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I. England and the Italian War of 18591

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

F. A. Simpson
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Extract

One of the difficult and important decisions which confronted Napoleon during his last days in Paris concerned the use of his fleet. Strategically there was overwhelming argument for its immediate and energetic employment. On land, Austria was starting the war with large advantages; in numbers, in preparation, in position, in geographical facilities of every kind. But on sea, she was nowhere. Never a formidable naval power, her small fleet was at the moment in a condition of more than ordinary decrepitude. That of France, on the contrary, had recently been raised by the Emperor to a size and efficiency which had attracted the uneasy attention of the British admiralty. Obviously, therefore, if Italy were indeed to be freed to the Adriatic, it was of the first importance that France should assert and use to the full her maritime superiority in the Adriatic. Only so could the famous Quadrilateral be taken in the rear, and Austria made conscious of her one geographical disadvantage: the inadequacy of her railway communications with her front. The Emperor had accordingly given detailed instructions for the sending of such a fleet, prepared to effect a landing at Venice. But now at the last moment the threatening attitude of England caused him to countermand them. For the Derby government not only dispatched a formidable fleet itself to the Mediterranean, but proceeded to advance an urgent request for the neutralization of the Adriatic. ‘Before the Emperor leaves Paris,’ wrote Malmesbury to Cowley on 2 May, ‘make a great effort to keep us out of the war by obtaining his consent to neutralise the Adriatic.’

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , June 1962 , pp. 111 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

2 This important letter does not occur in its natural place, F.O. France 1283. But it is not perhaps the only omission from our F.O. Archives for this month; and its authenticity is undoubted. It was published by Malmesbury himself in his memoirs, Memoirs of an ex-Minister, 2 vols. (1884), ii, 176.Google Scholar And it is fully borne out by a telegram of his of the same date to our ambassador at Petersburg: which shows him trying to concoct an agreement for the neutralization of the Adriatic and the Baltic, or failing that ‘for the Eastern shore of the Adriatic up to Trieste’ (Malmesbury to Crampton, received 3 May. F.O. Russia).

3 Bupot, Germain, Le Maréchal Canrobert, 4 vols. (1903–1904), III, 218.Google Scholar

4 Newman, F. W., Reminiscences of Two Exiles and Two Wars (1888), 119.Google Scholar

5 Even then, when it was finally sent to the Adriatic in June, the French fleet was careful to lay a course so chosen as to effect its journey ‘without a vessel being seen either from Malta or from Corfu; a movement highly creditable to the tactics of the French admiral in command’. Rear Admiral Sir Rodney Mundy, H.M.S. Hannibal During the Italian Revolution, 1859–61 (1863), 6.Google Scholar

6 Newman, op. cit. 119, 120; Kossuth, Louis, Memoirs of My Exile (English edn., 1880), 167–81.Google Scholar

7 Kossuth, , op. cit. 181.Google Scholar

8 Count von Eckställt, C. F. Vitzthum, Memoirs, 2 vols. (English trans., 1887), II, 176.Google Scholar

9 On this ground even the pacific Aberdeen, who had striven to keep England out of the Crimean War, was now most anxious to plunge her into a worse one: a fact which has curiously and completely escaped the notice of his admirers. ‘April 2 [1859]: I called on Lord Aberdeen.…He is ready to embark England in war on the side of Austria, if France and Sardinia invade Italy.…He says that the obligations of the Treaty of Vienna are more binding on England in defence of the Austrian possessions in Italy than any commitment by England to uphold the independence and integrity of Turkey.’ To Graham's retort that England would not be persuaded to such a war ‘his reply was: “If that be so we have fallen from our high estate, and must rank with Monaco in the scale of European powers”’. Parker, C. S., Life and Letters of Sir James Graham, 1792–1861, 2 vols. (1907), II, 374–5.Google Scholar

10 18 April: an occasion on which, as a Radical journal complained, the ‘Liberal’ Clarendonjoined Derby and Malmesbury in ‘vying with one another in praise of Austrian misrule in Lombardo–Venetia’ (The Daily News, 12 May 1859).

11 Notably Disraeli at Aylesbury on 30 April (The Times, 3 May). The Prime Minister's son, Lord Stanley, and the Attorney-General in East Suffolk spoke in the same sense. Urban, M. B., British Opinion and Policy on the Unification of Italy, 1856–61 (1938), 206.Google Scholar

12 Greville, C. C. F., The Grevitte Memoirs, 3rd series (1881)Google Scholar, entry for 17 May 1859.

13 The Greville Memoirs, loc. cit.

14 Malmesbury to Cowley, F.O. France 1283, 572.

15 The Correspondence of Priscilla, Countess of Westmorland, edited by her daughter (1909), 405, 406.Google Scholar

16 Malmesbury to Bloomfield, 27 April 1859, F.O. Prussia.

17 Malmesbury to Crampton, 23 April 1859, F.O. Russia.

18 Friedrich Ferdinand Count von Beust, Memoirs (English trans., 1887), 184, 186.

19 Malmesbury to Bloomfield, 9 and 11 May, F.O. Prussia.

20 Malmesbury, , op. cit. II, 203, 205.Google Scholar

21 Elliot, Henry, Diplomatic Recollections (privately printed), 7.Google Scholar Quoted in Trevelyan, G. M., Garibaldi and the Thousand (1909), II, 116.Google Scholar

22 Elliot to Malmesbury, 7 June 1859, F.O. Sicily: ‘This opinion with regard to the reestablishment of the Constitution is one which I find so generally entertained by those best qualified to judge that, knowing the importance your Lordship attaches to the preservation of the neutrality of this country, I have abstained from urging it as a measure which ought to be adopted at once’. Cf. ibid. 6 and 19 June.

23 Stanmore, Lord, Lord Herbert of Lea, a memoir, 2 vols. (1906), II, 187.Google Scholar

24 Cobden, Richard, The Three Panics (1862), 69.Google Scholar

25 The Leiters of Queen Victoria, 1837–61, 3 vols. (1908), III, 335–40.Google Scholar

26 Ibid. for 2–3 June 1859. Cf. Malmesbury, op. cit. II, 184, 29 May: ‘The Queen and the Prince feel very strongly the defeat of Austria, and are anxious to take their part, but I told Her Majesty that was quite impossible’. Kossuth's speeches were on 20, 24, 25 and 27 May.

27 Prosper Mérimée, Letters to Panizzi, edited by Fagan, Louis, 2 vols. (1881).Google Scholar Letter of 30 June 1859.

28 SirMartin, Theodore, Life of the Prince Consort, 5 vols. (1875–1880), IV, 432–4.Google Scholar

29 Mundy, , op. cit. 204.Google Scholar

30 So convinced was Piedmont of England's hostility, that at the outset of the campaign it took the course—at that time wholly exceptional—of keeping the English military attaché, Colonel Cadogan, miles away from the front: and this though his previous service as a liaison officer with their troops in the Crimea had rendered him personally most acceptable to them. ‘Rightly or wrongly’, commented Cadogan—and it is clear from the rest of the dispatch that his own view was ‘rightly’—‘the attitude of England is considered here something less than neutral’ (Cadogan to Malmesbury, Turin, 26 May 1859. F.O. Sardinia, 252).

31 Letters of Walter Savage Landor, edited by Wheeler, Stephen (1899), 192, 16 March 1855.Google Scholar

32 Brace, C. L., Hungary in 1851 (1852), 39.Google Scholar

33 For sympathetic reports of these speeches see the Morning Advertiser, the Morning Post and the Daily News. The unfriendly reports in The Times were in Kossuth's opinion actually helpful to him by giving him the opportunity of replying to its criticisms (Kossuth, , op. cit. 262).Google Scholar

34 On this incident and the indignation caused by it in France see Mérimée, , op. cit., letter of 9 06 1859Google Scholar, and Bupot, , op. cit. III, 218.Google Scholar

35 Kossuth, , op. cit. 237.Google Scholar

36 On 11 June, in a House of 637, in the largest division that had ever taken place in it, the Derby government was defeated mainly on its Italian policy, resigning on the same day. The Queen, after a vain attempt to find an alternative ministry, was forced to accept the anti-Austrian Palmerston as Prime Minister, with the pro-Italian Lord John Russell at the Foreign Office.