Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

FONTI E MEMORIE
B ENGLAND, PIEDMONT, AND THE CAGLIARI AFFAIR H 1857-1858 H
The Cagliari affair rarely has attracted much attentiori from scholars of the Risorgimento.1) This, perhaps, is not too surprising. In comparison with the great events of that era, the Cagliari affair does not, at first glance, seem particularly significant However, it is not without historical interest In the first place, it gives us an insight into the unorthodox diplomatic practices of Cavour. Secondly, it reveals much about English policy in Italy, designed essentially to preserve the peace. Thirdly, it was the Cagliari affair which set the tone for Piedmontese relations with the Tory government, which carne to power in Britain in February 1858 and remained in office until June 1859 In particular, the affair prompted Lord Malmesbury, the Tory Foreign Secretary, to view Cavour and Piedmont with deep mistrust
The Cagliari was a Piedmontese mail-ship which ran between Genoa and Tunis via Cagliari In June 1857 the ship had been hijacked soon after leaving Genoa by revolutionaries led by Carlo Pisacane. The Cagliari had been forced to sail first to the Neapolitan prison-island settlement of Ponza, where the revolutionaries attacked the gaol and liberated some 400 detainees, then to Sapri on the Neapolitan mainland, where Pisacane and many of his followers were killed following a failed attempt to storm the town's garrison. The Cagliari, now back under the command of its captain, sailed for Naples, apparentiy (or so the captain claimed) to report the inci-dent Before reaching Naples, however, the Cagliari was seized by Neapoli­tan war frigates. Subsequendy, the vessel and its cargo were confiscateci, and its passengers and (mainly Piedmontese) crew imprisoned. English in-volvement in the resulting dispute between Piedmont and Naples over the Cagliar? fate stemmed from the fact that two members of the ship's crew, engineers Henry Watt and Charles Park, were British subjects.
The Whig government then in power in England had little faith in the Neapolitan system of justice. Ever since Gladstone's public condemnation in 1851 of the Neapolitan administration as the nega don of God erected
0 The one work of substancc on the Cagliari affair is HARRY HEARDER'S, La cattura del Cagliari*. Urta disputa tripartita fra Napoli, Piemonte e Inghilterra (1'857-1'858), in Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, XLVII (1960), pp. 226-235.