More on the Battle of Solferino 1859
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) Makes a Stand
This is a follow up to the previous Battle of Solferino 1859 post from this blog.
Series 2 of the Netflix series The Empress, based upon the life of Empress Elizabeth of Austria ( better known as 'Sisi') ended with the start of the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859. Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, has to fight off the French under Napoleon III and their Italian allies led by Victor Emanuel II of Piedmont from taking the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, part of the Austrian Empire. Series 3 of The Empress will presumably open with the Battle of Solferino in Lombardy. Technically a French and Piedmontese victory. Yet the horror of the battlefield was one of the factors that led to Napoleon III agreeing a peace treaty with Franz Joseph at Villa Franca, and leaving the campaign. A Swiss observer to the carnage at the end of the day, Henri Dupont, was so moved by the wretched plight of the wounded that he helped set in motion the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Geneva Convention. Napoleon III was a patron of the latter.
In Britain the presidency of Napoleon III and then his taking the title of Emperor in 1852 was met with some alarm. The European compromise achieved at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was now being challenged by the nephew of Napoleon 1 .Even the fact that Britain and France were allies during the Crimean War 1853-1856 was not enough. The south coast of England appeared to be particularly vulnerable to attack. There was always the fear since the first Napoleon that if the main British fleet could be tricked away from the English Channel, the south coast could be invaded. Forts were constructed at Littlehampton in 1854, and Shoreham by Sea in 1857. After the French/Piedmontese victory at Salferino a royal commission was appointed in August 1859 to establish a series of new forts to protect Portsmouth, and work began in 1860.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Napoleon III in France in 1858.Albert was particularly dismayed by new militarisation of Cherbourg HIBBERT, POUND Overall, it seems that Victoria and Albert were more sympathetic to the Austrian side during the war in Italy HIBBERT. It has to remember that before George V and the modern monarchy of the House of Windsor, the sovereign and consort could hold far more influence in the nation's foreign policy. Lord Palmerston favoured a policy of supporting Italian Independence but strengthening British defences against France. BROWN The secrecy of the Piedmontese -French alliance antagonised Palmerston who felt that this was a distancing of European co-operation favoured by the Congress of Vienna. RIDLEY
Italian nationalists had a key supporter in the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Elizabeth was already an accomplished and published poet when in 1846 she married the poet Robert Browning in secret. The couple left for Europe and settled in Florence. By 1847 Elizabeth was a supporter of Italian nationalism, a theme in her collection Case Guidi Windows from that year. In 1857 her masterwork Aurora Leigh was published. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth wholeheartedly supported Napoleon III being involved in the Second War of Italian Independence, it's not really clear whether she realised his rise to power was a potential threat to Britain. Her rather dismal poem The Forced Recruit Solferino 1859 depicts an Italian youth living in Venetia being forced by the Austrians to join their army. He becomes a martyr to the cause of Italian unification by emptying his gun of any cartridges once on the battlefield.
III
Rough alien the cloth on his breath
Underneath it how seldom a greater
Young heart, has a shot sent to rest
IV
To march with the, stand in their file,
His musket (see) never was loaded
He facing your guns with that smile.
https://ebbarchive.org/poems/the_forced_recruit.php
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was never in the best of health and reacted extremely badly to Napoleon III agreeing a separate peace with Emperor Franz Joseph I at Villafranca on 8th July 1859. She retired to her sick bed for several weeks.
“- Not a line have I written since the peace.
I fell that day from the mountains of the moon where I had walked hand in hand with a beautiful Dream-now fled away. The grief, the despair overwhelmed us, none of you can imagine of.
I never will forgive England for her part in these things- never-in helping Prussia and confederated Germany, by a league of most inhuman selfishness, to prevent the perfecting of the greatest Deed given to men to do in these latter days.”
These sentiments in a letter to her sister Henrietta HUXLEY . Elizabeth Browning was seemingly unable to grasp the price that France had already paid in dead and wounded already in the cause of Italian unification. Or the fact that Italian nationalists had tried to assassinate Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, most notably going to the Paris Opera House in January 1859.
And poem followed poem. Such as First News From Villafranca
What! -with the enemy’s guns in our ears?
With the country’s wrong not rendered back?
What!-while Austria stands at bay
In Montua, and our Venice bears
The cursed flag of the yellow and black
Several of Elizabeth's poems in support of Italian Unification appeared in a volume titled Poems Before Congress (1860) along with A Curse of a Nation, an attack on slavery in the USA. Seemed to herald the idea that an international congress could soon be heard to settle some crucial questions of the day.
Yet in the wake of Solferino the move to unite Italy under Victor Emanuel II of Piedmont accelerated, even without the armed intervention of Napoleon III. The French absences in the struggle made it easier for British supporters to voice their support for Italian Unification. Elizabeth Barrett Browning died on 29th June 1861. Italian nationalist general Garibaldi visited Britain in the Spring of 1864 to a tumultuous welcome,something that Elizabeth would have heartily welcomed.
Victorian Forts on the English south coast
Littlehampton Fort Preservation Society
Palmerston's Folly article The Story of Hampshire's Forts, by Linda EVANS Hampshire Genealogical Society
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Victorian Web Chronology for the life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Please note that any mistakes or schoolboy errors in this post are the responsibility of the writer and should not be attributed to any source or group cited above.
Worthing, England
8th July 2026
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