July 25, 2025 • 15 mins
Embark on a journey through the life of Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, a pivotal figure in the Italian unification movement. Born a nobleman in Turin, Cavour went on to establish the influential political newspaper Il Risorgimento. A fervent admirer of Britains constitutional monarchy, he built robust diplomatic ties with British statesmen, eventually ascending to the role of prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia under King Victor Emmanuel II. Through his shrewd diplomacy, Cavour managed to secure the military assistance of Emperor Napoleon III of France to liberate the Italian states from Austrian oppression. Joining forces with the military strategist Giuseppe Garibaldi, albeit in an uneasy alliance, he masterminded the creation of the modern Italian state. - Summary by Pamela Nagami, M.D.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section seventeen of cavour by the Countess Evelin Martinen coches Aresco.
This librovox recording is in the public domain recording by
Pamel and Agami, Chapter nine The War of eighteen fifty
nine Villa Franca, Part one. On the whole, it can
(00:22):
be safely assumed that Napoleon's hark back was real and
was not a move poor Miu stte. He was not
pleased at the cool reception given in Italy to a
pamphlet known to have been inspired by him, in which
the old scheme was revived of a federation of Italian
states under the presidency of the Pope. The Empress was
(00:43):
against the war, it was said, for fear of a reverse.
Perhaps she thought already what she said when flying from
Paris in eighteen seventy en France in the Faux Poetre Malereux.
But more than this, fear, anxiety for the head of
the church, made her anti Italian, and with her the
(01:03):
whole clerical party. Nor was this the limit of the
opposition which the proposed War of Liberation encountered. Though France
did not know of the secret treaty, she knew enough
to understand by this time where she was being led,
and with singular unanimity, she protested when such different persons
(01:24):
as Guiso, La Martine and Pruden pronounced against a free Italy.
When no one except the Paris workmen showed the slightest
enthusiasm for the war, it is hardly surprising if Napoleon
seized with alarm for his dynasty, was glad of any
plausible excuse for a retreat. Such an excuse was forthcoming
(01:47):
in the Russian proposal of a Congress, which was warmly
seconded by England. Austria accepted the proposal subject to two conditions,
the previous disarmament of Piedmont and its exclusion from the congress.
The bearing of the French ministry became almost insulting. The
Emperor said, Velevsky was not going to rush into a
(02:09):
war to favor Sardinia's ambition. Everything would be peaceably settled
by the Congress, in which Piedmont had not the smallest
right to take part. None of the usual private hints
came from the Tuileries to counteract the effect of these words.
Kavor was plunged in blank despair. He wrote to Napoleon
(02:31):
that they would be driven to some desperate act, which
was answered by a call to Paris. But his interviews
with the Emperor only increased his fears. He threatened the
king's abdication and his own retirement. He would go to
America and publish all his correspondence with Napoleon. He alone
was responsible for the course his country had taken, the
(02:54):
pledges it had given, the engagements already performed by which
he meant, the concerit wrenched from the king to the
Princess Clotilde's marriage. The responsibility would be crushing if he
became guilty before God and Man of the disasters which
menaced his king in his country. The English government now
(03:16):
proposed that all the Italian states should be admitted to
the Congress, and that Austria as well as Piedmont should
be invited to disarm. On April seventeenth, Kavor sent a
note agreeing to this plan. It was a tremendous risk,
but it was the only way to prevent Piedmont from
being deserted and left to its fate. If Austria also consented,
(03:40):
all was lost. There would be peace. Could the gods
be trusted to make her mad? Kavoor's nervous organization was
strained at attention that nearly snapped the cord. It is
believed that he was on the brink of suicide. On
April nineteenth, he shut himself up in his room and
(04:00):
gave orders that no one should be admitted. On being
told of this, his faithful friend Castelli, who was one
of the few persons not afraid of him, rushed to
the Palazzo Cavour, where his worst fears were confirmed by
the old majordomo, who said, the Count is alone in
his room. He has burnt many papers. He told us
(04:22):
to let no one pass, but for Heaven's sake, go
in and see him at whatever cost. When he went in,
Costelli saw a litter of torn up papers. Others were
burning on the hearth. He said that he knew no
one was to pass, and that was why he had come.
Cavor stared at him in silence. Then he went on,
(04:43):
must I believe that Count Cavour will desert the camp
on the eve of battle, that he will abandon us
all and unhinged by excitement and by his great affection
for the man, he burst into tears. Cavor walked round
the room, looking like one distraught. Then He stopped opposite
to Castelli and embraced him, saying, be tranquil, we will
(05:04):
face it all together. Costelli went out to reassure those
who had brought him the alarming news. Neither he nor
Cavur afterwards alluded to this strange scene. At the very
moment that cavour thought he had lost the game, he
had won it. On the same day, April nineteenth, Count Bull, somewhat,
(05:26):
it is said, against his better judgment, but yielding to
the Emperor, who again yielded to the military power, sent
off a contemptuous rejoinder to the English proposals. Ignoring all suggestions.
The Austrian minister said that they would themselves call upon
Piedmont to disarm. Here, then was the famous ac da gracion.
(05:50):
Napoleon could not escape now. The fact that this happened
simultaneously with Sardinia's submission to the will of Europe was
a wonderful piece of luck, which, as Massimo dat Salio said,
could happen only once in a century. When the Austrian
government took the irrevocable step, it did not know yet
(06:11):
that the whole onus of breaking the peace would fall
upon it, nor it must be remembered. Did it know
the text of the treaty between France and Sardinia, And
in view of the French Emperor's recent conduct, it may
well have been convinced that no treaty at all existed. Hence,
it is probable that Austria flattered herself that she would
(06:33):
only have to deal with weak Sardinia. The Chamber of
Deputies was convoked on April twenty third to confer plenary
powers on the king. Many deputies were so overcome that
they wept. Just as the President of the Chamber announced
the vote, a scrap of paper was handed to Cavour,
on which were written the words in pencil, they are here,
(06:56):
I have seen them. It was from a person whom
he had instructed to inform him instantly. When the bearers
of the Austrian ultimatum arrived, they were come Angels of
light could not have been more welcome. Kavor went hastily out,
while the house broke into deafening cries of long live
the King. He said to the friend who brought the message,
(07:19):
I am leaving the last sitting of the last Piedmontese chamber.
The next will represent the Kingdom of Italy. The Sardinian
army to be placed on a peace footing, the volunteers
to be dismissed. An answer of yes or no required
within three days. These were the terms of the ultimatum.
If the answer were not fully satisfactory, his Majesty would
(07:42):
resort to force. Kavur replied that Piedmont had given its
adhesion to the proposals made by England with the approval
of France, Prussia and Russia, and had nothing more to say.
No one who saw the statesman's radiant face would have
guessed that less than a week before he had passed
through so frightful a mental crisis. He took leave of
(08:06):
Baron von Kellersberg with graceful courtesy, and then, turning to
those present, he said, we have made history. Now let
us go to dinner. The French ambassador at Vienna notified
to Count Buol that his sovereign would consider the crossing
of the frontier by the Austrian troops equivalent to a
declaration of war. Lord Malmsbury was so favorably impressed by
(08:29):
Sardinia's docility and so furious with the Austrian coup de tete,
that he became in those days quite ardently Italian, which
he assured Massimo d'at Salio was his natural state of mind,
and such it may have been, since cabinet ministers are
constantly employed in upholding, especially in foreign affairs, what they
(08:51):
most dislike. He hoped to stop the runaway Austrian steed
by proposing mediation in lieu of a congress, but the
result was only to delay the outbreak of the war
for a week, much to the disadvantage of the Austrians,
as it gave the French time to arrive and the
Piedmontese to flood the country by means of the canals
(09:11):
of irrigation, thus preventing a dash at Turin, probably the
best chance for Austria. Baron Fan Kellsberg and his companion,
during their brief visit, had done nothing but pity this
fine town, so soon to be given over to the
horrors of war. Their solicitude proved superfluous. For the present,
(09:32):
the statesman's task was ended. He had procured for his
country a favorable opportunity for entering upon an inevitable struggle.
When Napoleon said to cavour on landing at Genoa, your
plans are being realized, he was unconsciously forestalling the verdict
of posterity. The reason that he was standing there was
(09:54):
because Cavor had so willed it in spite of the
Emperor's fits of Italian sympathy. In the various circumstances which
impelled him toward helping Italy, he would not have taken
the final resolution had not some one saved him the
trouble by taking it for him. As the French student
of history has lately said, in eighteen fifty nine, as
(10:16):
in eighteen forty nine, there was a hamlet in the case.
But Paris, not Turan, was his abode. Napoleon needed and
perhaps desired to be precipitated. Look at it, how we may.
It must be allowed that he was doing a very
grave thing. He was embarking on a war of no
palpable necessity against the sentiment, as the Empress wrote to
(10:40):
Count Raze of his own country, a stronger man than
he might have hesitated. The natural discernment of the Italian
masses enlightened them as to the magnitude of Cavour's part
in the play, even in the hour when the interest
seemed transferred to the battlefield, and when an emperor and
a king moved among them as liberators at Milan. After
(11:03):
the victory of Magenta had opened its gates, the most
permanent enthusiasm gathered round the short, stout, undistinguished figure in
plain clothes and spectacles, the one decidedly prosaic appearance in
the pomp of war and the glitter of royal state.
Victor Emmanuel said good humoredly that when driving with his
(11:23):
great subject, he felt just like the tenor who leads
the prima donna forward to receive applause. Success followed success,
and this, to the popular imagination, is the all in
all of war. Milan was freed, though the Battle of
Magenta was not unlike a drawn one. Lombardy was won,
though the fight for the heights of sol Fedino could
(11:46):
hardly have resulted as it did if the Austrians had
not blundered into keeping a large part of their forces inactive.
Would the same fortune be with the allies to the end.
Kavor does not appear to have asked the question. He
watched the war with no misgivings. It was to him
a supreme satisfaction that the Sardinian army, which he had
(12:07):
worked so hard to prepare, did Italy credit. He took
a personal pride in the romantic exploits of the volunteers,
though for political reasons he carefully concealed that he had
been the first to think of placing them in the field.
He made an indefatigable Minister of War, having taken the
office when La Marmaa went to the front. The work
(12:29):
was heavy. The problem of finding even bred enough for
the Allied armies was not a simple one. On one occasion,
the French Commissariate asked for a hundred thousand rations to
make sure of receiving fifty thousand. The officer in charge
was surprised to see one hundred and twenty thousand punctually
arrive on the day named. Kavor's thoughts were not, however,
(12:50):
only with the troops and Lombardy. The whole country was
in a ferment, and instead of accelerating events, the question
now was to keep pace with them. When Ferdinand the
Second died and a young king, the son of a
princess of the House of Savoy, ascended the throne, Kavor
invited him to join in the war with Austria. The
(13:12):
invitation has been blamed as insincere and unpatriotic, but the
best Neapolitans seconded it. Poerio said he was willing to
go back to prison if King Francis would send his
army to help Piedmont, faithful to his primary object of
expelling the Austrians. Kavor would have taken for an ally
(13:34):
any one who had troops to give. Moreover, an alliance
between Naples and Sardinia meant the final shelving of a
scheme which had caused him anxiety off and on for
many years, that of a Muratist restoration. Though he had
always recognized that word, accepted by the Neapolitans themselves, it
would be impossible for him to oppose it. He understood
(13:57):
that to place a Mura on the throne of Naples
would be to move in the old vicious circle by
substituting one foreign influence for another. There is no doubt
that the idea was attractive to Napoleon. One of his
first cares after he became emperor had been defined an
accomplished Neapolitan tutor for the young sons of Prince Murat
(14:21):
about the time of the Paris Congress, emissaries were actively
working on behalf of the French pretender in the Kingdom
of Naples. The propaganda was in abeyance during the war
because Russia made it a condition of her neutrality that
the King of Naples should be let alone. But the
simple fact that Napoleon had undertaken to liberate Italy was
(14:44):
a splendid advertisement of the claims of his cousin. These
considerations tended to make Cavour hold out his hand to
the young Bubon king. There is much evidence to show
that the first impulse of Francis was to take it,
but the count influences around him were too strong. When
he refused, he sealed his own doom, though the time
(15:07):
for the crisis was not yet come. End of Section seventeen.
Section seventeen of cavour by the Countess Evelin Martinen coches Aresco.
This librovox recording is in the public domain recording by
Pamel and Agami, Chapter nine The War of eighteen fifty
nine Villa Franca, Part one. On the whole, it can
(00:22):
be safely assumed that Napoleon's hark back was real and
was not a move poor Miu stte. He was not
pleased at the cool reception given in Italy to a
pamphlet known to have been inspired by him, in which
the old scheme was revived of a federation of Italian
states under the presidency of the Pope. The Empress was
(00:43):
against the war, it was said, for fear of a reverse.
Perhaps she thought already what she said when flying from
Paris in eighteen seventy en France in the Faux Poetre Malereux.
But more than this, fear, anxiety for the head of
the church, made her anti Italian, and with her the
(01:03):
whole clerical party. Nor was this the limit of the
opposition which the proposed War of Liberation encountered. Though France
did not know of the secret treaty, she knew enough
to understand by this time where she was being led,
and with singular unanimity, she protested when such different persons
(01:24):
as Guiso, La Martine and Pruden pronounced against a free Italy.
When no one except the Paris workmen showed the slightest
enthusiasm for the war, it is hardly surprising if Napoleon
seized with alarm for his dynasty, was glad of any
plausible excuse for a retreat. Such an excuse was forthcoming
(01:47):
in the Russian proposal of a Congress, which was warmly
seconded by England. Austria accepted the proposal subject to two conditions,
the previous disarmament of Piedmont and its exclusion from the congress.
The bearing of the French ministry became almost insulting. The
Emperor said, Velevsky was not going to rush into a
(02:09):
war to favor Sardinia's ambition. Everything would be peaceably settled
by the Congress, in which Piedmont had not the smallest
right to take part. None of the usual private hints
came from the Tuileries to counteract the effect of these words.
Kavor was plunged in blank despair. He wrote to Napoleon
(02:31):
that they would be driven to some desperate act, which
was answered by a call to Paris. But his interviews
with the Emperor only increased his fears. He threatened the
king's abdication and his own retirement. He would go to
America and publish all his correspondence with Napoleon. He alone
was responsible for the course his country had taken, the
(02:54):
pledges it had given, the engagements already performed by which
he meant, the concerit wrenched from the king to the
Princess Clotilde's marriage. The responsibility would be crushing if he
became guilty before God and Man of the disasters which
menaced his king in his country. The English government now
(03:16):
proposed that all the Italian states should be admitted to
the Congress, and that Austria as well as Piedmont should
be invited to disarm. On April seventeenth, Kavor sent a
note agreeing to this plan. It was a tremendous risk,
but it was the only way to prevent Piedmont from
being deserted and left to its fate. If Austria also consented,
(03:40):
all was lost. There would be peace. Could the gods
be trusted to make her mad? Kavoor's nervous organization was
strained at attention that nearly snapped the cord. It is
believed that he was on the brink of suicide. On
April nineteenth, he shut himself up in his room and
(04:00):
gave orders that no one should be admitted. On being
told of this, his faithful friend Castelli, who was one
of the few persons not afraid of him, rushed to
the Palazzo Cavour, where his worst fears were confirmed by
the old majordomo, who said, the Count is alone in
his room. He has burnt many papers. He told us
(04:22):
to let no one pass, but for Heaven's sake, go
in and see him at whatever cost. When he went in,
Costelli saw a litter of torn up papers. Others were
burning on the hearth. He said that he knew no
one was to pass, and that was why he had come.
Cavor stared at him in silence. Then he went on,
(04:43):
must I believe that Count Cavour will desert the camp
on the eve of battle, that he will abandon us
all and unhinged by excitement and by his great affection
for the man, he burst into tears. Cavor walked round
the room, looking like one distraught. Then He stopped opposite
to Castelli and embraced him, saying, be tranquil, we will
(05:04):
face it all together. Costelli went out to reassure those
who had brought him the alarming news. Neither he nor
Cavur afterwards alluded to this strange scene. At the very
moment that cavour thought he had lost the game, he
had won it. On the same day, April nineteenth, Count Bull, somewhat,
(05:26):
it is said, against his better judgment, but yielding to
the Emperor, who again yielded to the military power, sent
off a contemptuous rejoinder to the English proposals. Ignoring all suggestions.
The Austrian minister said that they would themselves call upon
Piedmont to disarm. Here, then was the famous ac da gracion.
(05:50):
Napoleon could not escape now. The fact that this happened
simultaneously with Sardinia's submission to the will of Europe was
a wonderful piece of luck, which, as Massimo dat Salio said,
could happen only once in a century. When the Austrian
government took the irrevocable step, it did not know yet
(06:11):
that the whole onus of breaking the peace would fall
upon it, nor it must be remembered. Did it know
the text of the treaty between France and Sardinia, And
in view of the French Emperor's recent conduct, it may
well have been convinced that no treaty at all existed. Hence,
it is probable that Austria flattered herself that she would
(06:33):
only have to deal with weak Sardinia. The Chamber of
Deputies was convoked on April twenty third to confer plenary
powers on the king. Many deputies were so overcome that
they wept. Just as the President of the Chamber announced
the vote, a scrap of paper was handed to Cavour,
on which were written the words in pencil, they are here,
(06:56):
I have seen them. It was from a person whom
he had instructed to inform him instantly. When the bearers
of the Austrian ultimatum arrived, they were come Angels of
light could not have been more welcome. Kavor went hastily out,
while the house broke into deafening cries of long live
the King. He said to the friend who brought the message,
(07:19):
I am leaving the last sitting of the last Piedmontese chamber.
The next will represent the Kingdom of Italy. The Sardinian
army to be placed on a peace footing, the volunteers
to be dismissed. An answer of yes or no required
within three days. These were the terms of the ultimatum.
If the answer were not fully satisfactory, his Majesty would
(07:42):
resort to force. Kavur replied that Piedmont had given its
adhesion to the proposals made by England with the approval
of France, Prussia and Russia, and had nothing more to say.
No one who saw the statesman's radiant face would have
guessed that less than a week before he had passed
through so frightful a mental crisis. He took leave of
(08:06):
Baron von Kellersberg with graceful courtesy, and then, turning to
those present, he said, we have made history. Now let
us go to dinner. The French ambassador at Vienna notified
to Count Buol that his sovereign would consider the crossing
of the frontier by the Austrian troops equivalent to a
declaration of war. Lord Malmsbury was so favorably impressed by
(08:29):
Sardinia's docility and so furious with the Austrian coup de tete,
that he became in those days quite ardently Italian, which
he assured Massimo d'at Salio was his natural state of mind,
and such it may have been, since cabinet ministers are
constantly employed in upholding, especially in foreign affairs, what they
(08:51):
most dislike. He hoped to stop the runaway Austrian steed
by proposing mediation in lieu of a congress, but the
result was only to delay the outbreak of the war
for a week, much to the disadvantage of the Austrians,
as it gave the French time to arrive and the
Piedmontese to flood the country by means of the canals
(09:11):
of irrigation, thus preventing a dash at Turin, probably the
best chance for Austria. Baron Fan Kellsberg and his companion,
during their brief visit, had done nothing but pity this
fine town, so soon to be given over to the
horrors of war. Their solicitude proved superfluous. For the present,
(09:32):
the statesman's task was ended. He had procured for his
country a favorable opportunity for entering upon an inevitable struggle.
When Napoleon said to cavour on landing at Genoa, your
plans are being realized, he was unconsciously forestalling the verdict
of posterity. The reason that he was standing there was
(09:54):
because Cavor had so willed it in spite of the
Emperor's fits of Italian sympathy. In the various circumstances which
impelled him toward helping Italy, he would not have taken
the final resolution had not some one saved him the
trouble by taking it for him. As the French student
of history has lately said, in eighteen fifty nine, as
(10:16):
in eighteen forty nine, there was a hamlet in the case.
But Paris, not Turan, was his abode. Napoleon needed and
perhaps desired to be precipitated. Look at it, how we may.
It must be allowed that he was doing a very
grave thing. He was embarking on a war of no
palpable necessity against the sentiment, as the Empress wrote to
(10:40):
Count Raze of his own country, a stronger man than
he might have hesitated. The natural discernment of the Italian
masses enlightened them as to the magnitude of Cavour's part
in the play, even in the hour when the interest
seemed transferred to the battlefield, and when an emperor and
a king moved among them as liberators at Milan. After
(11:03):
the victory of Magenta had opened its gates, the most
permanent enthusiasm gathered round the short, stout, undistinguished figure in
plain clothes and spectacles, the one decidedly prosaic appearance in
the pomp of war and the glitter of royal state.
Victor Emmanuel said good humoredly that when driving with his
(11:23):
great subject, he felt just like the tenor who leads
the prima donna forward to receive applause. Success followed success,
and this, to the popular imagination, is the all in
all of war. Milan was freed, though the Battle of
Magenta was not unlike a drawn one. Lombardy was won,
though the fight for the heights of sol Fedino could
(11:46):
hardly have resulted as it did if the Austrians had
not blundered into keeping a large part of their forces inactive.
Would the same fortune be with the allies to the end.
Kavor does not appear to have asked the question. He
watched the war with no misgivings. It was to him
a supreme satisfaction that the Sardinian army, which he had
(12:07):
worked so hard to prepare, did Italy credit. He took
a personal pride in the romantic exploits of the volunteers,
though for political reasons he carefully concealed that he had
been the first to think of placing them in the field.
He made an indefatigable Minister of War, having taken the
office when La Marmaa went to the front. The work
(12:29):
was heavy. The problem of finding even bred enough for
the Allied armies was not a simple one. On one occasion,
the French Commissariate asked for a hundred thousand rations to
make sure of receiving fifty thousand. The officer in charge
was surprised to see one hundred and twenty thousand punctually
arrive on the day named. Kavor's thoughts were not, however,
(12:50):
only with the troops and Lombardy. The whole country was
in a ferment, and instead of accelerating events, the question
now was to keep pace with them. When Ferdinand the
Second died and a young king, the son of a
princess of the House of Savoy, ascended the throne, Kavor
invited him to join in the war with Austria. The
(13:12):
invitation has been blamed as insincere and unpatriotic, but the
best Neapolitans seconded it. Poerio said he was willing to
go back to prison if King Francis would send his
army to help Piedmont, faithful to his primary object of
expelling the Austrians. Kavor would have taken for an ally
(13:34):
any one who had troops to give. Moreover, an alliance
between Naples and Sardinia meant the final shelving of a
scheme which had caused him anxiety off and on for
many years, that of a Muratist restoration. Though he had
always recognized that word, accepted by the Neapolitans themselves, it
would be impossible for him to oppose it. He understood
(13:57):
that to place a Mura on the throne of Naples
would be to move in the old vicious circle by
substituting one foreign influence for another. There is no doubt
that the idea was attractive to Napoleon. One of his
first cares after he became emperor had been defined an
accomplished Neapolitan tutor for the young sons of Prince Murat
(14:21):
about the time of the Paris Congress, emissaries were actively
working on behalf of the French pretender in the Kingdom
of Naples. The propaganda was in abeyance during the war
because Russia made it a condition of her neutrality that
the King of Naples should be let alone. But the
simple fact that Napoleon had undertaken to liberate Italy was
(14:44):
a splendid advertisement of the claims of his cousin. These
considerations tended to make Cavour hold out his hand to
the young Bubon king. There is much evidence to show
that the first impulse of Francis was to take it,
but the count influences around him were too strong. When
he refused, he sealed his own doom, though the time
(15:07):
for the crisis was not yet come. End of Section seventeen.
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