In the 19th century, the image of a revolutionary was romantically embellished. These modern storytellers tended to be demonically beautiful, mysterious, and incredibly charming. Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini fit this image in all respects. No wonder Ethel Lilian Voynich, a famous writer, blinded her Gadfly from the organizer of Young Italy …
Giuseppe Mazzini, who was born in Genoa in 1805, was not only the brightest representative of the new revolutionary wave, but also in some way its creator.
Young Italy
According to his aspirations, the future revolutionary and terrorist could well become a writer - the creator of new worlds, created according to his own idealistic patterns. And for this he had everything he needed: a wealthy family (his father was a doctor at the Sardinian royal court), will, a broad outlook. But Giuseppe, who received a law degree, as it turned out, dreamed of something completely different - soon after graduation, in 1827, he joined the secret society of the Carbonari. In 1830, the authorities attacked the trail of underground revolutionaries. Although the punishment turned out to be rather mild - Giuseppe served his sentence for two and a half months in the ancient fortress of Savona. It was here that he realized that the Carbonari were the last century. We need a different union: with clear goals, strict discipline, ideas that can ignite people. This is how Young Italy appeared - an organization of a new type.
“Great revolutions are the work of principles, not bayonets,” - this is how Mazzini formulated his goals much later.
But putting "principles" at the forefront, Mazzini and his associates did not abandon the "bayonets" at all. More precisely, from daggers and pistols. Because apart from propaganda, explanatory work, "Young Italy", like its followers, has never renounced terror. Anyway, conspiracies were the main form of her activity. And what conspiracy is complete without secret and sometimes overt murders? Moreover, the "Young Italians", like all revolutionaries, shed blood for a reason, but for the great good - the uprising of the people!
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Leader of the Risorgimento
The authorities of the Sardinian kingdom after 2.5 months Mazzini was released and deported outside the country. Giuseppe settled in Marseille. It was there that the activities of Young Italy took place. In an abandoned quarry, Mazzini, together with his associates, founded a printing house, where he began to publish the magazine of the same name. It was distributed in Italy, and Mazzini's popularity grew every day. Soon he was already called the leader of the Risorgimento - the struggle for the liberation of Italy.
I must say that in those years, revolution and revolutionaries were in vogue. The unknown sailor Giuseppe Garibaldi soon became a member of the same "Young Italy" - he also longed for independence, and on this basis they became close to Mazzini. The future emperor of France, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, was also published in the magazine of the same name - at that time he was also a liberal and even partly a revolutionary. It can be said that the whole of Europe eagerly drank the revolutionary soup prepared in the Marseilles quarry.
And the ambitions of the "chef" Giuseppe were so great that he did not hesitate to write a letter to King Charles Albert, who headed the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1831. In a letter, he advised the king how to govern the state and people. Today it would look as if the local mafiosi were sending letters to the president. Karl Albert, of course, did not answer, but as it turned out later, some of Mazzini's remarks reached their goal and were even implemented!
But this was not enough for the passionate Genoese: in 1833 in Switzerland, he gathered a detachment of militants, at the head of General Ramorino, a participant in the Russian-Polish war of 1830-1831. And together with him, like Fidel Castro 100 years later, he moved to liberate Piedmont, which, in general, did not ask for release. Government troops quickly cooled the revolutionary fervor of the motley rabble. Many of them were captured and executed, but the experienced revolutionary Mazzini immediately carried off his feet and soon appeared in Switzerland. In Piedmont, he was sentenced to death in absentia, and this sentence was canceled only in 1848. Having settled in the Swiss Solothurn, Mazzini founded a new revolutionary journal. However, this time the authorities got tired of the revolutionary ferment, and they expelled the editor and his entire team from the city. As "Young Italy" was on its last legs, Mazzini created a new organization - "the sacred union of peoples" called "Young Europe". It included Italians, Germans, Swiss and Poles. They all dreamed of a united Europe as a federation of free lands from the Baltic to the Aegean. But for this it was necessary to destroy three empires - Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman. "Young Europeans" believed that these formations were a stronghold of conservatism and inertia, and therefore they should be destroyed."Young Europeans" believed that these formations were a stronghold of conservatism and inertia, and therefore they should be destroyed."Young Europeans" believed that these formations were a stronghold of conservatism and inertia, and therefore they should be destroyed.
Such an attitude could not but welcome Britain, which has always professed a policy of destruction and destabilization.
The energetic Italian was invited to London - Prime Minister Palmerston was personally interested in him.
In a cloak and with a dagger
Palmerston's offer was impossible to refuse: he offered to expand the Young Europe franchise with branches on the continent and beyond. Mazzini was becoming something like the head of a revolutionary corporation! Soon such organizations appeared in France, Serbia, Corsica, Asia, America. The purpose of these unions was the overthrow of the legitimate government, the organization of armed uprisings and coups. And not only - where the pen and political slogans were powerless, daggers and pistols were used. Mazzini's men have organized political assassinations and conspiracies in all latitudes. Thus, the agent of "Young Italy" Giovanni Pianori tried to kill Napoleon III. The murder failed, but after a while the attempt was repeated - this time by Felice Orsini. Mazzini's men attempted to assassinate the Sardinian king several times. Meanwhile, his apologists pitted the Romanians and Hungarians against each other, promising to both transfer Transylvania to control. Poles and Germans quarreled over the promise of the revolutionaries to transfer the tasty Silesia to both. Even in the United States, Mazzini's envoys were both in the ranks of the Southerners and in the army of the Northerners, although their main goal was the collapse of the United States.
In 1848, Europe finally managed to rock, and then, like pins knocked down by an experienced player's blow, power collapsed in France, Austria, Germany, Sicily, and some Italian states. Mazzini first darted to Palermo, where his fighters took part in the January mutiny. Then he arrived in Milan, founded a revolutionary newspaper and joined Garibaldi's revolutionary army. Then, when the revolution in the Papal States began with the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi, he moved to Rome. And there he became one of the leaders of the Roman Republic. And when the Roman Republic was defeated, he dropped everything and drove off to London.
For more than 30 years, wherever rebellion broke out, Mazzini and his people flocked there like flies to honey. Although in most cases they prepared these riots.
The whole Europe knew and feared the tireless and energetic revolutionary. It is not without reason that Ethel Lilian Voynich, who in the mid-1890s began creating The Gadfly, largely copied his image from Giuseppe Mazzini.
As recognized by many researchers, Mazzini was a "man of action", but at the same time was the author of many political and philosophical works filled with pathos, loud phrases and nationalist slogans. Nevertheless, he was considered and is considered a deep and original thinker, and in modern Italy Mazzini is even honored as the spiritual father of the nation.
The indefatigable rebel, who saw the meaning of life in the national liberation of both Italy and all of Europe, died, as befits a revolutionary, in the struggle. In 1872, he again tried to infiltrate Italy. But crossing the Alps, he caught a cold and died after a short illness. He was buried in his native Genoa, more than 50 thousand people took part in the funeral procession.
Ordinary people loved Giuseppe, seeing in him the defender of their interests. Although all too often, these interests did not differ in the least from the interests of Italy's enemies.
Dmitry Kupriyanov