The Plombières Agreement of 1858 was a secret verbal agreement concluded at Plombières-les-Bains between the chief minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, Count Cavour, and the French Emperor, Napoleon III. Some older English language sources refer to it as the Treaty of Plombières, but most avoid identifying it as a "treaty".
For evidential reasons there have been disputes on the details of what was agreed, but as events unfolded over the next couple of years it was apparent that the agreement had opened the way for the Franco-Pedmontese military alliance, concluded on 28 January 1859, and for the subsequent the war that led to Italian unification.
The Plombières Agreement was an agreement concerning a future war in which France and Piedmont would ally themselves against Austria in order to remove and exclude Austrian authority and influence from the Italian peninsular. In its place Italy, which a previous Austrian chancellor had reportedly dismissed on various occasions as a "[mere] geographical expression",[1] would be divided into two spheres of influence to be dominated respectively by Piedmont and France. As events turned out the war proceeded as agreed at Plombières, but its geo-political aftermath did not.
The French position edit
The Emperor Napoleon was keen to settle the "Italian question" and to correct the humiliations of the 1815 Vienna Congress, and he had long ago formed the view that this required a war against Austria.[2] War with Austria could bring France military success, delivering glory to France and humiliation to Austria. Actively supporting Italian nationalist aspirations would place France firmly on the side of what was then seen as progressive liberalism,and confirm the nation's special revolutionary credentials. For France, however, Italian independence (from Austria) and Italian political unification were two very different things. Political unification would have been contrary to French interests because it would have risked reducing French influence on the Italian peninsular.[3]
An opportunity for the chief minister of Piedmont-Sardinia edit
The prime-minister of Piedmont, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, was aware of the French objectives and was looking for an opportunity to serve these, while at the same time fulfilling his own by removing the burdensome yoke of Austrian repression from as many Italian citizens as possible.
The arrival in Turin of Jacques Alexandre Bixio on April 1858 seemed to provided Cavour with his opportunity. Bixio was a retired physician, originally from Liguria, with a taste for politics and for ballooning: he had made his life in France. Bixio was a friend both of Cavour and of Prince Napoléon Bonaparte, cousin to the French emperor. His presence in Turin was part of a tour he was discretely undertaking, visiting various European royal families in order to find a socially suitable wife for the emperor's cousin.
Bixio was able to pass to his friend, the Piedmontese chief minister, French proposals for an alliance of the two states against Austria. The agreement would be reinforced through the marriage of Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, eldest daughter of the Piedmontese King, to Prince Napoléon Bonaparte, cousin of the French Emperor.[3]
Reflecting the international sensitivities involved, negotiations progressed outside the "usual" diplomatic channels.[4] To confirm his approval for the proposal, Cavour sent his diplomat, Costantino Nigra, to Paris, where Nigra made contact with another friend and confidant of the emperor (and another physician) called Henri Conneau.[4] On 9 May 1858 Conneau was able to confirm to Nigra that the alliance proposal had the full support of the emperor himself. Further talks now took place in Turin involving Conneau, Cavour and the king, Victor Emanuel. At this point a suggestion came from the emperor for a meeting between himself and Cavour at Plombières-les-Bains, a once fashionable health resort in a small ravine in Eastern France, reassuringly far from Paris or Turin, and off the beaten track of those following international diplomacy and politics.[3]
The meeting edit
On 11 July 1858 Cavour left Turin, letting it be known that he was heading for Switzerland. Only The King and the Piedmontese military commander, General La Marmora, were aware that his final destination was Plombières, where the Piedmontese Prime Minister arrived during the evening of 20 July 2015.[3]
There is no surviving source for the meeting from Napoleon III. The only direct report of the discussions comes from Cavour. Cavour's report takes the form of a letter which he wrote to the king on 24 July 1858 from an overnight halt at Baden-Baden, while on his way home. This letter was made public in 1883 in La Perseveranza, a Milanese newspaper.[5]
The meeting itself took place on 21 July 1858, with a first four hour session starting at 11.00 and a second session running from 16.00 till 20.00. It was a Tuesday. The venue was a moving one: the two men sat together, without support staff, in a small horse-drawn carriage as it undertook a slow passage round and round the little town.[3]
Searching for a Casus belli edit
Neither man wanted the blame for causing the impending war. Cavour noted that Napoleon began by stating that he was determined to support [Piedmont-Sardinia] with all his strength in a war against Austria, on the condition that the war was not in support of a revolutionary cause and could be justified in diplomatic terms and, more importantly, before public opinion in France and in Europe.[5][6]
Rosario Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo (3 voll. in 4 tomi: Cavour e il suo tempo 1810-1842, ISBN 978-88-420-9876-8; Cavour e il suo tempo 1842-1854, ISBN 978-88-420-9877-5; Cavour e il suo tempo 1842-1861, ISBN 978-88-420-9878-2) Laterza, Bari, 1969-1984. Ristampa 2012.
Rosario Romeo, Vita di Cavour, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1998, ISBN 88-420-7491-8. Riassunto del precedente. Ristampa 2004.
References edit
- ^ Prince Klemens von Metternich (in a letter to the Austrian ambassador to France) (April 1847). "Quotations About History - Metternich". "The word 'Italy' is a geographical expression, a description which is useful shorthand, but has none of the political significance the efforts of the revolutionary ideologues try to put on it, and which is full of dangers for the very existence of the states which make up the peninsula.". age-of-the-sage.org. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
- ^ Shared interests between the French and the liberal Lombard Federation had already been highlighted in 1849 by the nationalist historian Carlo Cattaneo in his 3 volume work on the 1848 revolution, "Storia della Rivoluzione del 1848", published in Lugano in 1849:
- «Rimovendo anche ogni geniale impulso, la Francia non poteva vedere con pace che le forze dell'Italia cadessero in mano di chi potesse torcerle contro di lei. … la Francia … sa d'avere nemici molti e potenti. Ora, i nemici suoi sono i nostri; noi siamo l'antiguardo del popolo francese.»
- ^ a b c d e Rosario Romeo (2004). Vita di Cavour. Laterza, Roma & Bari. pp. 381, 382, 384. ISBN 978-88-420-9878-2.
- ^ a b Gigi Di Fiore (8 September 2010). Controstoria dell'Unità d'Italia: fatti e misfatti del Risorgimento. RCS Libri SpA, Milano. pp. 380, 382. ISBN 978-8817042819.
- ^ a b Alfredo Panzini (1909). Il 1859 da Plombières a Villafranca. Fratelli Treves, Milano & FB &c Ltd (Forgotten Books). pp. 131–134.
- ^ «...risoluto a sostenere la Sardegna con tutte le sue forze in una guerra contro l’Austria, a patto che la guerra avvenisse per una causa non rivoluzionaria e potesse trovare giustificazione dinanzi alla diplomazia e più ancora all’opinione pubblica di Francia e d’Europa»