OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (Caispi.) 



487 



Bishop, undertook to educate the boy, and in the 

 monastery and seminary of Monreale brought him 

 up to be a priest. Young Crispi chose rather 

 to be a lawyer, studied in the University of Paler- 

 mo, took his degree at the age of eighteen, con- 

 tinued his studies in preparation for entering the 



magistracy, but 

 married rashly 

 a beautiful girl, 

 and, having of- 

 fended the proc- 

 urator-general by 

 disputing with 

 him the theory of 

 taxation, opened 

 an office as advo- 

 cate and made a 

 forensic reputa- 

 tion at once by 

 saving a brigand 

 from the gallows. 

 He removed to 

 Naples, his young 

 wife and her child 

 having both died, 

 and his legal ca- 

 reer was wrecked by the interest he took in the 

 revolutionary movement of Young Italy which 

 was stirred into a blaze in the two Sicilies by 

 the repressive violence of the bigot Ferdinand II. 

 The suicide of his friend Areto, whom he cele- 

 brated in a touching political sonnet, and the 

 execution of the Bandiera brothers in 1844 helped 

 to make Crispi, not without a mental conflict 

 between revolutionary ideas and the priestly 

 training of his youth, a champion of Italian unity 

 and a Republican, for he was not yet won over 

 to the leadership of Piedmont. He first joined 

 Poerio's revolutionary society, an open body with 

 secret political aims, in 1843, and when insur- 

 rections broke out in different parts of the penin- 

 sula' in 1846 he alone of the leading members 

 escaped arrest, and thus became the chief organ- 

 izer and director of the revolutionary propaganda. 

 He reached Palermo on the day after its seizure 

 by the insurgents on Jan. 12, 1848, and for the 

 next year he was one of the heads of the revolu- 

 tionary Government, and as Secretary of War 

 organized the Sicilian army. He founded a news- 

 paper to advocate his ideas, and in the Chamber 

 of Commons he advanced a policy in which 

 Sicilians were generally in agreement adminis- 

 trative independence of Sicily in a confederation 

 of the Italian peoples. The victory of the Aus- 

 trians at Novara, the successes of the Bourbon 

 troops, and the widening chasm between the 

 Moderates and the Radicals and Republicans im- 

 pelled the Moderates, who were in the majority, 

 to vote in the Sicilian Chambers, in April, 1849, 

 to accept the mediation of France and England. 

 Crispi abstained from voting, but he was excluded 

 by name from the amnesty, and fled to Turin, 

 where he wrote with Depretis and other ardent 

 advocates of Italian unity for the Progresso news- 

 paper until Piedmont itself was closed to him in 

 consequence of the outbreak at Milan in 1853. 

 He stayed a short time in Malta. In London, 

 his next refuge, he came in contact with Maz- 

 zini. After a year of starvation he went to 

 Paris, where he remained until the police expelled 

 him in consequence of Orsini's attempt in 1858 

 on Napoleon III. The peace of Villafranca, 

 forced upon Sardinia, provoked insurrections in 

 Parma, Modena, and Tuscany in favor of annex- 

 ation to Piedmont and brought back exiled 

 leaders who entered Tuscany and Emilia secretly 

 to take charge of the movement. Crispi, disguised 



as a gray-bearded Argentine men-luuit, with a 

 pass procured by Mazzini, landed m Messina, and 

 went through Sicily organizing kind.- <,f patriots, 

 teaching them to make bombs, and \n oiiii.-in" to 

 return to head the rising on Oct. l, I-.,'). iiis 

 friends lost heart as soon as he tin tied his back, 

 and, going first to London to provide him.-elf with' 

 another disguise and a new forged pji.^.-.po,-!.. he 

 traveled all over Italy seeking assistance for'the 

 deliverance of his native Sicily from the yoke <,[ 

 the Bourbons. In Modena, Farini promised him 

 1,000,000 francs, and in Turin he won over Rataz- 

 zi, the Prime Minister. He went with his friend 

 Pilo to Genoa to appeal to Garibaldi to reassem- 

 ble the disbanded volunteers who were menacing 

 the papal states and lead an expedition to Sicily. 

 When Garibaldi made a Sicilian rising the con- 

 dition, Pilo undertook to get up a sufficient 

 movement. If the King of Sardinia and Cavour 

 knew what was going on, they shut their eyes. 

 On May 5, 1860, Garibaldi sailed with his thou- 

 sand men from Quarto to invade Sicily and defy 

 an army of 36,000 regulars and a fleet of 24 

 frigates. He almost drew back at the last mo- 

 ment, but Crispi's confidence gave him hope. 

 Landing on May 11, Garibaldi's legion won the 

 fight at Calatafimi four days, and on May 27 

 the revolutionists were masters of Palermo. Gari- 

 baldi crossed over to Naples, and on Oct. 1, with 

 the watchword of Italy and Victor Emanuel, he 

 defeated the Bourbon army at Voltorno. Gari- 

 baldi had taken the head of the provisional Gov- 

 ernment and named Crispi his Secretary of State 

 on May 17. Crispi had accepted the monarchy 

 because that would unite, while the republic 

 would divide Italy. Garibaldi always acknowl- 

 edged that the winning of the Sicilies and the 

 final union of the Italian lands into one kingdom 

 was due in a greater degree to the untiring en- 

 ergy and fiery zeal of Francesco Crispi than to 

 his own action. He steadfastly refused to part 

 from him, although suspicion and calumniation 

 reached his ear from all sides. La Farina, who 

 was Cavour's representative in Sicily, was un- 

 willing to yield the fruits of victory to another, 

 although he himself had shrunk from the fight. 

 Cavour could not be induced to countenance a 

 Red Republican, the emissary of Mazzini. Gari- 

 baldi made Crispi Minister of the Interior and 

 Finance, and in this office he developed an aston- 

 ishing degree of energy and organizing talent; 

 yet, when Victor Emanuel entered Naples, he had 

 to go, and he surrendered his office without an 

 effort to assert his claims and merits. In Febru- 

 ary, 1861, he entered the Italian Parliament at 

 Turin and took his seat with the Extreme Left. 

 As a Sicilian among Piedmontese bureaucrats, 

 shunned by the Republicans as a turncoat and 

 suspected by the Ministerialists as a Mazzinist, 

 his position was a lonely one, and he neither 

 claimed nor was claimed by any party. He at- 

 tacked the Prime Ministers, Ratazzi in 1862 and 

 Minghetti in 1863, accused the Government in 

 1864 of procuring the plot against Napoleon III 

 of which Mazzini was accused, was denounced 

 in 1865 by Mazzini as a renegade, in reply to 

 which he avowed his sincere conversion to the 

 monarchy, was defeated as the candidate of the 

 Left for the presidency of the Chamber in 1866, 

 and in 1867 became the acknowledged leader of 

 the party. His means of living came from his 

 profession, and when the seat of Government was 

 transferred to Florence in 1865 and to Rome in 

 1870 he had to build up a new practise in each 

 place. When the Left came into power in 1876 

 Depretis was called upon to form a ministry, 

 and Crispi was chosen president of the Chamber. 



