CAVOUR, AND "THE DECADE OF RESISTANCE" The peace negotiations between Piedmont and Austria 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, and at last Austria agreed to amnesty all those compromised in the Lombard revolution save a very few; in August the peace terms were agreed upon. But 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 ( Jan. 9, 185o). The situation in Piedmont was far from promising. Legislation had to be entirely reformed, and the bill for abolishing the special juris diction for the clergy (foro ecclesiastico) and other mediaeval privileges aroused the bitter opposition of the Vatican as well as of the Piedmontese clericals. This same year (185o) Cavour, who had been in parliament for some time and had in his speech of March 7 struck the first note of encouragement after the gloom of Novara, became minister of agriculture, and in 1851 also assumed the portfolio of finance. A quarrel with D'Azeglio resulted in Cavour's resignation, but D'Azeglio was not equal to the situation, and he, too, resigned in Nov. 1852; whereupon the king appointed Cavour prime minister, a position which with short intervals he held until his death.
The Austrians in the period from 1849-59, known as the decen nio della resistenza (decade of resistance), were made to feel that they were in a conquered country; 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 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 State trials at Mantua in connection with the discovery of a Mazzinian plot, 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. On a charge of complicity an embargo was further
laid on the property of many Lombard emigrants who had settled in Piedmont and become naturalized. The Piedmontese Govern ment rightly regarded this measure as a violation of the peace treaty of 185o, and Cavour recalled the Piedmontese minister from Vienna.
Cavour's ideal for the present was the expulsion of Austria from Italy and the expansion of Piedmont into a North Italian king dom ; 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.
Realizing that by taking part in the Crimean War, Piedmont 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, Cavour negotiated a treaty of alliance (signed in Jan. 1855) and while Austria remained neutral, a well-equipped Pied montese force of 15,000 men, under Gen. 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 intol erable oppression of the Italian peoples by Austria and the despots ventilated.
Austria at last attempted a more conciliatory policy towards her Italian subjects, but it was too late, and the immense majority of the people rejected these advances. The restored despots in the rest of Italy resumed their old methods of persecution, especially Ferdinand of Naples, whose treatment of political prisoners, in cluding highly respectable men such as Silvio Spaventa, Luigi Settembrini and Carlo Poerio, called down upon him the fierce condemnation of W. E. Gladstone. The only exception was Leo pold of Tuscany, but even his mildness failed to conciliate his people, owing to his dependence on Austria.