Emil Heinäaho

What caused grey hair for Bismarck and Cavour?

There are some similarities in the unifications of Germany and Italy. Not just that they occurred in the 19^th century, but also the fact that they were not a result of a big nationalistic movement that had driven the people out on streets screaming “We want to unite with our brothers and sisters!” No. The both unifications very started and done by a small groups. Above these groups there were Bismarck and Cavour who were the leading persons in this business in their own countries. The unifications were definitely not easy deals. Both Bismarck and Cavour had some big problems – partly same, partly not.

Bismarck and Cavour were two totally different politicians. Their work for the unifications started after they had both achieved the high position in their governments. Here the similarities actually end. Bismarck was the man of the army. Even if he thought that diplomacy, where he was very good, comes first and using the army is the last choice, he considered army as a much more valuable “tool”. This is easy to see in the behaviour of Bismarck. Even if he had no special position in the army he used always the army uniform in public and from his speeches: “… but by blood and iron.” This was the way he was going to handle the big questions of the future. What about Cavour then? Cavour can be seen as a quite miserable creature if we are comparing him to Bismarck. Cavour relied on diplomacy. He was not working that much in publicity. He was more a person who discussed and planned his next act away from the people. Actually, he was not a that popular person in Italy. Maybe just because the people did not see him shouting with a red face in front of the government how they should attack Austria and unite Italy. This difference in styles made at least the work for Cavour much harder, because he could not rule as he wanted like Bismarck did. One of the major problems of Cavour was that he did not have the resources he needed. He had not the support of the people, the power or the personality to just walk over the others. Bismarck had never even thought about a problem like this. He had even more power in the united Germany that the Emperor had!

It was not only that Bismarck and Cavour were different, but also the “playing ground” they had varied. When Bismarck faced different parties, Cavour was struggling with person called Garibaldi. Bismarck’s opinion was that the liberals, the democrats and the socialist could run to the mountains and shoot themselves. He had a lot of fights specially with the liberals. Even if he was able to weaken their position, the liberals always lifted their heads from the mud. Cavour’s opponent was Garibaldi, who was nothing like Cavour. Garibaldi wanted to handle the questions with the army. Cavour disagreed him in many things. There were any real fights between these two men, but they irritated each other. As an example Garibaldi’s plans to take Rome. Garibaldi was going to take over Rome and unify it with the other states. When Cavour heard this he got in contact with France and after a while France declared that an attack against Rome would mean an attack against France. Garibaldi had to forget his plans. The biggest thing that made Garibaldi a threat to Cavour was that he was much more popular among the people than Cavour. Anyway, Garibaldi probably never could have managed to crush the Austrians with the help of the Frenchmen!

If Bismarck had more power, Cavour had a better location. The independent states, which were going to be Germany, were located in the middle of the “super powers” of the world. There has to be said that Italy, even if her situation was better, was not in that good place either, but at least it had only Austria and France threatening. The different powers around Germany forced Bismarck to work in a special way. Bismarck had planned that he would unite the different states in the following way: He would conquer states and the rest of them he would force to unite with Germany by making the other nations a threat to the states independence. The plan was clever. To do it required a lot of diplomacy and after that the skill of fighting. Every time Bismarck wanted to attack a nation around Germany, he had to sign alliances with the rest around Germany, so that the others would not see the attack as a threat against their independence. This would have led to a too early World War I! Cavour in the other hand was in a better position. With the help of his diplomatic skills he was able to make an alliance with Napoleon III. This alliance was playing a major role in Cavour working. Austria was not an easy neighbour. With the help of the weak Italy Austrians maintained their position in Europe among the other powers. So in other words Austria wanted to stop all the acts that were made for uniting the peninsula. Cavour knew that there were even Italians that had joined the Austrian army, which could attack Italy almost without a reason and in this fight the Italians would be crushed. Both Bismarck and Cavour had to be on their toes, because of the threat of the countries around them.

Both Germany and Italy were based on independent states that had been spread on a big area. This meant that the culture and the habits of the people varied a lot. There cannot be forgotten the economical position of the different areas. This was not a big problem in Bismarck’s Germany, but Cavour got a lot of grey hair because of this. In Italy all the money was concentrated in the north just because in the south farming was hard, because of bad land and ancient technology. Even if the religion was the same and the ancient Rome connected the people, they could not even understand each other. Even the farmers and the people in the cities had difficulties in understanding each other’s speaking. Even if the people was originally the same, Cavour had a big problem here. The people was not just divided, but it was not even interested in whole unification process. Because Cavour was not a strong leader, he could not get the people on his side, which would have helped to unify this people. Bismarck’s working methods were differing more than a little from Cavour’s way. The German states contained not only German-speakers, but also many minorities like the Polish. There were two leading religions, protestant, Bismarck’s favourite and then the Catholics. Bismarck tried to crush all the different groups in Germany to make a “pure” German Empire without any minorities disturbing. It is hard to say who had the harder job in unifying the country, Bismarck who was popular among people or Cavour who had not enough power. The fact is that both Germany and Italy were not fully united. The unification was just some official words on the paper, but among the people, who never cared about the whole thing, it had not created a feeling of any nationalism or brotherhood with the people in the other states.

As there can be seen, Bismarck’s and Cavour’s problems were both similar and totally different, but also their starting points differed. Powerful and popular Bismarck crushed ,at least tried, his enemies by his strong speeches and actions, when Cavour, who can be seen almost as a small rat, faced the war mad Garibaldi. Bismarck lost his hair when thinking about the other countries actions against him when he declared wars. Cavour had just the Austrians as opponents, because with the help of his diplomacy the Frenchmen were on his side. Both Bismarck and Cavour could not unify their states. Bismarck had different minorities, when Cavour’s problem was the economical conditions. The conditions really varied between these two states, even if the nature of the problems was the same, they were not the same.