y
was always the battlefield of the contending principles, since, hundreds
of years ago, the German emperors, the kings of Spain, and the kings of
France, fought their private feuds, their bloody battles on her much
coveted soil; and by their destructive influence, kept down all
progress, and fostered every jealousy. By the recollections of old, the
spirit of liberty was nowhere so dangerous for European absolutism as in
Italy. And this spirit of republican liberty, this warlike genius of
ancient Rome, was never extinguished between the Alps and the Faro.

We are taught by the scribes of absolutism to speak of the Italians as
if they were a nation of cowards, and we forget that the most renowned
masters of the science of war, the greatest generals up to our day, were
Italians,--Piccolomini, Montecucculi, Farnese, Eugene of Savoy, Spinola,
and Bonaparte--a galaxy of names whose glory is dimmed only by the
reflection that none of them fought for his own country. As often as the
spirit of liberty awoke in Italy, the servile forces of Germany, of
Spain, and of France poured into the country, and extinguished the
glowing spark in the blood of the people, lest it should once more
illumine the dark night of Europe. Frederic Barbarossa destroyed Milan
to its foundations, when it attempted to resist his imperial
encroachments by the league of independent cities; and led the plough
over the smoking ruins. Charles the Fifth had to gather all his powers
around him to subdue Florence, when it declared itself a democratic
republic. Napoleon extinguished the last remnants of republican
self-government by crushing the republics of Venice, Genoa, Lucca,
Ragusa, and left only, to ridicule republicanism, the commonwealth of
San Marino untouched. The Holy Alliance parted the spoils of Napoleon,
riveted afresh the iron fetters which enslave Italy, and forged new
spiritual fetters; prevented the extension of education, and destroyed
the press, in order that the Italians should not remember their past.

Every page, glorious in their history for twenty-five centuries, is
connected with the independence of Italy; every stain upon their honour
is connected with foreign rule. And the burning minds of the Italians,
though all spiritual food is denied to them, cannot be taught not to
remember their past glory and their present degradation. Every stone
speaks of the ancient glory; every Austrian policeman, every French
soldier, of the present degra