice (among certain peoples
of central Europe) of carrying a blazing, revolving wheel through fields
which needed the heat of the sun, the legend being invented to explain
the custom and subsequently adopted by the Greeks (see Mannhardt, _Wald-
und Feldkulte_, ii. 1905, p. 83). In view of the fact that the oak was
the sun-god's tree and that the mistletoe grew upon it, it is suggested
by A. B. Cook (_Class. Rev._ xvii. 420) that [Greek: Ixiôn] is derived
from [Greek: ixos] (mistletoe), the sun's fire being regarded as an
emanation from the mistletoe. Ixion himself is probably a by-form of
Zeus (Usener in _Rhein. Mus._ liii. 345).

"The Myth of Ixion" (by C. Smith, in _Classical Review_, June 1895)
deals with the subject of a red-figure cantharus in the British
Museum.

IXTACCIHUATL, or IZTACCIHUATL ("white woman"), a lofty mountain of
volcanic origin, 10 m. N. of Popocatepetl and about 40 m. S.S.E of the
city of Mexico, forming part of the short spur called the Sierra Nevada.
According to Angelo Heilprin (1853-1907) its elevation is 16,960 ft.;
other authorities make it much less. Its apparent height is dwarfed
somewhat by its elongated summit and the large area covered. It has
three summits of different heights standing on a north and south line,
the central one being the largest and highest and all three rising above
the permanent snow-line. As seen from the city of Mexico the three
summits have the appearance of a shrouded human figure, hence the poetic
Aztec appellation of "white woman" and the unsentimental Spanish
designation "_La mujer gorda_." The ascent is difficult and perilous,
and is rarely accomplished.

Heilprin says that the mountain is largely composed of trachytic rocks
and that it is older than Popocatepetl. It has no crater and no trace
of lingering volcanic heat. It is surmised that its crater, if it ever
had one, has been filled in and its cone worn away by erosion through
long periods of time.

IYRCAE, an ancient nation on the north-east trade route described by
Herodotus (iv. 22) beyond the Thyssagetae, somewhere about the upper
basins of the Tobol and the Irtysh. They were distinguished by their
mode of hunting, climbing a tree to survey their game, and then pursuing
it with trained horses and dogs. They were almost certainly the
ancestors of the modern Magyars, also called Jugra.

The reading [Greek: Tyrkai] is an anachronism, and when Pliny (_N.H._
vi. 19) and Mela (i. 116) speak of Tyrcae it is also probably due to a
false correction. (E. H. M.)

IZBARTA, or SPARTA [anc. _Baris_], the chief town of the Hamid-abad
sanjak of the Konia vilayet, in Asia Minor, well situated on the edge of
a fertile plain at the foot of Aghlasun Dagh. It was once the capital of
the Emirate of Hamid. It suffered severely from the earthquake of the
16th-17th of January 1889. It is a prosperous place with an enlightened
Greek element in its population (hence the numerous families called
"Spartali" in Levantine towns); and it is, in fact, the chief inland
colony of Hellenism in Anatolia; Pop. 20,000 (Moslems 13,000, Christians
7000). The new Aidin railway extends from Dineir to Izbarta via Buldur.

IZHEVSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Vyatka, 140 m. S.W. of
Perm and 22 m. W. from the Kama, on the Izh river. Pop. (1897) 21,500.
It has one of the principal steel and rifle works of the Russian crown,
started in 1807. The making of sporting guns is an active industry.

IZMAIL, or ISMAIL, a town of Russia, in the government of Bessarabia, on
the left bank of the Kilia branch of the Danube, 35 m. below Reni
railway station. Pop. (1866) 31,779, (1900) 33,607, comprising Great and
Little Russians, Bulgarians, Jews and Gipsies. There are flour-mills and
a trade in cereals, wool, tallow and hides. Originally a Turkish
fortified post, Izmail had by the end of the 18th century grown into a
place of 30,000 inhabitants. It was occupied by the Russians in 1770,
and twenty years later its capture was one of the brilliant achievements
of the Russian general, Count A. V. Suvarov. On that occasion the
garrison was 40,000 strong, and the assault cost the assailants 10,000
and the defenders 30,000 men. The victory was the theme of one of the
Russian poet G. R. Derzhavin's odes. In 1809 the town was again captured
by the Russians; and, when in 1812 it was assigned to them by the
Bucharest peace, they chose it as the central station for their Danube
fleet. It was about this time that the town of Tuchkov, with which it
was later (1830) incorporated, grew up outside of the fortifications.
These were dismantled in accordance with the treaty of Paris (1856), by
which Izmail was made over to Rumania. The town was again transferred to
Russia by the peace of Berlin (1878).

IZU-NO-SHICHI-TO, the seven (_shichi_) islands (_to_) of Izu, included
in the empire of Japan. They stretch in a southerly direction from a
point near the mouth of Tokyo Bay, and lie between 33° and 34° 48´ N.
and between 139° and 140° E. Their names, beginning from the north, are
Izu-no-Oshima, To-shima, Nii-shima, Kozu-shima, Miyake-shima and
Hachijo-shima. There are some islets in their immediate vicinity.
Izu-no-Oshima, an island 10 m. long and 5½ m. wide, is 15 m. from the
nearest point of the Izu promontory. It is known to western
cartographers as Vries Island, a name derived from that of Captain
Martin Gerritsz de Vries, a Dutch navigator, who is supposed to have
discovered the island in 1643. But the group was known to the Japanese
from a remote period, and used as convict settlements certainly from the
12th century and probably from a still earlier era. Hachijo, the most
southerly, is often erroneously written "Fatsisio" on English charts.
Izu-no-Oshima is remarkable for its smoking volcano, Mihara-yama (2461
ft.), a conspicuous object to all ships bound for Yokohama. Three others
of the islands--Nii-shima, Kozu-shima and Miyake-shima--have active
volcanoes. Those on Nii-shima and Kozu-shima are of inconsiderable size,
but that on Miyake-shima, namely, Oyama, rises to a height of 2707 ft.
The most southerly island, Hachijo-shima, has a still higher peak,
Dsubotake (2838 ft.), but it does not emit any smoke.

J A letter of the alphabet which, as far as form is concerned, is only a
modification of the Latin I and dates back with a separate value only to
the 15th century. It was first used as a special form of initial I, the
ordinary form being kept for use in other positions. As, however, in
many cases initial _i_ had the consonantal value of the English _y_ in
_iugum_ (yoke), &c., the symbol came to be used for the value of y, a
value which it still retains in German: _Ja! jung_, &c. Initially it is
pronounced in English as an affricate _dzh_. The great majority of
English words beginning with _j_ are (1) of foreign (mostly French)
origin, as "jaundice," "judge"; (2) imitative of sound, like "jar" (the
verb); or (3) influenced by analogy, like "jaw" (influenced by _chaw_,
according to Skeat). In early French _g_ when palatalized by _e_ or _i_
sounds became confused with consonantal _i_ (_y_), and both passed into
the sound of _j_ which is still preserved in English. A similar
sound-change takes place in other languages, e.g. Lithuanian, where the
resulting sound is spelt _dz_. Modern French and also Provençal and
Portuguese have changed _j = dzh_ into _z_ (_zh_). The sound initially
is sometimes represented in English by _g_: _gem_, _gaol_ as well as
_jail_. At the end of modern English words the same sound is represented
by -_dge_ as in _judge_, French _juge_. In this position, however, the
sound occurs also in genuine English words like _bridge_, _sedge_,
_singe_, but this is true only for the southern dialects on which the
literary language is founded. In the northern dialects the pronunciation
as _brig_, _seg_, _sing_ still survives. (P. Gi.)

JA'ALIN (from _Ja'al_, to settle, i.e. "the squatters"), an African
tribe of Semitic stock. They formerly occupied the country on both banks
of the Nile from Khartum to Abu Hamed. They claim to be of the Koreish
tribe and even trace descent from Abbas, uncle of the prophet. They are
of Arab origin, but now of very mixed blood. According to their own
tradition they emigrated to Nubia in the 12th century. They were at one
time subject to the Funj kings, but their position was in a measure
independent. At the Egyptian invasion in 1820 they were the most
powerful of Arab tribes in the Nile valley. They submitted at first, but
in 1822 rebelled and massacred the Egyptian garrison at Shendi. The
revolt was mercilessly suppressed, and the Ja'alin were thenceforward
looked on with suspicion. They were almost the first of the northern
tribes to join the mahdi in 1884, and it was their position to the north
of Khartum which made communication with General Gordon so difficult.
The Ja'alin are now a semi-nomad agricultural people. Many are employed
in Khartum as servants, scribes and watchmen. They are a proud religious
people, formerly notorious as cruel slave dealers. J. L. Burckhardt says
the true Ja'alin from the eastern desert is exactly like the Bedouin of
eastern Arabia.

See _The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan_, edited by Count Gleichen (London,
1905).

JABIRU, according to Marcgrave the Brazilian name of a bird, subsequently
called by Linnaeus _Mycteria americana_, one of the largest of the
storks, _Ciconiidae_, which occurs from Mexico southwards to the
territory of the Argentine Republic. It stands between 4 and 5 ft. in
height, and is conspicuous for its massive bill, slightly upturned, and
its entirely white plumage; but the head and neck are bare and black,
except for about the lower third part of the latter, which is bright red
in the living bird. Very nearly allied to _Mycteria_, and also commonly
called jabirus, are the birds of the genera _Xenorhynchus_ and
_Ephippiorhynchus_--the former containing one or (in the opinion of some)
two species, _X. australis_ and _X. indicus_, and the latter one only,
_E. senegalensis_. These belong to the countries indicated by their
names, and differ chiefly by their feathered head and neck, while the
last is sometimes termed the saddle-billed stork from the very singular
shape of its beak. Somewhat more distantly related are the gigantic birds
known to Europeans in India and elsewhere as adjutant birds, belonging to
the genus _Leptoptilus_, distinguished by their sad-coloured plumage,
their black scabrous head, and their enormous tawny pouch, which depends
occasionally some 16 in. or more in length from the lower part of the
neck, and seems to be connected with the respiratory and not, as commonly
believed, with the digestive system. In many parts of India _L. dubius_,
the largest of these birds, the _hargila_ as Hindus call it, is a most
efficient scavenger, sailing aloft at a vast height and descending on the
discovery of offal, though frogs and fishes also form part of its diet.
It familiarly enters the large towns, in many of which an account of its
services it is strictly protected from injury, and, having satisfied its
appetite, seeks the repose it has earned, sitting with its feet extended
in front in a most grotesque attitude. A second and smaller species, _L.
javanicus_, has a more southern and eastern range; while a third, _L.
crumenifer_, of African origin, and often known as the marabou-stork,
gives its name to the beautifully soft feathers so called, which are the
under-tail-coverts; the "marabout" feathers of the plume-trade are mostly
supplied by other birds, the term being apparently applied to any downy
feathers. (A. N.)

[Illustration: Jabiru.]

JABLOCHKOV, PAUL (1847-1894), Russian electrical engineer and inventor,
was born at Serdobsk, in the government of Saratov, on the 14th of
September 1847, and educated at St Petersburg. In 1871 he was appointed
director of the telegraph lines between Moscow and Kursk, but in 1875 he
resigned his position in order to devote himself to his researches on
electric lighting by arc lamps, which he had already taken up. In 1876
he settled in Paris, and towards the end of the year brought out his
famous "candles," known by his name, which consisted of two carbon
parallel rods, separated by a non-conducting partition; alternating
currents were employed, and the candle was operated by a high-resistance
carbon match connecting the tips of the rods, a true arc forming between
the parallel carbons when this burnt off, and the separators
volatilizing as the carbons burnt away. For a few years his system of
electric lighting was widely adopted, but it was gradually superseded
(see LIGHTING: _Electric_) and is no longer in use. Jablochkov made
various other electrical inventions, but he died in poverty, having
returned to Russia on the 19th of March 1894.

JABLONSKI, DANIEL ERNST (1660-1741), German theologian, was born at
Nassenhuben, near Danzig, on the 20th of November 1660. His father was a
minister of the Moravian Church, who had taken the name of Peter Figulus
on his baptism; the son, however, preferred the Bohemian family name of
Jablonski. His maternal grandfather, Johann Amos Comenius (d. 1670), was
a bishop of the Moravian Church. Having studied at Frankfort-on-the-Oder
and at Oxford, Jablonski entered upon his career as a preacher at
Magdeburg in 1683, and then from 1686 to 1691 he was the head of the
Moravian college at Lissa, a position which had been filled by his
grandfather. Still retaining his connexion with the Moravians, he was
appointed court preacher at Königsberg in 1691 by the elector of
Brandenburg, Frederick III., and here, entering upon a career of great
activity, he soon became a person of influence in court circles. In 1693
he was transferred to Berlin as court preacher, and in 1699 he was
consecrated a bishop of the Moravian Church. At Berlin Jablonski worked
hard to bring about a union between the followers of Luther and those of
Calvin; the courts of Berlin, Hanover, Brunswick and Gotha were
interested in his scheme, and his principal helper was the philosopher
Leibnitz. His idea appears to have been to form a general union between
the German, the English and the Swiss Protestants, and thus to establish
_una eademque sancta catholica et apostolica eademque evangelica et
reformata ecclesia_. For some years negotiations were carried on with a
view to attaining this end, but eventually it was found impossible to
surmount the many difficulties in the way; Jablonski and Leibnitz,
however, did not cease to believe in the possibility of accomplishing
their purpose. Jablonski's next plan was to reform the Church of Prussia
by introducing into it the episcopate, and also the liturgy of the
English Church, but here again he was unsuccessful. As a scholar
Jablonski brought out a Hebrew edition of the Old Testament, and
translated Bentley's _A Confutation of Atheism_ into Latin (1696). He
had some share in founding the Berlin Academy of Sciences, of which he
was president in 1733, and he received a degree from the university of
Oxford. He died on the 25th of May 1741.

Jablonski's son, Paul Ernst Jablonski (1693-1757), was professor of
theology and philosophy at the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder.

Editions of the letters which passed between Jablonski and Leibnitz,
relative to the proposed union, were published at Leipzig in 1747 and
at Dorpat in 1899.

JABORANDI, a name given in a generic manner in Brazil and South America
generally to a number of different plants, all of which possess more or
less marked sialogogue and sudorific properties. In the year 1875 a drug
was introduced under the above name to the notice of medical men in
France by Dr Coutinho of Pernambuco, its botanical source being then
unknown. _Pilocarpus pennatifolius_, a member of the natural order
Rutaceae, the plant from which it is obtained, is a slightly branched
shrub about 10 ft. high, growing in Paraguay and the eastern provinces
of Brazil. The leaves, which are placed alternately on the stem, are
often 1½ ft. long, and consist of from two to five pairs of opposite
leaflets, the terminal one having a longer pedicel than the others. The
leaflets are oval, lanceolate, entire and obtuse, with the apex often
slightly indented, from 3 to 4 in. long and 1 to 1½ in. broad in the
middle. When held up to the light they may be observed to have scattered
all over them numerous pellucid dots or receptacles of secretion
immersed in the substance of the leaf. The leaves in size and texture
bear some resemblance to those of the cherry-laurel (_Prunus
laurocerasus_), but are less polished on the upper surface. The flowers,
which are produced in spring and early summer, are borne on a raceme, 6
or 8 in. long, and the fruit consists of five carpels, of which not more
than two or three usually arrive at maturity. The leaves are the part of
the plant usually imported, although occasionally the stems and roots
are attached to them. The active principle for which the name
_pilocarpine_, suggested by Holmes, was ultimately adopted, was
discovered almost simultaneously by Hardy in France and Gerrard in
England, but was first obtained in a pure state by Petit of Paris. It is
a liquid alkaloid, slightly soluble in water, and very soluble in
alcohol, ether and chloroform. It strongly rotates the plane of
polarization to the right, and forms crystalline salts of which the
nitrate is that chiefly used in medicine. The nitrate and phosphate are
insoluble in ether, chloroform and benzol, while the hydrochlorate and
hydrobromate dissolve both in these menstrua and in water and alcohol;
the sulphate and acetate being deliquescent are not employed
medicinally. The formula of the alkaloid is C11H16N2O2.

Certain other alkaloids are present in the leaves. They have been named
_jaborine, jaboridine and pilocarpidine_. The first of these is the most
important and constant. It is possibly derived from pilocarpine, and has
the formula C22H32N4O4. Jaborine resembles atropine pharmacologically,
and is therefore antagonistic to pilocarpine. The various preparations
of jaborandi leaves are therefore undesirable for therapeutic purposes,
and only the nitrate of pilocarpine itself should be used. This is a
white crystalline powder, soluble in the ratio of about one part in ten
of cold water. The dose is (1/20)-½ grain by the mouth, and up to
one-third of a grain hypodermically, in which fashion it is usually
given.

[Illustration: Jaborandi--a, leaf (reduced); b, leaflet (natural size);
c, flower; d, fruit (natural size).]

The action of this powerful alkaloid closely resembles that of
physostigmine, but whereas the latter is specially active in
influencing the heart, the eye and the spinal cord, pilocarpine exerts
its greatest power on the secretions. It has no external action. When
taken by the mouth the drug is rapidly absorbed and stimulates the
secretions of the entire alimentary tract, though not of the liver.
The action on the salivary glands is the most marked and the best
understood. The great flow of saliva is due to an action of the drug,
after absorption, on the terminations of the chorda tympani,
sympathetic and other nerves of salivary secretion. The gland cells
themselves are unaffected. The nerves are so violently excited that
direct stimulation of them by electricity adds nothing to the rate of
salivary flow. The action is antagonized by atropine, which paralyses
the nerve terminals. About (1/100)th of a grain of atropine
antagonizes half a grain of pilocarpine. The circulation is depressed
by the drug, the pulse being slowed and the blood pressure falling.
The cardiac action is due to stimulation of the vagus, but the
dilatation of the blood-vessels does not appear to be due to a
specific action upon them. The drug does not kill by its action on the
heart. Its dangerous action is upon the bronchial secretion, which is
greatly increased. Pilocarpine is not only the most powerful
sialogogue but also the most powerful diaphoretic known. One dose may
cause the flow of nearly a pint of sweat in an hour. The action is
due, as in the case of the salivation, to stimulation of the terminals
of the sudorific nerves. According to K. Binz there is also in both
cases an action on the medullary centres for these secretions. Just as
the saliva is a true secretion containing a high proportion of ptyalin
and salts, and is not a mere transudation of water, so the
perspiration is found to contain a high ratio of urea and chlorides.
The great diaphoresis and the depression of the circulation usually
cause a fall in temperature of about 2° F. The drug is excreted
unchanged in the urine. It is a mild diuretic. When given internally
or applied locally to the eye it powerfully stimulates the terminals
of the oculomotor nerves in the iris and ciliary muscle, causing
extreme contraction of the pupil and spasm of accommodation. The
tension of the eyeball is at first raised but afterwards lowered.

The chief therapeutic use of the drug is as a diaphoretic in chronic
Bright's disease. It is also used to aid the growth of the hair--in
which it is sometimes successful; in cases of inordinate thirst, when
one-tenth of a grain with a little bismuth held in the mouth may be of
much value; in cases of lead and mercury poisoning, where it aids the
elimination of the poison in the secretions; as a galactagogue; and in
cases of atropine poisoning (though here it is of doubtful value).

JACA, a city of northern Spain, in the province of Huesca, 114 m. by
rail N. by W. of Saragossa, on the left bank of the river Aragon, and
among the southern slopes of the Pyrenees, 2380 ft. above the sea. Pop.
(1900), 4934. Jaca is an episcopal see, and was formerly the capital of
the Aragonese county of Sobrarbe. Its massive Gothic cathedral dates at
least from the 11th century, and possibly from the 9th. The city derives
some importance from its position on the ancient frontier road from
Saragossa to Pau. In August 1904 the French and Spanish governments
agreed to supplement this trade-route by building a railway from Oloron
in the Basses Pyrénées to Jaca. Various frontier defence works were
constructed in the neighbourhood at the close of the 19th century.

The origin of the city is unknown. The Jaccetani ([Greek: Iakkêtanoi])
are mentioned as one of the most celebrated of the numerous small tribes
inhabiting the basin of the Ebro by Strabo, who adds that their
territory was the theatre of the wars which took place in the 1st
century B.C. between Sertorius and Pompey. They are probably identical
with the Lacetani of Livy (xxi. 60, 61) and Caesar (_B.C._ i. 60). Early
in the 8th century Jaca fell into the possession of the Moors, by whose
writers it is referred to under the name of Dyaka as one of the chief
places in the province of Sarkosta (Saragossa). The date of its
reconquest is uncertain, but it must have been before the time of Ramiro
I. of Aragon (1035-1063), who gave it the title of "city," and in 1063
held within its walls a council, which, inasmuch as the people were
called in to sanction its decrees, is regarded as of great importance in
the history of the parliamentary institutions of the Peninsula. In 1705
Jaca supported King Philip V. from whom, in consequence, it received the
title of _muy noble, muy leal y vencedora_, "most noble, most loyal and
victorious." During the Peninsular War it surrendered to the French in
1809, and was recaptured in 1814.

JACAMAR, a word formed by Brisson from _Jacameri_, the Brazilian name of
a bird, as given by Marcgrave, and since adopted in most European tongues
for the species to which it was first applied and others allied to it,
forming the family _Galbulidae_[1] of ornithologists, the precise
position of which is uncertain, since the best authorities differ. All
will agree that the jacamars belong to the great heterogeneous group
called by Nitzsch Picariae, but further into detail it is hardly safe to
go. The _Galbulidae_ have zygodactylous or pair-toed feet, like the
_Cuculidae_, _Bucconidae_ and _Picidae_, they also resemble both the
latter in laying glossy white eggs, but in this respect they bear the
same resemblance to the _Momotidae_, _Alcedinidae_, _Meropidae_ and some
other groups, to which affinity has been claimed for them. In the opinion
of Sclater (_A Monograph of the Jacamars and Puff-birds_) the jacamars
form two groups--one consisting of the single genus and species
_Jacamerops aureus_ (_J. grandis_ of most authors), and the other
including all the rest, viz. _Urogalba_ with two species, _Galbula_ with
nine, _Brachygalba_ with five, and _Jacamaralcyon_ and _Galbalcyrhynchus_
with one each. They are all rather small birds, the largest known being
little over 10 in. in length, with long and sharply pointed bills, and
the plumage more or less resplendent with golden or bronze reflections,
but at the same time comparatively soft. _Jacamaralcyon tridactyla_
differs from all the rest in possessing but three toes (as its name
indicates), on each foot, the hallux being deficient. With the exception
of _Galbula melanogenia_, which is found also in Central America and
southern Mexico, all the jacamars inhabit the tropical portions of South
America eastward of the Andes, _Galbula ruficauda_, however, extending
its range to the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.[2] Very little is known
of the habits of any of the species. They are seen sitting motionless on
trees, sometimes solitarily, at other times in companies, whence they
suddenly dart off at any passing insect, catch it on the wing, and return
to their perch. Of their nidification almost nothing has been recorded,
but the species occurring in Tobago is said by Kirk to make its nest in
marl-banks, digging a hole about an inch and a half in diameter and some
18 in. deep. (A. N.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Galbula_ was first applied to Marcgrave's bird by Moehring. It
is another form of _Galgulus_, and seems to have been one of the many
names of the golden oriole. See ICTERUS.

[2] The singular appearance, recorded by Canon Tristram (_Zoologist_,
p. 3906), of a bird of this species in Lincolnshire seems to require
notice. No instance seems to be known of any jacamar having been kept
in confinement or brought to this country alive; but expert
aviculturists are often not communicative, and many importations of
rare birds have doubtless passed unrecorded.

JAÇANÁ, the Brazilian name, according to Marcgrave, of certain birds,
since found to have some allies in other parts of the world, which are
also very generally called by the same appellation. They have been most
frequently classed with the water-hens or rails (_Rallidae_), but are
now recognized by many systematists as forming a separate family,
_Parridae_,[1] whose leaning seems to be rather towards the _Limicolae_,
as apparently first suggested by Blyth, a view which is supported by the
osteological observations of Parker (_Proc. Zool. Society_, 1863, p.
513), though denied by A. Milne-Edwards (_Ois. foss. de la France_, ii.
p. 110). The most obvious characteristic of this group of birds is the
extraordinary length of their toes and claws, whereby they are enabled
to walk with ease over water-lilies and other aquatic plants growing in
rivers and lakes. The family has been divided into four genera--of which
_Parra_, as now restricted, inhabits South America; _Metopidius_, hardly
differing from it, has representatives in Africa, Madagascar and the
Indian region; _Hydralector_, also very nearly allied to _Parra_,
belongs to the northern portion of the Australian region; and
_Hydrophasianus_, the most extravagant form of the whole, is found in
India, Ceylon and China. In habits the jaçanás have much in common with
the water-hens, but that fact is insufficient to warrant the affinity
asserted to exist between the two groups; for in their osteological
structure there is much difference, and the resemblance seems to be only
that of analogy. The _Parridae_ lay very peculiar eggs of a rich
olive-brown colour, in most cases closely marked with dark lines, thus
presenting an appearance by which they may be readily known from those
of any other birds, though an approach to it is occasionally to be
noticed in those of certain _Limicolae_, and especially of certain
_Charadriidae_. (A. N.)

[Illustration: Pheasant-tailed Jaçaná.]

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The classic _Parra_ is by some authors thought to have been the
golden oriole (see ICTERUS), while others suppose it was a jay or
pie. The word seems to have been imported into ornithology by
Aldrovandus, but the reason which prompted Linnaeus to apply it, as
he seems first to have done, to a bird of this group, cannot be
satisfactorily stated.

JACINI, STEFANO, COUNT (1827-1891), Italian statesman and economist, was
descended from an old and wealthy Lombard family. He studied in
Switzerland, at Milan, and in German universities. During the period of
the Austrian restoration in Lombardy (1849-1859) he devoted himself to
literary and economic studies. For his work on _La Proprietà fondiaria
in Lombardia_ (Milan, 1856) he received a prize from the Milanese
_Società d'incoraggiamento di scienze e lettere_ and was made a member
of the Istituto Lombardo. In another work, _Sulle condizioni economiche
della Valtellina_ (Milan, 1858, translated into English by W. E.
Gladstone), he exposed the evils of Austrian rule, and he drew up a
report on the general conditions of Lombardy and Venetia for Cavour. He
was minister of Public Works under Cavour in 1860-1861, in 1864 under La
Marmora, and down to 1867 under Ricasoli. In 1866 he presented a bill
favouring Italy's participation in the construction of the St Gotthard
tunnel. He was instrumental in bringing about the alliance with Prussia
for the war of 1866 against Austria, and in the organization of the
Italian railways. From 1881 to 1886 he was president of the commission
to inquire into the agricultural conditions of Italy, and edited the
voluminous report on the subject. He was created senator in 1870, and
given the title of count in 1880. He died in 1891.

L. Carpi's _Risorgimento italiano_, vol. iv. (Milan, 1888), contains a
short sketch of Jacini's life.

JACK, a word with a great variety of meanings and applications, all
traceable to the common use of the word as a by-name of a man. The
question has been much discussed whether "Jack" as a name is an
adaptation of Fr. _Jacques_, i.e. James, from Lat. _Jacobus_, Gr.
[Greek: Iakôbos], or whether it is a direct pet formation from John,
which is its earliest and universal use in English. In the _History of
the Monastery of St Augustine_ at Canterbury, 1414, Jack is given as a
form of John--_Mos est Saxonum ... verba et nomina transformare ... ut
... pro Johanne Jankin sive Jacke_ (see E. W. B. Nicholson, _The
Pedigree of Jack and other Allied Names_, 1892). "Jack" was early used
as a general term for any man of the common people, especially in
combination with the woman's name Jill or Gill, as in the nursery rhyme.
The _New English Dictionary_ quotes from the _Coventry Mysteries_, 1450:
"And I wole kepe the feet this tyde Thow ther come both Iakke and
Gylle." Familiar examples of this generic application of the name are
Jack or Jack Tar for a sailor, which seems to date from the 17th
century, and such compound uses as cheap-jack and steeple-jack, or such
expressions as "jack in office," "jack of all trades," &c. It is a
further extension of this that gives the name to the knave in a pack of
cards, and also to various animals, as jackdaw, jack-snipe, jack-rabbit
(a species of large prairie-hare); it is also used as a general name for
pike.

The many applications of the word "jack" to mechanical devices and other
objects follow two lines of reference, one to objects somewhat smaller
than the ordinary, the other to appliances which take the place of
direct manual labour or assist or save it. Of the first class may be
noticed the use of the term for the small object bowl in the game of
bowls or for jack rafters, those rafters in a building shorter than the
main rafters, especially the end rafters in a hipped roof. The use of
jack as the name for a particular form of ship's flag probably arose
thus, for it is always a smaller flag than the ensign. The jack is flown
on a staff on the bowsprit of a vessel. In the British navy the jack is
a small Union flag. (The Union flag should not be styled a Union Jack
except when it is flown as a jack.) The jack of other nations is usually
the canton of the ensign, as in the German and the United States navies,
or else is a smaller form of the national ensign, as in France. (See
FLAG.)

The more common use of "jack" is for various mechanical and other
devices originally used as substitutes for men or boys. Thus the origin
of the boot-jack and the meat-jack is explained in Isaac Watts's
_Logic_, 1724: "So foot boys, who had frequently the common name of Jack
given them, were kept to turn the spit or pull off their masters' boots,
but when instruments were invented for both these services, they were
both called jacks." The _New English Dictionary_ finds a transitional
sense in the use of the name "jack" for mechanical figures which strike
the hours on a bell of a clock. Such a figure in the clock of St
Lawrence Church at Reading is called a jack in the parish accounts for
1498-1499. There are many different applications of "jack," to certain
levers and other parts of textile machinery, to metal plugs used for
connecting lines in a telephone exchange, to wooden uprights connecting
the levers of the keys with the strings in the harpsichord and virginal,
to a framework forming a seat or staging which can be fixed outside a
window for cleaning or painting purposes, and to many devices containing
a roller or winch, as in a jack towel, a long towel hung on a roller.
The principal mechanical application of the word, however, is to a
machine for raising weights from below. A jack chain, so called from its
use in meat-jacks, is one in which the links, formed each in a figure of
eight, are set in planes at right angles to each other, so that they are
seen alternately flat or edgeways.

In most European languages the word "jack" in various forms appears for
a short upper outer garment, particularly in the shape of a sleeveless
(quilted) leather jerkin, sometimes with plates or rings of iron sewn to
it. It was the common coat of defence of the infantry of the middle
ages. The word in this case is of French origin and was an adaptation of
the common name _Jacques_, as being a garment worn by the common people.
In French the word is _jaque_, and it appears in Italian as _giaco_, or
_giacco_, in Dutch _jak_, Swedish _jacka_ and German _Jacke_, still the
ordinary name for a short coat, as is the English jacket, from the
diminutive French _jaquette_. It was probably from some resemblance to
the leather coat that the well-known leather vessels for holding liquor
or for drinking were known as jacks or black jacks. These drinking
vessels, which are often of great size, were not described as black
jacks till the 16th century, though known as jacks much earlier. Among
the important specimens that have survived to this day is one with the
initials and crown of Charles I. and the date, 1646, which came from
Kensington Palace and is now in the British Museum; one each at Queen's
College and New College, Oxford; two at Winchester College; one at Eton
College; and six at the Chelsea Hospital. Many specimens are painted
with shields of arms, initials and other devices; they are very seldom
mounted in silver, though spurious specimens with silver medallions of
Cromwell and other prominent personages exist. At the end of the 17th
century a smaller jack of a different form, like an ordinary drinking
mug with a tapering cylindrical body, often mounted in silver, came into
vogue in a limited degree. The black jack is a distinct type of drinking
vessel from the leather botel and the bombard. The jack-boot, the heavy
riding boot with long flap covering the knee and part of the thigh, and
worn by troopers first during the 17th century, was so called probably
from association with the leather jack or jerkin. The jack-boot is still
worn by the Household Cavalry, and the name is applied to a high riding
boot reaching to the knee as distinguished from the riding boot with
tops, used in full hunting-kit or by grooms or coachmen.

Jack, sometimes spelled jak, is the common name for the fruit of the
tree _Artiocarpus integrifolia_, found in the East Indies. The word is
an adaptation of the Portuguese _jaca_ from the Malay name _chakka_.
(See BREAD FRUIT.)

The word "jackanapes," now used as an opprobrious term for a swaggering
person with impertinent ways and affected airs and graces, has a
disputed and curious history. According to the _New English Dictionary_
it first appears in 1450 in reference to William de la Pole, duke of
Suffolk (_Political Poems_, "Rolls Series," II. 224), "Jack Napys with
his clogge hath tiede Talbot oure gentille dogge." Suffolk's badge was a
clog and chain, such as was often used for an ape kept in captivity, and
he is alluded to (ibid. 222) as "Ape clogge." Jack Napes, Jack o' Napes,
Jackanapes, was a common name for a tame ape from the 16th century, and
it seems more likely that the word is a fanciful name for a monkey than
that it is due to the nickname of Suffolk.

JACKAL (Turk, _chakal_), a name properly restricted to _Canis aureus_, a
wolf-like wild member of the dog family inhabiting eastern Europe and
southern Asia, but extended to include a number of allied species.
Jackals resemble wolves and dogs in their dentition, the round
eye-pupils, the period of gestation, and to a large extent also in
habits. The European species grows to a height of 15 in. at the
shoulders, and to a length of about 2 ft., exclusive of its bushy tail.
Typically the fur is greyish-yellow, darker on the back and lighter
beneath. The range of the common jackal (_C. aureus_) extends from
Dalmatia to India, the species being represented by several local races.
In Senegal this species is replaced by _C. anthus_, while in Egypt
occurs the much larger _C. lupaster_, commonly known as the Egyptian
wolf. Nearly allied to the last is the so-called Indian wolf (_C.
pallipes_). Other African species are the black-backed jackal (_C.
mesomelas_), the variegated jackal (_C. variegatus_), and the dusky
jackal (_C. adustus_). Jackals are nocturnal animals, concealing
themselves until dusk in woody jungles and other natural lurking places,
and then sallying forth in packs, which sometimes number two hundred
individuals, and visiting farmyards, villages and towns in search of
food. This consists for the most part of the smaller mammals and
poultry; although the association in packs enables these marauders to
hunt down antelopes and sheep. When unable to obtain living prey, they
feed on carrion and refuse of all kinds, and are thus useful in removing
putrescent matter from the streets. They are also fond of grapes and
other fruits, and are thus the pests of the vineyard as well as the
poultry-yard. The cry of the jackal is even more appalling than that of
the hyena, a shriek from one member of a pack being the signal for a
general chorus of screams, which is kept up during the greater part of
the night. In India these animals are hunted with foxhounds or
greyhounds, and from their cunning and pluck afford excellent sport.
Jackals are readily tamed; and domesticated individuals are said, when
called by their masters, to wag their tails, crouch and throw themselves
on the ground, and otherwise behave in a dog-like fashion. The jackal,
like the fox, has an offensive odour, due to the secretion of a gland at
the base of the tail.

[Illustration: Egyptian Jackal (_Canis lupaster_).]

JACKDAW, or simply DAW (Old Low German, _Daha_; Dutch, _Kaauw_), one of
the smallest species of the genus _Corvus_ (see CROW), and a very well
known inhabitant of Europe, the _C. monedula_ of ornithologists. In some
of its habits it much resembles its congener the rook, with which it
constantly associates during a great part of the year; but, while the
rook only exceptionally places its nest elsewhere than on the boughs of
trees and open to the sky, the daw almost invariably chooses holes,
whether in rocks, hollow trees, rabbit-burrows or buildings. Nearly
every church-tower and castle, ruined or not, is more or less numerously
occupied by daws. Chimneys frequently give them the accommodation they
desire, much to the annoyance of the householder, who finds the funnel
choked by the quantity of sticks brought together by the birds, since
their industry in collecting materials for their nests is as marvellous
as it often is futile. In some cases the stack of loose sticks piled up
by daws in a belfry or tower has been known to form a structure 10 or 12
ft. in height, and hence this species may be accounted one of the
greatest nest-builders in the world. The style of architecture practised
by the daw thus brings it more than the rook into contact with man, and
its familiarity is increased by the boldness of its disposition which,
though tempered by discreet cunning, is hardly surpassed among birds.
Its small size, in comparison with most of its congeners, alone
incapacitates it from inflicting the serious injuries of which some of
them are often the authors, yet its pilferings are not to be denied,
though on the whole its services to the agriculturist are great, for in
the destruction of injurious insects it is hardly inferior to the rook,
and it has the useful habit of ridding sheep, on whose backs it may be
frequently seen perched, of some of their parasites.

The daw displays the glossy black plumage so characteristic of the true
crows, varied only by the hoary grey of the ear-coverts, and of the nape
and sides of the neck, which is the mark of the adult; but examples from
the east of Europe and western Asia have these parts much lighter,
passing into a silvery white, and hence have been deemed by some
authorities to constitute a distinct species (_C. collaris_, Drumm.).
Further to the eastward occurs the _C. dauuricus_ of Pallas, which has
not only the collar broader and of a pure white, but much of the lower
parts of the body white also. Japan and northern China are inhabited
also by a form resembling that of western Europe, but wanting the grey
nape of the latter. This is the _C. neglectus_ of Professor Schlegel,
and is said by Dresser, on the authority of Swinhoe, to interbreed
frequently with _C. dauuricus_. These are all the birds that seem
entitled to be considered daws, though Dr Bowdler Sharpe (_Cat. B. Brit.
Museum_, iii. 24) associates with them (under the little-deserved
separate generic distinction _Coloeus_) the fish-crow of North America,
which appears both in structure and in habits to be a true crow.
(A. N.)

JACKSON, ANDREW (1767-1845), seventh president of the United States, was
born on the 15th of March 1767, at the Waxhaw or Warsaw settlement, in
Union county, North Carolina, or in Lancaster county, South Carolina,
whither his parents had immigrated from Carrickfergus, Ireland, in 1765.
He played a slight part in the War of Independence, and was taken
prisoner in 1781, his treatment resulting in a lifelong dislike of Great
Britain. He studied law at Salisbury, North Carolina, was admitted to
the bar there in 1787, and began to practise at McLeansville, Guilford
county, North Carolina, where for a time he was a constable and
deputy-sheriff. In 1788, having been appointed prosecuting attorney of
the western district of North Carolina (now the state of Tennessee), he
removed to Nashville, the seat of justice of the district. In 1791 he
married Mrs Rachel Robards (_née_ Donelson), having heard that her
husband had obtained a divorce through the legislature of Virginia. The
legislative act, however, had only authorized the courts to determine
whether or not there were sufficient grounds for a divorce and to grant
or withhold it accordingly. It was more than two years before the
divorce was actually granted, and only on the basis of the fact that
Jackson and Mrs Robards were then living together. On receiving this
information, Jackson had the marriage ceremony performed a second time.

In 1796 Jackson assisted in framing the constitution of Tennessee. From
December 1796 to March 1797 he represented that state in the Federal
House of Representatives, where he distinguished himself as an
irreconcilable opponent of President Washington, and was one of the
twelve representatives who voted against the address to him by the
House. In 1797 he was elected a United States senator; but he resigned
in the following year. He was judge of the supreme court of Tennessee
from 1798 to 1804. In 1804-1805 he contracted a friendship with Aaron
Burr; and at the latter's trial in 1807 Jackson was one of his
conspicuous champions. Up to the time of his nomination for the
presidency, the biographer of Jackson finds nothing to record but
military exploits in which he displayed perseverance, energy and skill
of a very high order, and a succession of personal acts in which he
showed himself ignorant, violent, perverse, quarrelsome and
astonishingly indiscreet. His combative disposition led him into
numerous personal difficulties. In 1795 he fought a duel with Colonel
Waitstill Avery (1745-1821), an opposing counsel, over some angry words
uttered in a court room; but both, it appears, intentionally fired wild.
In 1806 in another duel, after a long and bitter quarrel, he killed
Charles Dickinson, and Jackson himself received a wound from which he
never fully recovered. In 1813 he exchanged shots with Thomas Hart
Benton and his brother Jesse in a Nashville tavern, and received a
second wound. Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton were later reconciled.

In 1813-1814, as major-general of militia, he commanded in the campaign
against the Creek Indians in Georgia and Alabama, defeated them (at
Talladega, on the 9th of November 1813, and at Tohopeka, on the 29th of
March 1814), and thus first attracted public notice by his talents. In
May 1814 he was commissioned as major-general in the regular army to
serve against the British; in November he captured Pensacola, Florida,
then owned by Spain, but used by the British as a base of operations;
and on the 8th of January 1815 he inflicted a severe defeat on the enemy
before New Orleans, the contestants being unaware that a treaty of peace
had already been signed. During his stay in New Orleans he proclaimed
martial law, and carried out his measures with unrelenting sternness,
banishing from the town a judge who attempted resistance. When civil law
was restored, Jackson was fined $1000 for contempt of court; in 1844
Congress ordered the fine with interest ($2700) to be repaid. In 1818
Jackson received the command against the Seminoles. His conduct in
following them up into the Spanish territory of Florida, in seizing
Pensacola, and in arresting and executing two British subjects,
Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, gave rise to much hostile
comment in the cabinet and in Congress; but the negotiations for the
purchase of Florida put an end to the diplomatic difficulty. In 1821
Jackson was military governor of the territory of Florida, and there
again he came into collision with the civil authority. From this, as
from previous troubles, John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state,
extricated him.

In July 1822 the general assembly of Tennessee nominated Jackson for
president; and in 1823 he was elected to the United States Senate, from
which he resigned in 1825. The rival candidates for the office of
president in the campaign of 1824 were Jackson, John Quincy Adams, W. H.
Crawford and Henry Clay. Jackson obtained the largest number of votes
(99) in the electoral college (Adams receiving 84, Crawford 41 and Clay
37); but no one had an absolute majority, and it thus became the duty of
the House of Representatives to choose one of the three
candidates--Adams, Jackson and Crawford--who had received the greatest
numbers of electoral votes. At the election by the house (February 9,
1825) Adams was chosen, receiving the votes of 13 states, while Jackson
received the votes of 7 and Crawford the votes of 4. Jackson, however,
was recognized by the abler politicians as the coming man. Martin Van
Buren and others, going into opposition under his banner, waged from the
first a relentless and factious war on the administration. Van Buren was
the most adroit politician of his time; and Jackson was in the hands of
very astute men, who advised and controlled him. He was easy to lead
when his mind was in solution; and he gave his confidence freely where
he had once placed it. He was not suspicious, but if he withdrew his
confidence he was implacable. When his mind crystallized on a notion
that had a personal significance to himself, that notion became a hard
fact that filled his field of vision. When he was told that he had been
cheated in the matter of the presidency,[1] he was sure of it, although
those who told him were by no means so.

There was great significance in the election of Jackson in 1828. A new
generation was growing up under new economic and social conditions. They
felt great confidence in themselves and great independence. They
despised tradition and Old World ways and notions; and they accepted the
Jeffersonian dogmas, not only as maxims, but as social forces--the
causes of the material prosperity of the country. By this generation,
therefore, Jackson was recognized as a man after their own heart. They
liked him because he was vigorous, brusque, uncouth, relentless,
straightforward and open. They made him president in 1828, and he
fulfilled all their expectations. He had 178 votes in the electoral
college against 83 given for Adams. Though the work of redistribution of
offices began almost at his inauguration, it is yet an incorrect account
of the matter to say that Jackson corrupted the civil service. His
administration is rather the date at which a system of democracy,
organized by the use of patronage, was introduced into the federal arena
by Van Buren. It was at this time that the Democratic or Republican
party divided, largely along personal lines, into Jacksonian Democrats
and National Republicans, the latter led by such men as Henry Clay and
J. Q. Adams. The administration itself had two factions in it from the
first, the faction of Van Buren, the secretary of state in 1829-1831,
and that of Calhoun, vice-president in 1829-1832. The refusal of the
wives of the cabinet and of Mrs Calhoun to accord social recognition to
Mrs J. H. Eaton brought about a rupture, and in April 1831 the whole
cabinet was reorganized. Van Buren, a widower, sided with the president
in this affair and grew in his favour. Jackson in the meantime had
learned that Calhoun as secretary of war had wished to censure him for
his actions during the Seminole war in Florida in 1818, and henceforth
he regarded the South Carolina statesman as his enemy. The result was
that Jackson transferred to Van Buren his support for succession in the
presidency. The relations between Jackson and his cabinet were unlike
those existing under his predecessors. Having a military point of view,
he was inclined to look upon the cabinet members as inferior officers,
and when in need of advice he usually consulted a group of personal
friends, who came to be called the "Kitchen Cabinet." The principal
members of this clique were William B. Lewis (1784-1866), Amos Kendall
and Duff Green, the last named being editor of the _United States
Telegraph_, the organ of the administration.

In 1832 Jackson was re-elected by a large majority (219 electoral votes
to 49) over Henry Clay, his chief opponent. The battle raged mainly
around the re-charter of the Bank of the United States. It is probable
that Jackson's advisers in 1828 had told him, though erroneously, that
the bank had worked against him, and then were not able to control him.
The first message of his first presidency had contained a severe
reflection on the bank; and in the very height of this second campaign
(July 1832) he vetoed the re-charter, which had been passed in the
session of 1831-1832. Jackson interpreted his re-election as an approval
by the people of his war on the bank, and he pushed it with energy. In
September 1833 he ordered the public deposits in the bank to be
transferred to selected local banks, and entered upon the "experiment"
whether these could not act as fiscal agents for the government, and
whether the desire to get the deposits would not induce the local banks
to adopt sound rules of currency. During the next session the Senate
passed a resolution condemning his conduct. Jackson protested, and after
a hard struggle, in which Jackson's friends were led by Senator Thomas
Hart Benton, the resolution was ordered to be expunged from the record,
on the 16th of January 1837.

In 1832, when the state of South Carolina attempted to "nullify" the
tariff laws, Jackson at once took steps to enforce the authority of the
federal government, ordering two war vessels to Charleston and placing
troops within convenient distance. He also issued a proclamation warning
the people of South Carolina against the consequences of their conduct.
In the troubles between Georgia and the Cherokee Indians, however, he
took a different stand. Shortly after his first election Georgia passed
an act extending over the Cherokee country the civil laws of the state.
This was contrary to the rights of the Cherokees under a federal treaty,
and the Supreme Court consequently declared the act void (1832).
Jackson, however, having the frontiersman's contempt for the Indian,
refused to enforce the decision of the court (see NULLIFICATION;
GEORGIA: _History_).

Jackson was very successful in collecting old claims against various
European nations for spoliations inflicted under Napoleon's continental
system, especially the French spoliation claims, with reference to which
he acted with aggressiveness and firmness. Aiming at a currency to
consist largely of specie, he caused the payment of these claims to be
received and imported in specie as far as possible; and in 1836 he
ordered land-agents to receive for land nothing but specie. About the
same time a law passed Congress for distributing among the states some
$35,000,000 balance belonging to the United States, the public debt
having all been paid. The eighty banks of deposit in which it was lying
had regarded this sum almost as a permanent loan, and had inflated
credit on the basis of it. The necessary calling in of their loans in
order to meet the drafts in favour of the states, combining with the
breach of the overstrained credit between America and Europe and the
decline in the price of cotton, brought about a crash which prostrated
the whole financial, industrial and commercial system of the country for
six or seven years. The crash came just as Jackson was leaving office;
the whole burden fell on his successor, Van Buren.

In the 18th century the influences at work in the American colonies
developed democratic notions. In fact, the circumstances were those
which create equality of wealth and condition, as far as civilized men
ever can be equal. The War of Independence was attended by a grand
outburst of political dogmatism of the democratic type. A class of men
were produced who believed in very broad dogmas of popular power and
rights. There were a few rich men, but they were almost ashamed to
differ from their neighbours and, in some known cases, they affected
democracy in order to win popularity. After the 19th century began the
class of rich men rapidly increased. In the first years of the century a
little clique at Philadelphia became alarmed at the increase of the
"money power," and at the growing perils to democracy. They attacked
with some violence, but little skill, the first Bank of the United
States, and they prevented its re-charter. The most permanent interest
of the history of the United States is the picture it offers of a
primitive democratic society transformed by prosperity and the
acquisition of capital into a great republican commonwealth. The
denunciations of the "money power" and the reiteration of democratic
dogmas deserve earnest attention. They show the development of classes
or parties in the old undifferentiated mass. Jackson came upon the
political stage just when a wealthy class first existed. It was an
industrial and commercial class greatly interested in the tariff, and
deeply interested also in the then current forms of issue banking. The
southern planters also were rich, but were agriculturists and remained
philosophical Democrats. Jackson was a man of low birth, uneducated,
prejudiced, and marked by strong personal feeling in all his beliefs and
disbeliefs. He showed, in his military work and in his early political
doings, great lack of discipline. The proposal to make him president won
his assent and awakened his ambition. In anything which he undertook he
always wanted to carry his point almost regardless of incidental effects
on himself or others. He soon became completely engaged in the effort to
be made president. The men nearest to him understood his character and
played on it. It was suggested to him that the money power was against
him. That meant that, to the educated or cultivated class of that day,
he did not seem to be in the class from which a president should be
chosen. He took the idea that the Bank of the United States was leading
the money power against him, and that he was the champion of the masses
of democracy and of the common people. The opposite party, led by Clay,
Adams, Biddle, &c., had schemes for banks and tariffs, enterprises which
were open to severe criticism. The political struggle was very intense
and there were two good sides to it. Men like Thomas H. Benton, Edward
Livingston, Amos Kendall, and the southern statesmen, found material for
strong attacks on the Whigs. The great mass of voters felt the issue as
Jackson's managers stated it. That meant that the masses recognized
Jackson as their champion. Therefore, Jackson's personality and name
became a power on the side opposed to banks, corporations and other
forms of the new growing power of capital. That Jackson was a typical
man of his generation is certain. He represents the spirit and temper of
the free American of that day, and it was a part of his way of thinking
and acting that he put his whole life and interest into the conflict. He
accomplished two things of great importance in the history: he crushed
excessive state-rights and established the contrary doctrine in fact and
in the political orthodoxy of the democrats; he destroyed the great
bank. The subsequent history of the bank left it without an apologist,
and prejudiced the whole later judgment about it. The way in which
Jackson accomplished these things was such that it cost the country ten
years of the severest liquidation, and left conflicting traditions of
public policy in the Democratic party. After he left Washington, Jackson
fell into discord with his most intimate old friends, and turned his
interest to the cause of slavery, which he thought to be attacked and in
danger.

Jackson is the only president of whom it may be said that he went out of
office far more popular than he was when he entered. When he went into
office he had no political opinions, only some popular notions. He left
his party strong, perfectly organized and enthusiastic on a platform of
low expenditure, payment of the debt, no expenditure for public
improvement or for glory or display in any form and low taxes. His name
still remained a spell to conjure with, and the politicians sought to
obtain the assistance of his approval for their schemes; but in general
his last years were quiet and uneventful. He died at his residence, "The
Hermitage," near Nashville, Tennessee, on the 8th of June 1845.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Of the early biographies, that by J. H. Eaton
(Philadelphia, 1824) is a history of Jackson's early military
exploits, written for political purposes. Amos Kendall's _Life_ (New
York, 1843) is incomplete, extending only to 1814. James Parton's
elaborate work (3 vols., New York, 1860) is still useful. Parton
prepared a shorter biography for the "Great Commanders Series" (New
York, 1893), which emphasizes Jackson's military career. W. G.
Sumner's _Andrew Jackson_ in the "American Statesmen Series" (Boston,
1882; revised, 1899) combines the leading facts of Jackson's life with
a history of his times. W. G. Brown wrote an appreciative sketch
(Boston, 1900) for the "Riverside Biographical Series." Of more recent
works the most elaborate are the _History of Andrew Jackson_, by A. C.
Buell (New York, 1904), marred by numerous errors, and the _Life and
Times of Andrew Jackson_, by A. S. Colyar (Nashville, 1904). Charles
H. Peck's _The Jacksonian Epoch_ (New York, 1899) is an account of
national politics from 1815 to 1840, in which the antagonism of
Jackson and Clay is emphasized. (W. G. S.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The charge was freely made then and afterwards (though, it is now
believed, without justification) that Clay had supported Adams and by
influencing his followers in the house had been instrumental in
securing his election, as the result of a bargain by which Adams had
agreed to pay him for his support by appointing him secretary of
state.

JACKSON, CYRIL (1746-1819), dean of Christ Church, Oxford, was born in
Yorkshire, and educated at Westminster and Oxford. In 1771 he was chosen
to be sub-preceptor to the two eldest sons of George III., but in 1776
he was dismissed, probably through some household intrigues. He then
took orders, and was appointed in 1779 to the preachership at Lincoln's
Inn and to a canonry at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1783 he was elected
dean of Christ Church. His devotion to the college led him to decline
the bishopric of Oxford in 1799 and the primacy of Ireland in 1800. He
took a leading part in framing the statute which, in 1802, launched the
system of public examinations at Oxford, but otherwise he was not
prominent in university affairs. On his resignation in 1809 he settled
at Felpham, in Sussex, where he remained till his death.

JACKSON, FREDERICK GEORGE (1860- ), British Arctic explorer, was
educated at Denstone College and Edinburgh University. His first voyage
in Arctic waters was on a whaling-cruise in 1886-1887, and in 1893 he
made a sledge-journey of 3000 miles across the frozen _tundra_ of
Siberia lying between the Ob and the Pechora. His narrative of this
journey was published under the title of _The Great Frozen Land_ (1895).
On his return, he was given the command of the Jackson-Harmsworth Arctic
expedition (1894-1897), which had for its objective the general
exploration of Franz Josef Land. In recognition of his services he
received a knighthood of the first class of the Danish Royal Order of St
Olaf in 1898, and was awarded the gold medal of the Paris Geographical
Society in 1899. His account of the expedition was published under the
title of _A Thousand Days in the Arctic_ (1899). He served in South
Africa during the Boer War, and obtained the rank of captain. His
travels also include a journey across the Australian deserts.

JACKSON, HELEN MARIA (1831-1885), American poet and novelist, who wrote
under the initials of "H. H." (Helen Hunt), was born in Amherst,
Massachusetts, on the 18th of October 1831, the daughter of Nathan Welby
Fiske (1798-1847), who was a professor in Amherst College. In October
1852 she married Lieutenant Edward Bissell Hunt (1822-1863), of the U.S.
corps of engineers. In 1870 she published a little volume of meditative
_Verses_, which was praised by Emerson in the preface to his _Parnassus_
(1874). In 1875 she married William S. Jackson, a banker, of Colorado
Springs. She became a prolific writer of prose and verse, including
juvenile tales, books of travel, household hints and novels, of which
the best is _Ramona_ (1884), a defence of the Indian character. In 1883,
as a special commissioner with Abbot Kinney (b. 1850), she investigated
the condition and needs of the Mission Indians in California. _A Century
of Dishonor_ (1881) was an arraignment of the treatment of the Indians
by the United States. She died on the 12th of August 1885 in San
Francisco.

In addition to her publications referred to above, _Mercy Philbrick's
Choice_ (1876), _Hetty's Strange History_ (1877), _Zeph_ (1886), and
_Sonnets and Lyrics_ (1886) may be mentioned.

JACKSON, MASON (c. 1820-1903), British engraver, was born at
Berwick-on-Tweed about 1820, and was trained as a wood engraver by his
brother, John Jackson, the author of a history of this art. In the
middle of the 19th century he made a considerable reputation by his
engravings for the Art Union of London, and for Knight's _Shakespeare_
and other standard books; and in 1860 he was appointed art editor of the
_Illustrated London News_, a post which he held for thirty years. He
wrote a history of the rise and progress of illustrated journalism. He
died in December 1903.

JACKSON, THOMAS (1579-1640), president of Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, and dean of Peterborough, was born at Witton-le-Wear, Durham,
and educated at Oxford. He became a probationer fellow of Corpus in
1606, and was soon afterwards elected vice-president. In 1623 he was
presented to the living of St Nicholas, Newcastle, and about 1625 to the
living of Winston, Durham. Five years later he was appointed president
of Corpus, and in 1632 the king presented him to the living of Witney,
Oxfordshire. He was made a prebendary of Winchester in 1635, and was
dean of Peterborough in 1635-1639. Although originally a Calvinist, he
became in later life an Arminian.

His chief work was a series of commentaries on the Apostles' Creed,
the first complete edition being entitled _The Works of Thomas
Jackson, D.D._ (London, 1673). The commentaries were, however,
originally published in 1613-1657, as twelve books with different
titles, the first being _The Eternal Truth of Scriptures_ (London,
1613).

JACKSON, THOMAS JONATHAN (1824-1863), known as "Stonewall Jackson,"
American general, was born at Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia),
on the 21st of January 1824, and was descended from an Ulster family. At
an early age he was left a penniless orphan, and his education was
acquired in a small country school until he procured, mainly by his own
energy, a nomination to the Military Academy. Lack of social graces and
the deficiencies of his early education impeded him at first, but "in
the end 'Old Jack,' as he was always called, with his desperate
earnestness, his unflinching straightforwardness, and his high sense of
honour, came to be regarded with something like affection." Such
qualities he displayed not less amongst the light-hearted cadets than
afterwards at the head of troops in battle. After graduating he took
part, as second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery, in the Mexican
War. At Vera Cruz he won the rank of first lieutenant, and for gallant
conduct at Contreras and Chapultepec respectively he was brevetted
captain and major, a rank which he attained with less than one year's
service. During his stay in the city of Mexico his thoughts were
seriously directed towards religion, and, eventually entering the
Presbyterian communion, he ruled every subsequent action of his life by
his faith. In 1851 he applied for and obtained a professorship at the
Virginia military institute, Lexington; and here, except for a short
visit to Europe, he remained for ten years, teaching natural science,
the theory of gunnery and battalion drill. Though he was not a good
teacher, his influence both on his pupils and on those few intimate
friends for whom alone he relaxed the gravity of his manner was
profound, and, little as he was known to the white inhabitants of
Lexington, he was revered by the slaves, to whom he showed uniform
kindness, and for whose moral instruction he worked unceasingly. As to
the great question at issue in 1861, Major Jackson's ruling motive was
devotion to his state, and when Virginia seceded, on the 17th of April,
and the Lexington cadets were ordered to Richmond, Jackson went thither
in command of the corps. His intimate friend, Governor Letcher,
appreciating his gifts, sent him as a colonel of infantry to Harper's
Ferry, where the first collision with the Union forces was hourly
expected. In June he received the command of a brigade, and in July
promotion to the rank of brigadier-general. He had well employed the
short time at his disposal for training his men, and on the first field
of Bull Run they won for themselves and their brigadier, by their rigid
steadiness at the critical moment of the battle, the historic name of
"Stonewall."

After the battle of Bull Run Jackson spent some time in the further
training of his brigade which, to his infinite regret, he was compelled
to leave behind him when, in October, he was assigned as a major-general
to command in the Shenandoah Valley. His army had to be formed out of
local troops, and few modern weapons were available, but the Valley
regiments retained the impress of Jackson's training till the days of
Cedar Creek. Discipline was not acquired at once, however, and the first
ventures of the force were not very successful. At Kernstown, indeed,
Jackson was tactically defeated by the Federals under Shields (March 23,
1862). But the Stonewall brigade had been sent to its old leader in
November, and by the time that the famous Valley Campaign (see
SHENANDOAH VALLEY CAMPAIGNS) began, the forces under Jackson's command
had acquired cohesion and power of manoeuvre. On the 8th of May 1862 was
fought the combat of McDowell, won by Jackson against the leading troops
of Frémont's command from West Virginia. Three weeks later the forces
under Banks were being driven over the Potomac at Harper's Ferry, and
Jackson was master of the Valley. Every other plan of campaign in
Virginia was at once subordinated to the scheme of "trapping Jackson."
But the Confederates, marching swiftly up the Valley, slipped between
the converging columns of Frémont from the west and McDowell from the
east, and concluded a most daring campaign by the victorious actions of
Cross Keys and Port Republic (8th and 9th of June). While the forces of
the North were still scattered, Jackson secretly left the Valley to take
a decisive part in Lee's campaign before Richmond. In the "Seven Days"
Jackson was frequently at fault, but his driving energy bore no small
part in securing the defeat of McClellan's advance on Richmond. Here he
passed for the first time under the direct orders of Robert Lee, and the
rest of his career was spent in command of the II. corps of the Army of
Northern Virginia. As Lee's chief and most trusted subordinate he was
throughout charged with the execution of the more delicate and difficult
operations of his commander's hazardous strategy. After his victory over
Banks at Cedar Mountain, near Culpeper, Virginia, Jackson led the daring
march round the flank of General Pope's army, which against all
theoretical rules ended in the great victory of second Bull Run. In the
Maryland campaign Lieut.-General Jackson was again detached from the
main army. Eleven thousand Federals, surrounded in Harper's Ferry, were
forced to surrender, and Jackson rejoined Lee just in time to oppose
McClellan's advance. At the Antietam his corps bore the brunt of the
battle, which was one of the most stubborn of modern warfare. At
Fredericksburg his wing of Lee's line of battle was heavily engaged, and
his last battle, before Chancellorsville, in the thickets of the
Wilderness, was his greatest triumph. By one of his swift and secret
flank marches he placed his corps on the flank of the enemy, and on the
2nd of May flung them against the Federal XI. corps, which was utterly
routed. At the close of a day of victory he was reconnoitring the
hostile positions when suddenly the Confederate outposts opened fire
upon his staff, whom they mistook in the dark and tangled forest for
Federal cavalry. Jackson fell wounded, and on the 10th of May he died at
Guinea's station. He was buried, according to his own wish, at
Lexington, where a statue and a memorial hall commemorate his connexion
with the place; and on the spot where he was mortally wounded stands a
plain granite pillar. The first contribution towards the bronze statue
at Richmond was made by the negro Baptist congregation for which Jackson
had laboured so earnestly in his Lexington years. He was twice married,
first to Eleanor (d. 1854), daughter of George Junkin, president of
Washington College, Virginia, and secondly in 1857 to Mary Anna
Morrison, daughter of a North Carolina clergyman.

That Jackson's death, at a critical moment of the fortunes of the
Confederacy, was an irreparable loss was disputed by no one. Lee said
that he had lost his right arm, and, good soldiers as were the other
generals, not one amongst them was comparable to Jackson, whose name was
dreaded in the North like that of Lee himself. His military character
was the enlargement of his personal character--"desperate earnestness,
unflinching straightforwardness," and absolute, almost fatalist, trust
in the guidance of providence. At the head of his troops, who idolized
him, he was a Cromwell, adding to the zeal of a fanatic and the energy
of the born leader the special military skill and trained soldierly
spirit which the English commander had to gain by experience. His
Christianity was conspicuous, even amongst deeply religious men like Lee
and Stuart, and penetrated every part of his character and conduct.

See lives by R. L. Dabney (New York, 1883), J. E. Cooke (New York,
1866), M. A. Jackson (General Jackson's widow) (New York, 1892); and
especially G. F. R. Henderson, _Stonewall Jackson_ (London, 1898), and
H. A. White, _Stonewall Jackson_ (Philadelphia, 1909).

JACKSON, WILLIAM (1730-1803), English musician, was born at Exeter on
the 29th of May 1730. His father, a grocer, bestowed a liberal education
upon him, but, on account of the lad's strong predilection for music,
was induced to place him under the care of John Silvester, the organist
of Exeter Cathedral, with whom he remained about two years. In 1748 he
went to London, and studied under John Travers, organist of the king's
chapel. Returning to Exeter, he settled there as a teacher and composer,
and in 1777 was appointed subchanter, organist, lay-vicar and master of
the choristers of the cathedral. In 1755 he published his first work,
_Twelve Songs_, which became at once highly popular. His next
publication, _Six Sonatas for the Harpsichord_, was a failure. His third
work, _Six Elegies for three voices, preceded by an Invocation, with an
Accompaniment_, placed him among the first composers of his day. His
fourth work was another set of _Twelve Songs_, now very scarce; and his
fifth work was again a set of _Twelve Songs_, all of which are now
forgotten. He next published _Twelve Hymns_, with some good remarks upon
that style of composition, although his precepts were better than his
practice. A set of _Twelve Songs_ followed, containing some good
compositions. Next came an _Ode to Fancy_, the words by Dr Warton.
_Twelve Canzonets for two voices_ formed his ninth work; and one of
them--"Time has not thinned my Flowing Hair"--long held a place at
public and private concerts. His tenth work was _Eight Sonatas for the
Harpsichord_, some of which were novel and pleasing. He composed three
dramatic pieces,--_Lycidas_ (1767), _The Lord of the Manor_, to General
Burgoyne's words (1780), and _The Metamorphoses_, a comic opera produced
at Drury Lane in 1783, which did not succeed. In the second of these
dramatic works, two airs--"Encompassed in an Angel's Form" and "When
first this Humble Roof I knew"--were great favourites. His church music
was published after his death by James Paddon (1820); most of it is
poor, but "Jackson in F" was for many years popular. In 1782 he
published _Thirty Letters on Various Subjects_, in which he severely
attacked canons, and described William Bird's _Non nobis Domine_ as
containing passages not to be endured. But his anger and contempt were
most strongly expressed against catches of all kinds, which he denounced
as barbarous. In 1791 he put forth a pamphlet, _Observations on the
Present State of Music in London_, in which he found fault with
everything and everybody. He published in 1798 _The Four Ages, together
with Essays on Various Subjects_,--a work which gives a favourable idea
of his character and of his literary acquirements. Jackson also
cultivated a taste for landscape painting, and imitated, not
unsuccessfully, the style of his friend Gainsborough. He died on the 5th
of July 1803.

JACKSON, a city and the county-seat of Jackson county, Michigan, U.S.A.,
on both sides of the Grand River, 76 m. W. of Detroit. Pop. (1890),
20,798; (1900), 25,180, of whom 3843 were foreign-born (1004 German, 941
English Canadian); (1910 census) 31,433. It is served by the Michigan
Central, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the Grand Trunk and the
Cincinnati Northern railways, and by inter-urban electric lines. It is
the seat of the state prison (established 1839). Coal is mined in the
vicinity; the city has a large trade with the surrounding agricultural
district (whose distinctive product is beans); the Michigan Central
railway has car and machine shops here; and the city has many
manufacturing establishments. The total factory product in 1904 was
valued at $8,348,125, an increase of 24.4% over that of 1900. The
municipality owns and operates its water-works. The place was formerly a
favourite camping ground of the Indians, and was settled by whites in
1829. In 1830 it was laid out as a town, selected for the county-seat,
and named Jacksonburg in honour of Andrew Jackson; the present name was
adopted in 1838. Jackson was incorporated as a village in 1843, and in
1857 was chartered as a city. It was at a convention held at Jackson on
the 6th of July 1854 that the Republican party was first organized and
so named by a representative state body.

JACKSON, a city and the county-seat of Hinds county, Mississippi,
U.S.A., and the capital of the state, on the W. bank of the Pearl River,
about 40 m. E. of Vicksburg and 185 m. N. of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Pop. (1890), 5920; (1900), 7816, of whom 4447 were negroes. According to
the Federal census taken in 1910 the population had increased to 21,262.
Jackson is served by the Illinois Central, the Alabama & Vicksburg, the
Gulf & Ship Island, New Orleans Great Northern, and the Yazoo &
Mississippi Valley railways, and during the winter by small freight and
passenger steamboats on the Pearl River. In Jackson is the state
library, with more than 80,000 volumes. The new state capitol was
finished in 1903. The old state capitol, dating from 1839, is of
considerable interest; in it were held the secession convention (1861),
the "Black and Tan Convention" (1868), and the constitutional convention
of 1890, and in it Jefferson Davis made his last speech (1884). Jackson
is the seat of Millsaps College, chartered in 1890 and opened in 1892
(under the control of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South), and
having, in 1907-1908, 12 instructors and 297 students; of Belhaven
College (non-sectarian, 1894), for girls; and of Jackson College
(founded in 1877 at Natchez by the American Baptist Home Mission
Society; in 1883 removed to Jackson), for negroes, which had 356
students in 1907-1908. The city is a market for cotton and farm
products, and has a number of manufactories. In 1821 the site was
designated as the seat of the state government, and early in the
following year the town, named in honour of Andrew Jackson, was laid
out. The legislature first met here in December 1822. It was not until
1840 that it was chartered as a city. During the Civil War Jackson was
in the theatre of active campaigning. On the 14th of May 1863 Johnston
who then held the city, was attacked on both sides by Sherman and
McPherson with two corps of Grant's army, which, after a sharp
engagement, drove the Confederates from the town. After the fall of
Vicksburg Johnston concentrated his forces at Jackson, which had been
evacuated by the Federal troops, and prepared to make a stand behind the
intrenchments. On the 9th of July Sherman began an investment of the
place, and during the succeeding week a sharp bombardment was carried
on. In the night of the 16th Johnston, taking advantage of a lull in the
firing, withdrew suddenly from the city. Sherman's army entered on the
17th and remained five days, burning a considerable part of the city and
ravaging the surrounding country.

JACKSON, a city and the county-seat of Madison county, Tennessee,
U.S.A., situated on the Forked Deer river, about 85 m. N.E. of Memphis.
Pop. (1890), 10,039; (1900), 14,511, of whom 6108 were negroes; (1910
census), 15,779. It is served by the Mobile & Ohio, the Nashville,
Chattanooga & St Louis and the Illinois Central railways. The state
supreme court holds its sessions here for the western district of
Tennessee. The city is the seat of Union University (co-educational),
chartered in 1875 as Southwestern Baptist University, and conducted
under that name at Jackson until 1907, when the present name was
adopted. In 1907-1908 the university had 17 instructors and 280
students. At Jackson, also, are St Mary's Academy (Roman Catholic); the
Memphis Conference Female Institute (Methodist Episcopal, South, 1843),
and Lane College (for negroes), under the control of the Colored
Methodist Episcopal Church. Jackson is an important cotton market, and
is a shipping point for the farm products and fruits of the surrounding
country. It has also numerous manufactures and railway shops. The total
value of the factory product in 1905 was $2,317,715. The municipality
owns and operates the electric-lighting plant and the water-works. There
is in the city an electro-chalybeate well with therapeutic properties.
Jackson was settled about 1820, incorporated as a town in 1823,
chartered as a city in 1854, and in 1907 received a new charter by which
the sale of intoxicating liquors is forever prohibited. After General
Grant's advance into Tennessee in 1862 Jackson was fortified and became
an important base of operations for the Federal army, Grant himself
establishing his headquarters here in October.

JACKSONVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Duval county, Florida,
U.S.A., in the N.E. part of the state, on the left bank of the St John's
River, 14 m. from the Atlantic Ocean as the crow flies and about 27 m.
by water. Pop. (1890), 17,201; (1900), 28,429, of whom 16,236 were
negroes and 1166 foreign-born; (1910 census) 57,699; the city being the
largest in the state. It is served by the Southern, the Atlantic Coast
Line, the Seaboard Air Line, the Georgia Southern & Florida and the
Florida East Coast railways, and by several steamship lines.[1] It is
the largest railway centre in the state, and is popularly known as the
Gate City of Florida. In appearance Jacksonville is very attractive. It
has many handsome buildings, and its residential streets are shaded with
live-oaks, water oaks and bitter-orange trees. Jacksonville is the seat
of two schools for negroes, the Florida Baptist Academy and Cookman
Institute (1872; Methodist Episcopal). Many winter visitors are annually
attracted by the excellent climate, the mean temperature for the winter
months being about 55° F. Among the places of interest in the vicinity
is the large Florida ostrich farm. There are numerous municipal and
other parks. The city owns and operates its electric-lighting plant and
its water-works system. The capital invested in manufacturing increased
from $1,857,844 in 1900 to $4,837,281 in 1905, or 160.4%, and the value
of the factory product rose from $1,798,607 in 1900 to $5,340,264 in
1905, or 196.9%. Jacksonville is the most important distributing centre
in Florida, and is a port of entry. In 1909 its foreign imports were
valued at $513,439; its foreign exports at $2,507,373.

The site of Jacksonville was called Cow Ford (a version of the Indian
name, Wacca Pilatka), from the excellent ford of the St John's River,
over which went the King's Road, a highway built by the English from St
Augustine to the Georgia line. The first settlement was made in 1816. In
1822 a town was laid out here and was named in honour of General Andrew
Jackson; in 1833 Jacksonville was incorporated. During the Civil War the
city was thrice occupied by Federal troops. In 1888 there was an
epidemic of yellow fever. On the 3rd of May 1901 a fire destroyed nearly
150 blocks of buildings, constituting nearly the whole of the business
part of the city, the total loss being more than $15,000,000; but within
two years new buildings greater in number than those destroyed were
constructed, and up to December 1909 about 9000 building permits had
been granted.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Shoals in the river and sand rock at its mouth long prevented the
development of an extensive water trade, but in 1896 the United
States Government made an appropriation (supplemented in 1902, 1903
and 1904) for deepening, for a width of 300 ft., the channel
connecting the city and the ocean to 24 ft., and on the bar 27 ft.
(mean low water), and by 1909 the work had been completed; further
dredging to a 24 ft. depth between the navigable channel and pierhead
lines was authorized in 1907 and completed by 1910.

JACKSONVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Morgan county, Illinois,
U.S.A., on Mauvaiseterre Creek, about 33 m. W. of Springfield. Pop.
(1890), 12,935; (1900), 15,078, of whom 1497 were foreign-born; (1910
census), 15,326. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the
Chicago & Alton, the Chicago, Peoria & St Louis and the Wabash railways.
It is the seat of several educational and philanthropic institutions.
Illinois College (Presbyterian), founded in 1829 through the efforts of
the Rev. John Millot Ellis (1793-1855), a missionary of the American
Home Missionary Society and of the so-called Yale Band (seven Yale
graduates devoted to higher education in the Middle West), is one of the
oldest colleges in the Central States of the United States. The
Jacksonville Female Academy (1830) and the Illinois Conservatory of
Music (1871) were absorbed in 1903 by Illinois College, which then
became co-educational. The college embraces, besides the collegiate
department, Whipple Academy (a preparatory department), the Illinois
Conservatory of Music and a School of Art, and in 1908-1909 had 21
instructors and 173 students. The Rev. Edward Beecher was the first
president of the college (from 1830 to 1844), and among its prominent
graduates have been Richard Yates, jun., the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher,
Newton Bateman (1822-1897), superintendent of public instruction of
Illinois from 1865 to 1875 and president of Knox College in 1875-1893,
Bishop Theodore N. Morrison (b. 1850), Protestant Episcopal Bishop of
Iowa after 1898, and William J. Bryan. The Illinois Woman's College
(Methodist Episcopal; chartered in 1847 as the Illinois Conference
Female Academy) received its present name in 1899. The State Central
Hospital for the Insane (opened in 1851), the State School for the deaf
(established in 1839, opened in 1845, and the first charitable
institution of the state) and the State School for the Blind (1849) are
also in Jacksonville. Morgan Lake and Duncan Park are pleasure resorts.
The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,981,582, an
increase of 17.7% since 1900. Jacksonville was laid out in 1825 as the
county-seat of Morgan county, was named probably in honour of Andrew
Jackson, and was incorporated as a town in 1840, chartered as a city in
1867, and re-chartered in 1887. The majority of the early settlers came
from the southern and border states, principally from Missouri and
Kentucky; but subsequently there was a large immigration of New England
and Eastern people, and these elements were stronger in the population
of Jacksonville than in any other city of southern Illinois. The city
was a station of the "Underground Railroad."

JACOB (Hebrew _ya'aqob_, derived, according to Gen. xxv. 26, xxvii. 36,
from a root meaning "to seize the heel" or "supplant"), son of Isaac and
Rebekah in the Biblical narrative, and the father of the twelve tribes
of Israel. Jacob and his twin brother Esau are the eponyms of the
Israelites and Edomites. It was said of them that they would be two
nations, and that the elder would serve the younger. Esau was born
first, but lost his superiority by relinquishing his birthright, and
Jacob by an act of deceit gained the paternal blessing intended for Esau
(Gen. xxvii., J and E).[1] The popular view regarding Israel and Edom is
expressed when the story makes Jacob a tent-dweller, and Esau a hunter,
a man of the field. But whilst Esau married among the Canaanite
"daughters of the land" (P in xxvi. 34; xxviii. 8 seq.), Jacob was sent,
or (according to a variant tradition) fled from Beer-sheba, to take a
wife from among his Syrian kinsfolk at Haran. On the way he received a
revelation at Bethel ("house of God") promising to him and to his
descendants the whole extent of the land. The beautiful story of Jacob's
fortunes at Haran is among the best examples of Hebrew narrative: how he
served seven years for Rachel, "and they seemed a few days for the love
he had to her," and was tricked by receiving the elder sister Leah, and
how he served yet another seven years, and at last won his love. The
patriarch's increasing wealth caused him to incur the jealousy of his
father-in-law, Laban, and he was forced to flee in secret with his
family. They were overtaken at Gilead,[2] whose name (interpreted "heap
of witness") is explained by the covenant into which Jacob and Laban
entered (xxxi. 47 sqq.). Passing Mahanaim ("camps"), where he saw the
camps of God, Jacob sent to Esau with friendly overtures. At the Jabbok
he wrestled with a divine being and prevailed (cf. Hos. xii. 3 sqq.),
hence he called the place Peniel or Penuel ("the face of God"), and
received the new name Israel. He then effected an unexpected
reconciliation with Esau, passed to Succoth, where he built "booths" for
his cattle (hence its name), and reached Shechem. Here he purchased
ground from the clan Hamor (cf. Judg. ix. 28), and erected an altar to
"God (El) the God of Israel." This was the scene of the rape of Dinah
and of the attack of Simeon and Levi which led to their ruin (xxxiv.;
see DAN, LEVITES, SIMEON). Thence Jacob went down south to Bethel, where
he received a divine revelation (P), similar to that recorded by the
earlier narrator (J), and was called Israel (xxxv. 9-13, 15). Here
Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, on the way to Ephrath. Rachel died in
giving birth to Benjamin (q.v.), and further south Reuben was guilty of
a grave offence (cf. xlix. 4). According to P, Jacob came to Hebron, and
it was at this juncture that Jacob and Esau separated (a second time)
and the latter removed to Mount Seir (xxxvi. 6 sqq.; cf. the parallel in
xiii. 5 sqq.). Compelled by circumstances, described with much fullness
and vividness, Jacob ultimately migrated to Egypt, receiving on the way
the promise that God would make of him a great nation, which should come
again out of Egypt (see JOSEPH). After an interview with the Pharaoh
(recorded only by P, xlvii. 5-11), he dwelt with his sons in the land of
Goshen, and as his death drew near pronounced a formal benediction upon
the two sons of Joseph (Manasseh and Ephraim), intentionally exalting
the younger. Then he summoned all the "sons" to gather round his bed,
and told them "what shall befall in the latter days" (xlix.). He died at
the age of 147 (so P), and permission was given to carry his body to
Canaan to be buried.

These narratives are full of much valuable evidence regarding marriage
customs, pastoral life and duties, popular beliefs and traditions, and
are evidently typical of what was currently retailed. Their historical
value has been variously estimated. The _name_ existed long before the
traditional date of Jacob, and the Egyptian phonetic equivalent of
Jacob-el (cf. Isra-el, Ishma-el) appears to be the name of a district of
central Palestine (or possibly east of Jordon) about 1500 B.C. But the
stories in their present form are very much later. The close relation
between Jacob and Aramaeans confirms the view that some of the tribes of
Israel were partly of Aramaean origin; his entrance into Palestine from
beyond the Jordan is parallel to Joshua's invasion at the head of the
Israelites; and his previous journey from the south finds independent
support in traditions of another distinct movement from this quarter.
Consequently, it would appear that these extremely elevated and richly
developed narratives of Jacob-Israel embody, among a number of other
features, a recollection of two distinct traditions of migration which
became fused among the Israelites. See further GENESIS; JEWS.
(S. A. C.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For the symbols J, E, P, as regards the sources of the book of
Genesis, see GENESIS; BIBLE: _Old Test. Criticism._

[2] Since it is some 300 m. from Haran to Gilead it is probable that
Laban's home, only seven days' journey distant, was nearer Gilead
than the current tradition allows (Gen. xxxi. 22 sqq.).

JACOB, JOHN (1812-1858), Indian soldier and administrator, was born on
the 11th of January 1812, educated at Addiscombe, and entered the Bombay
artillery in 1828. He served in the first Afghan War under Sir John
Keane, and afterwards led his regiment with distinction at the battles
of Meeanee, Shahdadpur, and Umarkot; but it is as commandant of the Sind
Horse and political superintendent of Upper Sind that he was chiefly
famous. He was the pacificator of the Sind frontier, reducing the tribes
to quietude as much by his commanding personality as by his ubiquitous
military measures. In 1853 he foretold the Indian Mutiny, saying: "There
is more danger to our Indian empire from the state of the Bengal army,
from the feeling which there exists between the native and the European,
and thence, spreads throughout the length and breadth of the land, than
from all other causes combined. Let government look to this; it is a
serious and most important truth"; but he was only rebuked by Lord
Dalhousie for his pains. He was a friend of Sir Charles Napier and Sir
James Outram, and resembled them in his outspoken criticisms and
independence of authority. He died at the early age of 46 of brain
fever, brought on by excessive heat and overwork. The town of Jacobabad,
which has the reputation of being the hottest place in India, is named
after him.

See A. I. Shand, _General John Jacob_ (1900).

JACOB BEN ASHER (1280-1340), codifier of Jewish law, was born in Germany
and died in Toledo. A son of Asher ben Yehiel (q.v.), Jacob helped to
re-introduce the older elaborate method of legal casuistry which had
been overthrown by Maimonides (q.v.). The Asheri family suffered great
privations but remained faithful in their devotion to the Talmud. Jacob
ben Asher is known as the Ba'al ha-turim (literally "Master of the
Rows") from his chief work, the four _Turim_ or Rows (the title is
derived from the four _Turim_ or rows of jewels in the High Priest's
breastplate). In this work Jacob ben Asher codified Rabbinic law on
ethics and ritual, and it remained a standard work of reference until it
was edited with a commentary by Joseph Qaro, who afterwards simplified
the code into the more popular _Shulhan Aruch_. Jacob also wrote two
commentaries on the Pentateuch.

See Graetz, _History of the Jews_ (Eng. trans.), vol. iv. ch. iii.;
Weiss, _Dor dor we-dorashav_, v. 118-123. (I. A.)

JACOB OF EDESSA, who ranks with Barhebraeus as the most distinguished
for scholarship among Syriac writers,[1] was born at 'En-debha in the
province of Antioch, probably about A.D. 640. From the trustworthy
account of his life by Barhebraeus (_Chron. Eccles._ i. 289) we learn
that he studied first at the famous monastery of Ken-neshre (on the left
bank of the Euphrates, opposite Jerabis) and afterwards at Alexandria,
which had of course been for some time in the hands of the Moslems.[2]
On his return he was appointed bishop of Edessa by his friend Athanasius
II. (of Balad), probably in 684,[3] but held this office only for three
or four years, as the clergy withstood his strict enforcement of the
Church canons and he was not supported by Julian, the successor of
Athanasius in the patriarchate. Accordingly, having in anger publicly
burnt a copy of the canons in front of Julian's residence, Jacob retired
to the monastery of Kaisum near Samosata, and from there to the
monastery of Eusebhona,[4] where for eleven years he taught the Psalms
and the reading of the Scriptures in Greek. But towards the close of
this period he again encountered opposition, this time from monks "who
hated the Greeks," and so proceeded to the great convent of Tell 'Adda
or Teleda (? modern Telladi, N.W. of Aleppo), where he spent nine years
in revising and emending the Peshitta version of the Old Testament by
the help of the various Greek versions. He was finally recalled to the
bishopric of Edessa in 708, but died four months later, on the 5th of
June.

In doctrine Jacob was undoubtedly Monophysite.[5] Of the very large
number of his works, which are mostly in prose, not many have as yet
been published, but much information may be gathered from Assemani's
_Bibliotheca Orientalis_ and Wright's _Catalogue of Syriac MSS. in the
British Museum_. (1) Of the Syriac Old Testament Jacob produced what
Wright calls "a curious eclectic or patchwork text," of which five
volumes survive in Europe (Wright's _Catalogue_ 38). It was "the last
attempt at a revision of the Old Testament in the Monophysite Church."
Jacob was also the chief founder of the Syriac Massorah among the
Monophysites, which produced such MSS. as the one (Vat. cliii.)
described by Wiseman in _Horae syriacae_, part iii. (2) Jacob was the
author both of commentaries and of scholia on the sacred books; of
these specimens are given by Assemani and Wright. They were largely
quoted by later commentators, who often refer to Jacob as "the
interpreter of the Scriptures." With the commentaries may be mentioned
his _Hexahemeron_, or treatise on the six days of creation, MSS. of
which exist at Leiden and at Lyons. It was his latest work, and being
left incomplete was finished by his friend George the bishop of the
Arabs. Among apocrypha, the _History of the Rechabites_ composed by
Zosimus was translated from Greek into Syriac by Jacob (Wright's
_Catalogue_ 1128, and Nau in _Revue sémitique_ vi. 263, vii. 54, 136).
(3) Mention has been made above of Jacob's zeal on behalf of
ecclesiastical canons. In his letter to the priest Addai we possess a
collection of canons from his pen, given in the form of answers to
Addai's questions. These were edited by Lagarde in _Reliquiae juris
eccl. syriace_, pp. 117 sqq. and Lamy in _Dissert._ pp. 98 sqq.
Additional canons were given in Wright's _Notulae syriacae_. The whole
have been translated and expounded by Kayser, _Die Canones Jacobs von
Edessa_ (Leipzig, 1886). (4) Jacob made many contributions to Syriac
liturgy, both original and translated (Wright, _Short Hist._ p. 145
seq.). (5) To philosophical literature his chief original contribution
was his _Enchiridion_, a tract on philosophical terms (Wright's
_Catalogue_ 984). The translations of works of Aristotle which have
been attributed to him are probably by other hands (Wright, _Short
Hist._ p. 149; Duval, _Littérature syriaque_, pp. 255, 258). The
treatise _De causa omnium causarum_, which was the work of a bishop of
Edessa, was formerly attributed to Jacob; but the publication of the
whole by Kayser[6] has made it clear that the treatise is of much
later date. (6) An important historical work by Jacob--a _Chronicle_
in continuation of that of Eusebius--has unfortunately perished all
except a few leaves. Of these a full account is given in Wright's
_Catalogue_ 1062. (7) Jacob's fame among his countrymen rests most of
all on his labours as a grammarian. In his letter to George, bishop of
Serugh, on Syriac orthography (published by Phillips in London 1869,
and by Martin in Paris the same year) he sets forth the importance of
fidelity by scribes in the copying of minutiae of spelling. In his
grammar[7] (of which only some fragments remain), while expressing his
sense of the disadvantage under which Syriac labours through its
alphabet containing only consonants, he declined to introduce a
general system of vowel-signs, lest the change should contribute to
the neglect and loss of the older books written without vowels. At the
same time he invented, by adaptation of the Greek vowels, such a
system of signs as might serve for purposes of grammatical exposition,
and elaborated the rules by which certain consonants serve to indicate
vowels. He also systematized and extended the use of diacritical
points. It is still a moot question how far Jacob is to be regarded as
the author of the five vowel-signs derived from Greek which soon after
came into use among the Jacobites.[8] In any case he made the most
important contribution to Syriac grammar down to the time of
Barhebraeus. (8) As a translator Jacob's greatest achievement was his
Syriac version of the _Homiliae cathedrales_ of Severus, the
monophysite patriarch of Antioch (512-518, 535-536). This important
collection is now in part known to us by E. W. Brooks's edition and
translation of the 6th book of selected epistles of Severus, according
to another Syriac version made by Athanasius of Nisibis in 669. (9) A
large number of letters by Jacob to various correspondents have been
found in various MSS. Besides those on the canon law to Addai, and on
grammar to George of Serugh referred to above, there are others
dealing with doctrine, liturgy, &c. A few are in verse.

Jacob impresses the modern reader mainly as an _educator_ of his
countrymen, and particularly of the clergy. His writings lack the
fervid rhetoric and graceful style of such authors as Isaac of
Antioch, Jacob of Serugh and Philoxenus of Mabbog. But judged by the
standard of his time he shows the qualities of a truly scientific
theologian and scholar. (N. M.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "In the literature of his country Jacob holds much the same place
as Jerome among the Latin fathers" (Wright, _Short Hist. of Syr.
Lit._ p. 143).

[2] Merx infers that the fact of Jacob's going to Alexandria as a
student tells against the view that the Arabs burned the great
library (_Hist. artis gramm. apud Syros_, p. 35). On this question
cf. Krehl in _Alli del iv. congr. internaz. degli Orientalisti_
(Florence, 1880), pp. 433 sqq.

[3] Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre says 677; but Athanasius was
patriarch only 684-687.

[4] According to Merx (_op. cit._ p. 43) this may be the celebrated
convent of Eusebius near Apamea.

[5] Assemani tried hard to prove him orthodox (_B.O._ i. 470 sqq.)
but changed his opinion on reading his biography by Barhebraeus (ib.
ii. 337). See especially Lamy, _Dissert. de Syrorum fide_, pp. 206
sqq.

[6] Text at Leipzig 1889 (_Das Buch der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit oder
der Ursache aller Ursachen_): translation (posthumously) at
Strassburg 1893.

[7] The surviving fragments were published by Wright (London, 1871)
and by Merx, _op. cit._ p. 73 sqq. of Syriac text.

[8] An affirmative answer is given by Wiseman (_Horae syr._ pp.
181-8) and Wright (_Catalogue_ 1168; _Fragm. of the Syriac Grammar of
Jacob of Edessa_, preface; Short Hist. p. 151 seq.). But Martin (in
_Jour. As._ May-June 1869, pp. 456 sqq.), Duval (_Grammaire
syriaque_, p. 71) and Merx (_op. cit._ p. 50) are of the opposite
opinion. The date of the introduction of the seven Nestorian
vowel-signs is also uncertain.

JACOB OF JÜTERBOGK (c. 1381-1465), monk and theologian. Benedict
Stolzenhagen, known in religion as Jacob, was born at Jüterbogk in
Brandenburg of poor peasant stock. He became a Cistercian at the
monastery of Paradiz in Poland, and was sent by the abbot to the
university of Cracow, where he became master in philosophy and doctor of
theology. He returned to his monastery, of which he became abbot. In
1441, however, discontented with the absence of strict discipline in his
community, he obtained the leave of the papal legate at the council of
Basel to transfer himself to the Carthusians, entering the monastery of
Salvatorberg near Erfurt, of which he became prior. He lectured on
theology at the university of Erfurt, of which he was rector in 1455. He
died on the 30th of April 1465.

Jacob's main preoccupation was the reform of monastic life, the grave
disorders of which he deplored, and to this end he wrote his
_Petitiones religiosorum pro reformatione sui status_. Another work,
_De negligentia praelatorum_, was directed against the neglect of
their duties by the higher clergy, and he addressed a petition for the
reform of the church (_Advisamentum pro reformatione ecclesiae_) to
Pope Nicholas V. This having no effect, he issued the most outspoken
of his works, _De Septem ecclesiae statibus_, in which he reviewed the
work of the reforming councils of his time, and, without touching the
question of doctrine, championed a drastic reform of life and practice
of the church on the lines laid down at Constance and Basel.

His principal works are collected in Walch, _Monimenta med. aev._ i.
and ii. (1757, 1771), and Engelbert Klüpfel, _Vetus bibliotheca
eccles_. (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1780).

JACOB OF SERUGH, one of the best Syriac authors, named by one of his
biographers "the flute of the Holy Spirit and the harp of the believing
church," was born in 451 at Kurtam, a village on the Euphrates to the
west of Harran, and was probably educated at Edessa. At an early age he
attracted the attention of his countrymen by his piety and his literary
gifts, and entered on the composition of the long series of metrical
homilies on religious themes which formed the great work of his life.
Having been ordained to the priesthood, he became periodeutes or
episcopal visitor of Haura, in Serugh, not far from his birthplace. His
tenure of this office extended over a time of great trouble to the
Christian population of Mesopotamia, due to the fierce war carried on by
Kavadh II. of Persia within the Roman borders. When on the 10th of
January 503 Amid was captured by the Persians after a three months'
siege and all its citizens put to the sword or carried captive, a panic
seized the whole district, and the Christian inhabitants of many
neighbouring cities planned to leave their homes and flee to the west of
the Euphrates. They were recalled to a more courageous frame of mind by
the letters of Jacob.[1] In 519, at the age of 68, Jacob was made bishop
of Batnan, another town in the district of Serugh, but only lived till
November 521.

From the various extant accounts of Jacob's life and from the number
of his known works, we gather that his literary activity was
unceasing. According to Barhebraeus (_Chron. Eccles._ i. 191) he
employed 70 amanuenses and wrote in all 760 metrical homilies, besides
expositions, letters and hymns of different sorts. Of his merits as a
writer and poet we are now well able to judge from P. Bedjan's
excellent edition of selected metrical homilies, of which four volumes
have already appeared (Paris 1905-1908), containing 146 pieces.[2]
They are written throughout in dodecasyllabic metre, and those
published deal mainly with biblical themes, though there are also
poems on such subjects as the deaths of Christian martyrs, the fall of
the idols, the council of Nicaea, &c.[3] Of Jacob's prose works, which
are not nearly so numerous, the most interesting are his letters,
which throw light upon some of the events of his time and reveal his
attachment to the Monophysite doctrine which was then struggling for
supremacy in the Syrian churches, and particularly at Edessa, over the
opposite teaching of Nestorius.[4] (N. M.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See the contemporary _Chronicle_ called that of Joshua the
Stylite, chap. 54.

[2] Assemani (_Bibl. Orient._ i. 305-339) enumerates 231 which he had
seen in MSS.

[3] Some other historical poems M. Bedjan has not seen fit to
publish, on account of their unreliable and legendary character (vol.
i. p. ix. of preface).

[4] A full list of the older editions of works by Jacob is given by
Wright in _Short History of Syriac Literature_, pp. 68-72.

JACOBA, or JACQUELINE (1401-1436), countess of Holland, was the only
daughter and heiress of William, duke of Bavaria and count of Holland,
Zeeland and Hainaut. She was married as a child to John, duke of
Touraine, second son of Charles VI., king of France, who on the death of
his elder brother Louis became dauphin. John of Touraine died in April
1417, and two months afterwards Jacoba lost her father. Acknowledged as
sovereign in Holland and Zeeland, Jacoba was opposed by her uncle John
of Bavaria, bishop of Liége. She had the support of the Hook faction in
Holland. Meanwhile she had been married in 1418 by her uncle, John the
Fearless, duke of Burgundy, to her cousin John IV., duke of Brabant. By
the mediation of John the Fearless, a treaty of partition was concluded
in 1419 between Jacoba and John of Bavaria; but it was merely a truce,
and the contest between uncle and niece soon began again and continued
with varying success. In 1420 Jacoba fled to England; and there,
declaring that her marriage with John of Brabant was illegal, she
contracted a marriage with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in 1422. Two
years later Jacoba, with Humphrey, invaded Holland, where she was now
opposed by her former husband, John of Brabant, John of Bavaria having
died of poison. In 1425 Humphrey deserted his wife, who found herself
obliged to seek refuge with her cousin, Philip V., duke of Burgundy, to
whom she had to submit, and she was imprisoned in the castle of Ghent.
John of Brabant now mortgaged the two counties of Holland and Zeeland to
Philip, who assumed their protectorate. Jacoba, however, escaped from
prison in disguise, and for three years struggled gallantly to maintain
herself in Holland against the united efforts of Philip of Burgundy and
John of Brabant, and met at first with success. The death of the weak
John of Brabant (April 1427) freed the countess from her quondam
husband; but nevertheless the pope pronounced Jacoba's marriage with
Humphrey illegal, and Philip, putting out his full strength, broke down
all opposition. By a treaty, made in July 1428, Jacoba was left
nominally countess, but Philip was to administer the government of
Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut, and was declared heir in case Jacoba
should die without children. Two years later Philip mortgaged Holland
and Zeeland to the Borselen family, of which Francis, lord of Borselen,
was the head. Jacoba now made her last effort. In 1432 she secretly
married Francis of Borselen, and endeavoured to foment a rising in
Holland against the Burgundian rule. Philip invaded the country,
however, and threw Borselen into prison. Only on condition that Jacoba
abdicated her three countships in his favour would he allow her liberty
and recognize her marriage with Borselen. She submitted in April 1432,
retained her title of duchess in Bavaria, and lived on her husband's
estates in retirement. She died on the 9th of October 1436, leaving no
children.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--F. von Löher, _Jakobäa von Bayern und ihre Zeit_ (2
vols., Nördlingen, 1862-1869); W. J. F. Nuyens, _Jacoba van Beieren en
de eerste helft der XV. eeuw_ (Haarlem, 1873); A. von Overstraten,
_Jacoba van Beieren_ (Amsterdam, 1790). (G. E.)

JACOBABAD, a town of British India, the administrative headquarters of
the Upper Sind frontier district in Bombay; with a station on the Quetta
branch of the North-Western railway, 37 m. from the junction at Ruk, on
the main line. Pop. (1901), 10,787. It is famous as having consistently
the highest temperature in India. During the month of June the
thermometer ranges between 120° and 127° F. The town was founded on the
site of the village of Khangarh in 1847 by General John Jacob, for many
years commandant of the Sind Horse, who died here in 1858. It has
cantonments for a cavalry regiment, with accommodation for caravans from
Central Asia. It is watered by two canals. An annual horse show is held
in January.

JACOBEAN STYLE, the name given to the second phase of the early
Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style.
Although the term is generally employed of the style which prevailed in
England during the first quarter of the 17th century, its peculiar
decadent detail will be found nearly twenty years earlier at Wollaton
Hall, Nottinghamshire, and in Oxford and Cambridge examples exist up to
1660, notwithstanding the introduction of the purer Italian style by
Inigo Jones in 1619 at Whitehall. Already during Queen Elizabeth's reign
reproductions of the classic orders had found their way into English
architecture, based frequently upon John Shute's _The First and Chief
Grounds of Architecture_, published in 1563, with two other editions in
1579 and 1584. In 1577, three years before the commencement of Wollaton
Hall, a copybook of the orders was brought out in Antwerp by Jan
Vredeman de Vries. Though nominally based on the description of the
orders by Vitruvius, the author indulged freely not only in his
rendering of them, but in suggestions of his own, showing how the orders
might be employed in various buildings. Those suggestions were of a most
decadent type, so that even the author deemed it advisable to publish a
letter from a canon of the Church, stating that there was nothing in his
architectural designs which was contrary to religion. It is to
publications of this kind that Jacobean architecture owes the perversion
of its forms and the introduction of strap work and pierced crestings,
which appear for the first time at Wollaton (1580); at Bramshill,
Hampshire (1607-1612), and in Holland House, Kensington (1624), it
receives its fullest development. (R. P. S.)

JACOBI, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH (1743-1819), German philosopher, was born at
Düsseldorf on the 25th of January 1743. The second son of a wealthy
sugar merchant near Düsseldorf, he was educated for a commercial career.
Of a retiring, meditative disposition, Jacobi associated himself at
Geneva mainly with the literary and scientific circle of which the most
prominent member was Lesage. He studied closely the works of Charles
Bonnet, and the political ideas of Rousseau and Voltaire. In 1763 he was
called back to Düsseldorf, and in the following year he married and took
over the management of his father's business. After a short period he
gave up his commercial career, and in 1770 became a member of the
council for the duchies of Jülich and Berg, in which capacity he
distinguished himself by his ability in financial affairs, and his zeal
in social reform. Jacobi kept up his interest in literary and
philosophic matters by an extensive correspondence, and his mansion at
Pempelfort, near Düsseldorf, was the centre of a distinguished literary
circle. With C. M. Wieland he helped to found a new literary journal.
_Der Teutsche Mercur_, in which some of his earliest writings, mainly on
practical or economic subjects, were published. Here too appeared in
part the first of his philosophic works, _Edward Allwills Briefsammlung_
(1776), a combination of romance and speculation. This was followed in
1779 by _Woldemar_, a philosophic novel, of very imperfect structure,
but full of genial ideas, and giving the most complete picture of
Jacobi's method of philosophizing. In 1779 he visited Munich as member
of the privy council, but after a short stay there differences with his
colleagues and with the authorities of Bavaria drove him back to
Pempelfort. A few unimportant tracts on questions of theoretical
politics were followed in 1785 by the work which first brought Jacobi
into prominence as a philosopher. A conversation which he had held with
Lessing in 1780, in which Lessing avowed that he knew no philosophy, in
the true sense of that word, save Spinozism, led him to a protracted
study of Spinoza's works. The _Briefe über die Lehre Spinozas_ (1785;
2nd ed., much enlarged and with important _Appendices_, 1789) expressed
sharply and clearly Jacobi's strenuous objection to a dogmatic system in
philosophy, and drew upon him the vigorous enmity of the Berlin clique,
led by Moses Mendelssohn. Jacobi was ridiculed as endeavouring to
re-introduce into philosophy the antiquated notion of unreasoning
belief, was denounced as an enemy of reason, as a pietist, and as in all
probability a Jesuit in disguise, and was especially attacked for his
use of the ambiguous term "belief." Jacobi's next important work, _David
Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus_ (1787), was an
attempt to show not only that the term _Glaube_ had been used by the
most eminent writers to denote what he had employed it for in the
_Letters on Spinoza_, but that the nature of the cognition of facts as
opposed to the construction of inferences could not be otherwise
expressed. In this writing, and especially in the _Appendix_, Jacobi
came into contact with the critical philosophy, and subjected the
Kantian view of knowledge to searching examination.

The outbreak of the war with the French republic induced Jacobi in 1793
to leave his home near Düsseldorf, and for nearly ten years he resided
in Holstein. While there he became intimately acquainted with Reinhold
(in whose _Beiträge_, pt. iii., 1801, his important work _Über das
Unternehmen des Kriticismus, die Vernunft zu Verstande zu bringen_ was
first published), and with Matthias Claudius, the editor of the
_Wandsbecker Bote_. During the same period the excitement caused by the
accusation of atheism brought against Fichte at Jena led to the
publication of Jacobi's _Letter to Fichte_ (1799), in which he made more
precise the relation of his own philosophic principles to theology. Soon
after his return to Germany, Jacobi received a call to Munich in
connexion with the new academy of sciences just founded there. The loss
of a considerable portion of his fortune induced him to accept this
offer; he settled in Munich in 1804, and in 1807 became president of the
academy. In 1811 appeared his last philosophic work, directed against
Schelling specially (_Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung_),
the first part of which, a review of the _Wandsbecker Bote_, had been
written in 1798. A bitter reply from Schelling was left without answer
by Jacobi, but gave rise to an animated controversy in which Fries and
Baader took prominent part. In 1812 Jacobi retired from the office of
president, and began to prepare a collected edition of his works. He
died before this was completed, on the 10th of March 1819. The edition
of his writings was continued by his friend F. Köppen, and was completed
in 1825. The works fill six volumes, of which the fourth is in three
parts. To the second is prefixed an introduction by Jacobi, which is at
the same time an introduction to his philosophy. The fourth volume has
also an important preface.

The philosophy of Jacobi is essentially unsystematic. A certain
fundamental view which underlies all his thinking is brought to bear
in succession upon those systematic doctrines which appear to stand
most sharply in contradiction to it, and any positive philosophic
results are given only occasionally. The leading idea of the whole is
that of the complete separation between understanding and apprehension
of real fact. For Jacobi understanding, or the logical faculty, is
purely formal or elaborative, and its results never transcend the
given material supplied to it. From the basis of immediate experience
or perception thought proceeds by comparison and abstraction,
establishing connexions among facts, but remaining in its nature
mediate and finite. The principle of reason and consequent, the
necessity of thinking each given fact of perception as conditioned,
impels understanding towards an endless series of identical
propositions, the records of successive comparisons and abstractions.
The province of the understanding is therefore strictly the region of
the conditioned; to it the world must present itself as a mechanism.
If, then, there is objective truth at all, the existence of real facts
must be made known to us otherwise than through the logical faculty of
thought; and, as the regress from conclusion to premises must depend
upon something not itself capable of logical grounding, mediate
thought implies the consciousness of immediate truth. Philosophy
therefore must resign the hopeless ideal of a systematic (i.e.
intelligible) explanation of things, and must content itself with the
examination of the facts of consciousness. It is a mere prejudice of
philosophic thinkers, a prejudice which has descended from Aristotle,
that mediate or demonstrated cognition is superior in cogency and
value to the immediate perception of truths or facts.

As Jacobi starts with the doctrine that thought is partial and
limited, applicable only to connect facts, but incapable of explaining
their existence, it is evident that for him any demonstrative system
of metaphysic which should attempt to subject all existence to the
principle of logical ground must be repulsive. Now in modern
philosophy the first and greatest demonstrative system of metaphysic
is that of Spinoza, and it lay in the nature of things that upon
Spinoza's system Jacobi should first direct his criticism. A summary
of the results of his examination is thus presented (_Werke_, i.
216-223): (1) Spinozism is atheism; (2) the Kabbalistic philosophy, in
so far as it is philosophy, is nothing but undeveloped or confused
Spinozism; (3) the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff is not less
fatalistic than that of Spinoza, and carries a resolute thinker to the
very principles of Spinoza; (4) every demonstrative method ends in
fatalism; (5) we can demonstrate only similarities (agreements, truths
conditionally necessary), proceeding always in identical propositions;
every proof presupposes something already proved, the principle of
which is immediately given (_Offenbarung_, revelation, is the term
here employed by Jacobi, as by many later writers, e.g. Lotze, to
denote the peculiar character of an immediate, unproved truth); (6)
the keystone (_Element_) of all human knowledge and activity is belief
(_Glaube_). Of these propositions only the first and fourth require
further notice. Jacobi, accepting the law of reason and consequent as
the fundamental rule of demonstrative reasoning, and as the rule
explicitly followed by Spinoza, points out that, if we proceed by
applying this principle so as to recede from particular and qualified
facts to the more general and abstract conditions, we land ourselves,
not in the notion of an active, intelligent creator of the system of
things, but in the notion of an all-comprehensive, indeterminate
_Nature_, devoid of will or intelligence. Our unconditioned is either
a pure _abstraction_, or else the impossible notion of a completed
system of conditions. In either case the result is atheism, and this
result is necessary if the demonstrative method, the method of
understanding, is regarded as the only possible means of knowledge.
Moreover, the same method inevitably lands in fatalism. For, if the
action of the human will is to be made intelligible to understanding,
it must be thought as a conditioned phenomenon, having its sufficient
ground in preceding circumstances, and, in ultimate abstraction, as
the outflow from nature which is the sum of conditions. But this is
the fatalist conception, and any philosophy which accepts the law of
reason and consequent as the essence of understanding is fatalistic.
Thus for the scientific understanding there can be no God and no
liberty. It is impossible that there should be a God, for if so he
would of necessity be finite. But a finite God, a God that is _known_,
is no God. It is impossible that there should be liberty, for if so
the mechanical order of phenomena, by means of which they are
comprehensible, would be disturbed, and we should have an
unintelligible world, coupled with the requirement that it shall be
understood. Cognition, then, in the strict sense, occupies the middle
place between sense perception, which is belief in matters of sense,
and reason, which is belief in supersensuous fact.

The best introduction to Jacobi's philosophy is the preface to the
second volume of the _Works_, and Appendix 7 to the _Letters on
Spinoza's Theory_. See also J. Kuhn, _Jacobi und die Philosophie
seiner Zeit_ (1834); F. Deycks, _F. H. Jacobi im Verhältnis zu seinen
Zeitgenossen_ (1848); H. Düntzer, _Freundesbilder aus Goethes Leben_
(1853); E. Zirngiebl, _F. H. Jacobis Leben, Dichten, und Denken_,
1867; F. Harms, _Über die Lehre von F. H. Jacobi_ (1876). Jacobi's
_Auserlesener Briefwechsel_ has been edited by F. Roth in 2 vols.
(1825-1827).

JACOBI, JOHANN GEORG (1740-1814), German poet, elder brother of the
philosopher, F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819), was born at Düsseldorf on the 2nd
of September 1740. He studied theology at Göttingen and jurisprudence at
Helmstedt, and was appointed, in 1766, professor of philosophy in Halle.
In this year he made the acquaintance of J. W. L. ("Vater") Gleim, who,
attracted by the young poet's _Poetische Versuche_ (1764), became his
warm friend, and a lively literary correspondence ensued between Gleim
in Halberstadt and Jacobi in Halle. In order to have Jacobi near him,
Gleim succeeded in procuring for him a prebendal stall at the cathedral
of Halberstadt in 1769, and here Jacobi issued a number of anacreontic
lyrics and sonnets. He tired, however, of the lighter muse, and in 1774,
to Gleim's grief, left Halberstadt, and for two years (1774-1776) edited
at Düsseldorf the _Iris_, a quarterly for women readers. Meanwhile, he
wrote many charming lyrics, distinguished by exquisite taste and true
poetical feeling. In 1784 he became professor of literature at the
university of Freiburg im Breisgau, a post which he held until his death
there on the 4th of January 1814. In addition to the earlier _Iris_, to
which Goethe, his brother F. H. Jacobi, Gleim and other poets
contributed, he published, from 1803-1813, another periodical, also
called _Iris_, in which Klopstock, Herder, Jean Paul, Voss and the
brothers Stollberg also collaborated.

Jacobi's _Sämmtliche Werke_ were published in 1774 (Halberstadt, 3
vols.). Other editions appeared at Zürich in 1807-1813 and 1825. See
_Ungedruckte Briefe von und an Johann Georg Jacobi_ (Strassburg,
1874); biographical notice by Daniel Jacoby in _Allg. Deutsche
Biographie_; Longo, _Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi_ (Vienna,
1898); and _Leben J. G. Jacobis, von einem seiner Freunde_ (1822).

JACOBI, KARL GUSTAV JACOB (1804-1851), German mathematician, was born at
Potsdam, of Jewish parentage, on the 10th of December 1804. He studied
at Berlin University, where he obtained the degree of doctor of
philosophy in 1825, his thesis being an analytical discussion of the
theory of fractions. In 1827 he became extraordinary and in 1829
ordinary professor of mathematics at Königsberg, and this chair he
filled till 1842, when he visited Italy for a few months to recruit his
health. On his return he removed to Berlin, where he lived as a royal
pensioner till his death, which occurred on the 18th of February 1851.

His investigations in elliptic functions, the theory of which he
established upon quite a new basis, and more particularly his
development of the theta-function, as given in his great treatise
_Fundamenta nova theoriae functionum ellipticarum_ (Königsberg, 1829),
and in later papers in _Crelle's Journal_, constitute his grandest
analytical discoveries. Second in importance only to these are his
researches in differential equations, notably the theory of the last
multiplier, which is fully treated in his _Vorlesungen über Dynamik_,
edited by R. F. A. Clebsch (Berlin, 1866). It was in analytical
development that Jacobi's peculiar power mainly lay, and he made many
important contributions of this kind to other departments of
mathematics, as a glance at the long list of papers that were
published by him in _Crelle's Journal_ and elsewhere from 1826 onwards
will sufficiently indicate. He was one of the early founders of the
theory of determinants; in particular, he invented the functional
determinant formed of the n² differential coefficients of n given
functions of n independent variables, which now bears his name
(Jacobian), and which has played an important part in many analytical
investigations (see ALGEBRAIC FORMS). Valuable also are his papers on
Abelian transcendents, and his investigations in the theory of
numbers, in which latter department he mainly supplements the labours
of K. F. Gauss. The planetary theory and other particular dynamical
problems likewise occupied his attention from time to time. He left a
vast store of manuscript, portions of which have been published at
intervals in _Crelle's Journal_. His other works include _Commentatio
de transformatione integralis duplicis indefiniti in formam
simpliciorem_ (1832), _Canon arithmeticus_ (1839), and _Opuscula
mathematica_ (1846-1857). His _Gesammelte Werke_ (1881-1891) were
published by the Berlin Academy.

See Lejeune-Dirichlet, "Gedächtnisrede auf Jacobi" in the
_Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie_ (1852).

JACOBINS, THE, the most famous of the political clubs of the French
Revolution. It had its origin in the Club Breton, which was established
at Versailles shortly after the opening of the States General in 1789.
It was at first composed exclusively of deputies from Brittany, but was
soon joined by others from various parts of France, and counted among
its early members Mirabeau, Sieyès, Barnave, Pétion, the Abbé Grégoire,
Charles and Alexandre Lameth, Robespierre, the duc d'Aiguillon, and La
Revellière-Lépeaux. At this time its meetings were secret and little is
known of what took place at them. After the émeute of the 5th and 6th of
October the club, still entirely composed of deputies, followed the
National Assembly to Paris, where it rented the refectory of the
monastery of the Jacobins in the Rue St Honoré, near the seat of the
Assembly. The name "Jacobins," given in France to the Dominicans,
because their first house in Paris was in the Rue St Jacques, was first
applied to the club in ridicule by its enemies. The title assumed by the
club itself, after the promulgation of the constitution of 1791, was
_Société des amis de la constitution séants aux Jacobins à Paris_, which
was changed on the 21st of September 1792, after the fall of the
monarchy, to _Société des Jacobins, amis de la liberté et de l'égalité_.
It occupied successively the refectory, the library, and the chapel of
the monastery.

Once transferred to Paris, the club underwent rapid modifications. The
first step was its expansion by the admission as members or associates
of others besides deputies; Arthur Young was so admitted on the 18th of
January 1790. On the 8th of February the society was formally
constituted on this broader basis by the adoption of the rules drawn up
by Barnave, which were issued with the signature of the duc d'Aiguillon,
the president. The objects of the club were defined as (1) to discuss in
advance questions to be decided by the National Assembly; (2) to work
for the establishment and strengthening of the constitution in
accordance with the spirit of the preamble (i.e. of respect for legally
constituted authority and the rights of man); (3) to correspond with
other societies of the same kind which should be formed in the realm. At
the same time the rules of order and forms of election were settled, and
the constitution of the club determined. There were to be a president,
elected every month, four secretaries, a treasurer, and committees
elected to superintend elections and presentations, the correspondence,
and the administration of the club. Any member who by word or action
showed that his principles were contrary to the constitution and the
rights of man was to be expelled, a rule which later on facilitated the
"purification" of the society by the expulsion of its more moderate
elements. By the 7th article the club decided to admit as associates
similar societies in other parts of France and to maintain with them a
regular correspondence.

This last provision was of far-reaching importance. By the 10th of
August 1790 there were already one hundred and fifty-two affiliated
clubs; the attempts at counter-revolution led to a great increase of
their number in the spring of 1791, and by the close of the year the
Jacobins had a network of branches all over France. It was this
widespread yet highly centralized organization that gave to the Jacobin
Club its formidable power.

At the outset the Jacobin Club was not distinguished by extreme
political views. The somewhat high subscription confined its membership
to men of substance, and to the last it was--so far as the central
society in Paris was concerned--composed almost entirely of professional
men, such as Robespierre, or well-to-do _bourgeois_, like Santerre. From
the first, however, other elements were present. Besides Louis Philippe,
duc de Chartres (afterwards king of the French), liberal aristocrats of
the type of the duc d'Aiguillon, the prince de Broglie, or the vicomte
de Noailles, and the _bourgeois_ who formed the mass of the members, the
club contained such figures as "Père" Michel Gérard, a peasant
proprietor from Tuel-en-Montgermont, in Brittany, whose rough common
sense was admired as the oracle of popular wisdom, and whose
countryman's waistcoat and plaited hair were later on to become the
model for the Jacobin fashion.[1] The provincial branches were from the
first far more democratic, though in these too the leadership was
usually in the hands of members of the educated or propertied classes.
Up to the very eve of the republic, the club ostensibly supported the
monarchy; it took no part in the petition of the 17th of July 1790 for
the king's dethronement; nor had it any official share even in the
insurrections of the 20th of June and the 10th of August 1792; it only
formally recognized the republic on the 21st of September. But the
character and extent of the club's influence cannot be gauged by its
official acts alone, and long before it emerged as the principal focus
of the Terror, its character had been profoundly changed by the
secession of its more moderate elements, some to found the Club of 1789,
some in 1791--among them Barnave, the Lameths, Duport and Bailly--to
found the club of the Feuillants scoffed at by their former friends as
the _club monarchique_. The main cause of this change was the admission
of the public to the sittings of the club, which began on the 14th of
October 1791. The result is described in a report of the Department of
Paris on "the state of the empire," presented on the 12th of June 1792,
at the request of Roland, the minister of the interior, and signed by
the duc de La Rochefoucauld, which ascribes to the Jacobins all the woes
of the state. "There exists," it runs, "in the midst of the capital
committed to our care a public pulpit of defamation, where citizens of
every age and both sexes are admitted day by day to listen to a criminal
propaganda.... This establishment, situated in the former house of the
Jacobins, calls itself a society; but it has less the aspect of a
private society than that of a public spectacle: vast tribunes are
thrown open for the audience; all the sittings are advertised to the
public for fixed days and hours, and the speeches made are printed in a
special journal and lavishly distributed."[2] In this society--the
report continues--murder is counselled or applauded, all authorities are
calumniated and all the organs of the law bespattered with abuse; as to
its power, it exercises "by its influence, its affiliations and its
correspondence a veritable ministerial authority, without title and
without responsibility, while leaving to the legal and responsible
authorities only the shadow of power" (Schmidt, _Tableaux_ i. 78, &c.).

The constituency to which the club was henceforth responsible, and from
which it derived its power, was in fact the _peuple bête_ of Paris; the
_sans-culottes_--decayed lackeys, cosmopolitan ne'er-do-wells, and
starving workpeople--who crowded its tribunes. To this audience, and not
primarily to the members of the club, the speeches of the orators were
addressed and by its verdict they were judged. In the earlier stages of
the Revolution the mob had been satisfied with the fine platitudes of
the _philosophes_ and the vague promise of a political millennium; but
as the chaos in the body politic grew, and with it the appalling
material misery, it began to clamour for the blood of the "traitors" in
office by whose corrupt machinations the millennium was delayed, and
only those orators were listened to who pandered to its suspicions.
Hence the elimination of the moderate elements from the club; hence the
ascendancy of Marat, and finally of Robespierre, the secret of whose
power was that they really shared the suspicions of the populace, to
which they gave a voice and which they did not shrink from translating
into action. After the fall of the monarchy Robespierre was in effect
the Jacobin Club; for to the tribunes he was the oracle of political
wisdom, and by his standard all others were judged.[3] With his fall the
Jacobins too came to an end.

Not the least singular thing about the Jacobins is the very slender
material basis on which their overwhelming power rested. France groaned
under their tyranny, which was compared to that of the Inquisition, with
its system of espionage and denunciations which no one was too
illustrious or too humble to escape. Yet it was reckoned by competent
observers that, at the height of the Terror, the Jacobins could not
command a force of more than 3000 men in Paris. But the secret of their
strength was that, in the midst of the general disorganization, they
alone were organized. The police agent Dutard, in a report to the
minister Garat (April 30, 1793), describing an episode in the Palais
Égalité (Royal), adds: "Why did a dozen Jacobins strike terror into two
or three hundred aristocrats? It is that the former have a
rallying-point and that the latter have none." When the _jeunesse dorée_
did at last organize themselves, they had little difficulty in flogging
the Jacobins out of the cafés into comparative silence. Long before this
the Girondin government had been urged to meet organization by
organization, force by force; and it is clear from the daily reports of
the police agents that even a moderate display of energy would have
saved the National Convention from the humiliation of being dominated by
a club, and the French Revolution from the blot of the Terror. But
though the Girondins were fully conscious of the evil, they were too
timid, or too convinced of the ultimate triumph of their own persuasive
eloquence, to act. In the session of the 30th of April 1793 a proposal
was made to move the Convention to Versailles out of reach of the
Jacobins, and Buzot declared that it was "impossible to remain in Paris"
so long as "this abominable haunt" should exist; but the motion was not
carried, and the Girondins remained to become the victims of the
Jacobins.

Meanwhile other political clubs could only survive so long as they were
content to be the shadows of the powerful organization of the Rue St
Honoré. The Feuillants had been suppressed on the 18th of August 1792.
The turn of the Cordeliers came so soon as its leaders showed signs of
revolting against Jacobin supremacy, and no more startling proof of this
ascendancy could be found than the ease with which Hébert and his
fellows were condemned and the readiness with which the Cordeliers,
after a feeble attempt at protest, acquiesced in the verdict. It is idle
to speculate on what might have happened had this ascendancy been
overthrown by the action of a strong government. No strong government
existed, nor, in the actual conditions of the country, could exist on
the lines laid down by the constitution. France was menaced by civil war
within, and by a coalition of hostile powers without; the discipline of
the Terror was perhaps necessary if she was to be welded into a united
force capable of resisting this double peril; and the revolutionary
leaders saw in the Jacobin organization the only instrument by which
this discipline could be made effective. This is the apology usually put
forward for the Jacobins by republican writers of later times; they
were, it is said (and of some of them it is certainly true), no mere
doctrinaires and visionary sectaries, but practical and far-seeing
politicians, who realized that "desperate ills need desperate remedies,"
and, by having the courage of their convictions, saved the gains of the
Revolution for France.

The Jacobin Club was closed after the fall of Robespierre on the 9th of
Thermidor of the year III., and some of its members were executed. An
attempt was made to re-open the club, which was joined by many of the
enemies of the Thermidorians, but on the 21st of Brumaire, year III.
(Nov. 11, 1794), it was definitively closed. Its members and their
sympathizers were scattered among the cafés, where a ruthless war of
sticks and chairs was waged against them by the young "aristocrats"
known as the _jeunesse dorée_. Nevertheless the "Jacobins" survived, in
a somewhat subterranean fashion, emerging again in the club of the
Panthéon, founded on the 25th of November 1795, and suppressed in the
following February (see BABEUF; FRANÇOIS NOEl). The last attempt to
reorganize them was the foundation of the _Réunion d'amis de l'égalité
et de la liberté_, in July 1799, which had its headquarters in the
_Salle du Manège_ of the Tuileries, and was thus known as the _Club du
Manège_. It was patronized by Barras, and some two hundred and fifty
members of the two councils of the legislature were enrolled as members,
including many notable ex-Jacobins. It published a newspaper called the
_Journal des Libres_, proclaimed the apotheosis of Robespierre and
Babeuf, and attacked the Directory as a _royauté pentarchique_. But
public opinion was now preponderatingly moderate or royalist, and the
club was violently attacked in the press and in the streets, the
suspicions of the government were aroused; it had to change its
meeting-place from the Tuileries to the church of the Jacobins (Temple
of Peace) in the Rue du Bac, and in August it was suppressed, after
barely a month's existence. Its members revenged themselves on the
Directory by supporting Napoleon Bonaparte.

Long before the suppression of the Jacobin Club the name of "Jacobins"
had been popularly applied to all promulgators of extreme revolutionary
opinions. In this sense the word passed beyond the borders of France and
long survived the Revolution. Canning's paper, _The Anti-Jacobin_,
directed against the English Radicals, consecrated its use in England;
and in the correspondence of Metternich and other leaders of the
repressive policy which followed the second fall of Napoleon, "Jacobin"
is the term commonly applied to anyone with Liberal tendencies, even to
so august a personage as the emperor Alexander I. of Russia.

The most important source of information for the history of the
Jacobins is F. A. Aulard's _La société des Jacobins, Recueil de
documents_ (6 vols., Paris, 1889, &c.), where a critical bibliography
will be found. This collection does not contain all the printed
sources--notably the official Journal of the Club is omitted--but
these sources, when not included, are indicated. The documents
published are furnished with valuable explanatory notes. See also W.
A. Schmidt, _Tableaux de la révolution française_ (3 vols., Leipzig,
1867-1870), notably for the reports of the secret police, which throw
much light on the actual working of the Jacobin propaganda.
(W. A. P.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "When I first sat among you I heard so many beautiful speeches
that I might have believed myself in heaven, had there not been so
many lawyers present." Instead of practical questions "we have become
involved in a _galimatias_ of Rights of Man of which I understand
mighty little but that it is worth nothing." _Motion du Père Gérard_
in the Jacobins of the 27th of April 1790 (Aulard i. 63).

[2] i.e. _Journal des débats et de la correspondance de la Société_,
&c. For the various newspapers published under the auspices of the
Jacobins see Aulard i. p. cx., &c.

[3] In the published reports only the speeches of members are given,
not the interruptions from the tribunes. But see the report (May 18,
1793) of Dutard to Garat on a meeting of the Jacobins (Schmidt,
_Tableaux_ ii. 242).

JACOBITE CHURCH. The name of "Jacobites" is first found in a synodal
decree of Nicaea A.D. 787, and was invented by hostile Greeks for the
Syrian Monophysite Church as founded, or rather restored, by Jacob or
James Baradaeus, who was ordained its bishop A.D. 541 or 543. The
Monophysites, who like the Greeks knew themselves simply as the
Orthodox, were grievously persecuted by the emperor Justinian and the
graecizing patriarchs of Antioch, because they rejected the decrees of
the council of Chalcedon, in which they--not without good reason--saw
nothing but a thinly veiled relapse into those opinions of Nestorius
which the previous council of Ephesus had condemned. James was born a
little before A.D. 500 at Tella or Tela, 55 m. east of Edessa, of a
priestly family, and entered the convent of Phesilta on Mount Isla.
About 528 he went with a fellow-monk Sergius to Constantinople to plead
the cause of his co-religionists with the empress Theodora, and lived
there fifteen years. Justinian during those years imprisoned, deprived
or exiled most of the recalcitrant clergy of Syria, Mesopotamia,
Cilicia, Cappadocia, and the adjacent regions. Once ordained bishop of
Edessa, with the connivance of Theodora, James, disguised as a ragged
beggar (whence his name Baradaeus, Syriac _Burdeana_, Arabic
_al-Baradia_), traversed these regions preaching, teaching and ordaining
new clergy to the number, it is said, of 80,000. His later years were
embittered by squabbles with his own clergy, and he died in 578. His
work, however, endured, and in the middle ages the Jacobite hierarchy
numbered 150 archbishops and bishops under a patriarch and his
_maphrian_. About the year 728 six Jacobite bishops present at the
council of Manazgert established communion with the Armenians, who
equally rejected Chalcedon; they were sent by the patriarch of Antioch,
and among them were the metropolitan of Urha (Edessa) and the bishops of
Qarhan, Gardman, Nferkert and Amasia. How long this union lasted is not
known. In 1842, when the Rev. G. P. Badger visited the chief Jacobite
centres, their numbers in all Turkey had dwindled to about 100,000
souls, owing to vast secessions to Rome. At Aleppo at that date only ten
families out of several hundred remained true to their old faith, and
something like the same proportion at Damascus and Bagdad. Badger
testifies that the Syrian proselytes to Rome were superior to their
Jacobite brethren, having established schools, rebuilt their churches,
increased their clergy, and, above all, having learned to live with each
other on terms of peace and charity. As late as 1850 there were 150
villages of them in the Jebel Toor to the north-east of Mardin, 50 in
the district of Urfah and Gawar, and a few in the neighbourhoods of
Diarbekr, Mosul and Damascus. From about 1860, the seceders to Rome were
able, thanks to French consular protection, to seize the majority of the
Jacobite churches in Turkey; and this injustice has contributed much to
the present degradation and impoverishment of the Jacobites.

They used leavened bread in the Eucharist mixed with salt and oil, and
like other Monophysites add to the _Trisagion_ the words "Who wast
crucified for our sake." They venerate pictures or images, and make the
sign of the cross with one finger to show that Christ had but one
nature. Deacons, as in Armenia, marry before taking priests' orders.
Their patriarch is styled of Antioch, but seldom comes west of Mardin.
His _maphrian_ (fertilizer) since 1089 has lived at Mosul and ordains
the bishops. Monkery is common among them, but there are no nuns. Next
to the Roman Uniats (whom they term _Rassen_ or Venal) they most hate
the Nestorian Syrians of Persia. In 1882, at the instance of the British
government, the Turks began to recognize them as a separate
organization.

See M. Klein, _Jacobus Baradaeus_ (Leiden, 1882); Assemani, _Bibl.
Or._ ii. 62-69, 326 and 331; G. P. Badger, _The Nestorians_ (London,
1852); Rubens Duval, _La litérature syriaque_ (Paris, 1899); G.
Krüger, _Monophysitische Streitigkeiten_ (Jena, 1884); Silbernagel,
_Verfassung der Kirchen des Orients_ (Landshut, 1865); and G. Wright,
_History of Syriac Literature_ (London, 1894). (F. C. C.)

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 1 - "Italy" to "Jacobite Church"" ***

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