XXIX. 1832. Jan. 20. CHAP. of excitement that they resolved on resistance. A conflict took place on the plains of Cesena, which the insurgents, 3000 strong, though they had only three pieces of cannon, and the Pontifical troops were double their number, maintained with great courage; but they were at length routed, and the victorious soldiers, pursuing the 1 Ann. Hist. fugitives, made their way into Forli, which underwent all the horrors of a town taken by assault. Soon after Ravenna was occupied by the Pope's troops, the passage of the Bastia was forced, and the whole sea-coast of the Adriatic fell into their hands.1 xv. 431, 432; L. Blanc, iii. 184, 185 Cap. vi. 18, 22. 28. Interven The civic guards and insurgents upon these disasters retired to Bologna, where they concentrated from all quarters. Their position and numbers were there so entry into threatening that the Pontifical generals did not deem tion of the Austrians, and their Bologna. themselves strong enough to hazard an attack without external aid, and they applied to COUNT RADETSKY, governor of Milan, for assistance accordingly. The Austrian general, in obedience to the orders of his court, and in accordance with a secret convention previously concluded with the court of Rome, lost no time in complying with the request, and on 28th January 6000 Imperialists, under General Grabowsky, entered Bologna, where they were next day followed by 3000 of the Pontifical troops. These forces were so considerable as to render resistance hopeless, and forcibly re-establish L. Blanc, tranquillity in the Papal States to the north of the Apeniii. 183, 185; nines. But in doing so it roused a new storm to the north of the Alps, and it soon appeared that the peace vi. 21, 24. of Europe was put in imminent hazard by this inter Ann. Hist. xv. 431, 433; Cap. 29. of Ancona. vention.2 Casimir Périer had long had his eye on the disOccupation turbances in Italy, both from jealousy of Austria and Feb. 22. the wish to present an object of counter-irritation to the discontent of France; and the occupation of Bologna by the Austrians appeared to him to present a favourable opportunity for intervention. His designs were taken XXIX. 1832. with decision, secresy, and skill. The Suffrein ship of CHAP. the line and two frigates were immediately fitted out for sea, and 2500 men, under Col. Combe, embarked on board them, with orders to proceed with all possible expedition to Ancona and occupy that town; while at the same time General Cubières, who was to command the expedition, was despatched to Rome to prepare the cabinet of the Vatican for the invasion of their territory. Some accidental delays retarded the journey of General Cubières; and on the other hand, the expedition met with so favourable a passage that it arrived first in the Roman States. On the 22d February, at daybreak, three strange vessels were descried from the walls of Ancona, which soon hoisted French colours, and made straight for the mole. France being a friendly power, they were admitted without suspicion into the harbour, and they instantly landed the troops, to the unbounded astonishment of the inhabitants, and made straight for the citadel, of which they required the immediate surrender. The governor in vain demanded some respite in order to ascertain whether this occupation was or was not authorised by his government. Col. Combe, a resolute veteran of the school of Napoleon, would admit of no delay, and threatened an immediate assault if the place was not instantly surrendered. The governor, being wholly unprepared, was in no condition to resist, and heMoniteur, accordingly capitulated. The troops immediately entered, 1832; Cap. and the tricolor flag was hoisted from the citadel, while the Ann. Hist. Austrian standards were seen only three leagues distant 435. in the plains.1 March 5, xv. 433, 30. this stroke No words can describe the astonishment in Italy, and the indignation of the papal government, when these Effects of events were made known. General Cubières arrived at in Italy and Rome two hours after the intelligence had been received, Europe. and he experienced the first burst of the Pope's indignation. "There has been nothing like this since the days of the Saracens," were the first words he uttered. CHAP. 1832. "We have only imitated the Austrians," replied M. de St Aulaire" they occupied, and we occupied." Though there was much truth in this rejoinder, yet it afforded little consolation to the government of the Vatican that their territory had in this manner become the object of a double occupation by the tramontane states: and they accordingly transmitted a very angry note on the subject to the cabinet of the Tuileries, and for some time the attitude of the court of Rome as well as of the cabinet of Vienna was very hostile. The storm, however, blew over neither state was as yet prepared for war, and the Austrians were satisfied, or feigned to be so, with the assurance that a temporary occupation by a limited number of troops was alone intended. In Italy the descent of the French, and the sight of the tricolor flag, excited the most unbounded transports. It was immediately displayed from every window in Ancona: the state prisons were forthwith thrown open, and the captives libeiii. 186, 189; rated; and the people, fraternising in the coffee-houses and the streets with the French soldiers, surrendered themselves for a brief season to the pleasing illusion of Italian independence.1 1 L. Blanc, Cap. vi. 30, 32; Ann. Hist. xv. 437, 441. 31. First ap pearance of in Paris. March 29. The excitement of these events, external and internal, was cut short in Paris, in the end of March 1832, by the cholera the appearance of a domestic enemy more formidable. than any foreign foe. The CHOLERA had for some months past been making strides from Asia through the east of Europe, and its regular progress, like that of civilisation, from east to west, gave too certain assurance that it would soon make its appearance even in its most westerly states. This anticipation was not long of being realised. On the 29th March the commissary of police announced, in the middle of a ball at the Opera, the sinister intelligence-"The cholera is in Paris;" and this was shortly after followed by the publication of an official bulletin confirming the intelligence, and announcing that the cases in the hospitals already amounted to twenty-six. Neither XXIX. 1832. Indescribable was the terror which this announcement CHAP. produced. The march of the terrible unknown epidemic across Russia, Poland, and Germany, had been watched with intense anxiety, and rumour had even exaggerated the terrors of its approach. In truth, they were sufficiently formidable without any addition from the power of imagination. The dreadful disease, springing apparently from the hot marshes of the Nile or the Ganges, advanced with ceaseless march through the air, unchecked either by the skill of man or the force of nature. a long tract of wind blowing from the west, nor the utmost sanitary or police precautions in all the realms over which it had passed, could arrest its dreaded approach. The journals of St Petersburg, Moscow, and Constantinople, were filled at the same time with the details of its devastation, the terrors of its advent. They were soon too fatally verified. A few ventured the first day to discredit the report, but it was soon ascertained to be too true. On the very next day the deaths amounted to one hundred and fifty; and the police, by Moniteur, whom the scourge had long been expected, and who had 1832; Ann. taken every precaution against it, issued the most urgent 142, 144; proclamations, enjoining implicit and instant obedience 83." to the sanitary regulations which had been promulgated.1 1 April 1, Hist. xv. Cap. vi. 82, dinary and for symp In Paris, as in all other places which it has visited, 32. the symptoms of this terrible epidemic baffled alike the Its extraor efforts of medical skill, the anticipations of reason, and unlookedthe deductions of experience. To all appearance the toms. poison came through the air, and was inhaled, in the first instance at least, by the lungs; yet how was this reconcilable with its constant progress from east to west, in opposition to the wind, which in all the states of western Europe blows two hundred and fifty days in the year, and nearly all the autumn and winter, from west to east? The character of the disease, and the localities in which it sometimes appeared with most virulence, led to the general belief that filth, and impurity of water or air, XXIX. 1832. CHAP. were most likely to aggravate it: but although many facts apparently supporting this opinion very generally occurred, yet others of a directly opposite character were not long of showing themselves; and in many places, while the filthiest and worst-aired quarters of cities escaped almost untouched, the pestilence seized with most virulence on those who dwelt in the most cleanly and well aired.* 33. in its mode of treat ment. The first symptoms of the disease seemed to indicate Uncertainty the existence of some poisonous or deleterious matter in the system, which nature was making an effort to throw off; yet the mode of treatment which has uniformly proved most successful to arrest at least the premonitory symptoms, are laudanum, or other binding medicine, which might retain the poison in it. Its sudden advent, and its appearance among many different persons in dif *In Glasgow, where cholera has broken out three times with great violence, these contradictory symptoms have been clearly evinced. In 1848, which was its second visit, while the low and ill-aired districts, abounding with filth and the lowest lodging-houses, crowded with Irish, were almost untouched, the highest, richest, and best-aired part of the city, that of Blythswood Hill, had one or more deaths in every house. The vast influence of intoxication in predisposing to the reception of the poison was clearly proved by the fact, that after having been three weeks in the city, the deaths had not risen, on 3d December 1847, to more than 30 or 40 a-day but on 2d January, after the drunkenness of the New Year, they at once rose to 239. The deaths in the three years of the epidemic were : In Paris the same strange and unexpected results appeared :-" A Passy, où l'air est si pur, le nombre des décès s'éleva à 26 par 1000 habitans, tandis qu'il y eut à peine 16 morts par 1000 habitans dans l'atmosphère empestée de Montfaucon. Parmi les communes rurales, si quelques villages remarquables par leur salubrité, tels que Chatenay, Vitry, Chabellon, eurent en point de choleriques, d'autres qui se trouvaient dans les mêmes conditions, tels que Saint Ouen, Fontenay, Louis-Bois, Asnières, Puteaux, comptèrent de 35 à 50 morts sur 1000 habitans. Certaines professions jugées mortelles se trouvèrent priviligiées, c'est ainsi que parmi les ouvriers employés à disséquer des animaux en putréfaction, pas un ne fut sérieusement menacé."-L. BLANC, iii. 223. Add to this, that in the epidemic of 1854, out of 2600 persons employed in cleaning out the drains and common sewers in London, not one took the cholera, while its ravages were great in some of the most salubrious parts of the metropolis. |