At last, when the armistice concluded on the morrow of Novara had been
prolonged for five months, the treaty of peace was signed. Prince
Schwarzenberg offered to further reduce the indemnity, 75,000,000 to
71,000,000, but D'Azeglio having agreed to the former figure,
preferred to abide by his agreement. He thought, probably, that he
would thus gain some concession as to the amnesty, and, in fact,
Austria finally consented to pardon all but a small number of the
persons compromised in the late events. D'Azeglio still stood out, but
finding that there was no shadow of a chance of obtaining more than
this, he reluctantly accepted it. The great mass, the hundred thousand
and more fugitives who had left their homes in Lombardy and Venetia,
were, at any rate, promised a safe return. The city of Venice, as yet
undominated, though on the brink of her fall, was totally excluded.
The list of those whose banishment from Lombardy was confirmed,
comprises the noblest names in the province; with the exception of a
few who were excluded from the amnesty on the score that, before the
revolution, they were Austrian functionaries, nearly every unpardoned
Lombard was noble: Casati, Arese, Borromeo, Litta, Greppi,
Pallavicini, and the Princess Cristina Belgiojoso of Milan, the two
Camozzis of Bergamo, and G. Martinengo Cesaresco of Brescia.
It must not be imagined that this amnesty ushered in a reign of
oblivion and mildness. It seemed, rather, that Austria, afraid of the
moral consequences of the return of so many unloving subjects,
redoubled her severity. The day following the promulgation of the
amnesty was the 18th of August, the Emperor of Austria's birthday. In
the morning, placards dissuading the citizens from taking part in the
official rejoicings were to be seen on the walls of Milan. The persons
who put these up were not caught, but in the course of the day a
crowd, consisting of all classes, made what the official report called
'a scandalous and anti-politic demonstration,' raising revolutionary
cries, and even saying uncomplimentary things of His Majesty, and
worse still, of the Austrian soldiers. During this 'shameful scene,'
of which the above is the Austrian and hence the most highly-coloured
description, the military arrested at hazard some of the crowd, who,
by a 'superior order,' were condemned to the following pains and
penalties:--
1. Angelo Negroni, of Padua, aged thirty, proprietor, forty
strokes;
2. Carlo Bossi, watchmaker, aged twenty-two, forty strokes;
3. Paolo Lodi, of Monza, student, aged twenty-one, thirty strokes;
4. Giovanni Mazzuchetti, Milanese, barrister, aged twenty-four,
thirty strokes;
5. Bonnetti, Milanese, lithographer, aged thirty-one, fifty
strokes;
6. Moretti, Milanese, domestic servant, aged twenty-six, fifty
strokes;
7. Cesana, artist, aged thirty-two, forty strokes;
8. Scotti, shopkeeper, of Monza, fifty strokes;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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