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principles. But no-one welcomed French troops on their soil or the financial demands

Napoleon made on his subject peoples. Napoleon shook up the old map of Europe,
even though the Congress of Vienna did its best to reconstruct it.

To Mazzini, nationalism was a moral crusade. He later recalled that he was inspired
to his life’s work when as a 15-year-old student at Genoa harbour he encountered
some Italian refugees begging for money to get to Spain, on the run from the
Austrian authorities after an unsuccessful uprising: “That day there took shape
confusedly in my mind the thought that we Italians could and therefore ought to

struggle for the liberty of our fatherland.” His tireless activism, letter-writing,
pamphleteering, setting up Young Italy, sister organisations such as Young Poland
and other oppressed nationalities, and even a Young Europe, was devoted to
educating public opinion. But it had its limitations. His message was well received by
the liberal middle classes, but struggled to penetrate workers or peasants. Mazzini
was keen to educate public opinion and move Italian nationalism beyond the
conspiratorial ethos of the Carbonari (“charcoal burners”, the codename used by the

pre-Mazzini Italian nationalists). But he still had to operate outside the law; Mazzini
himself lived in exile under a death sentence. However, some critics have noted how
Mazzini organised many revolutionary conspiracies which nearly always resulted in
failure and the capture and execution of young men who became involved; he
remarked that the nationalist cause would be helped by the blood of its martyrs.
The revolutionary ethos of Europe between 1815 and 1848 is well described by
historian L.B. Seaman (Vienna to Versailles 1995): “revolts and revolutions occurred
only when there were added to the discontent of the professional classes the

discontents of the uneducated elements of society. These might include brigands and
bandits as in southern Italy and Greece in 1820; deracinated cranks, ruffians and
delinquents as in the 1830 revolutions in Italy; unemployed or under-employed army
officers as in Spain in 1820; an unemployed urban proletariat augmented by peasants
migrating to the towns after bad harvests as happened in Berlin, Vienna and
Budapest in 1848. The irresponsibility of students, the sheer incendiarism of fanatics,

the half-lunatic, half-criminal proceedings of Europe’s myriad secret societies – these,
allied to the anger of workers in their thousands, and peasants in their tens of
thousands, made the Revolutions possible, for otherwise the professional classes
would have been leaders without an army. To the uneducated and the unbalanced, to
the immature, passionate natures of young men burning with frustrated patriotism or
thwarted ambition or idealism – and still more to the starving worker or peasant –
revolution seemed the only way.” And when their efforts failed to deliver the new
Heaven, “there was Mazzini to tell them with the fervour of a prophet that revolution
was still the essential aim.”