Zurich, Treaties of

ZURICH, TREATIES OF. - On July 11, 1859, meeting at Villafranca, Napoleon III and Francis Joseph agreed on the cessation of the war that had pitted the Franco-Sardinians and the Austrians against each other on the plains of Lombardy.

That same evening Prince Jerome Napoleon brought to the Emperor of Austria in Verona the text of the peace preliminaries as it had been agreed upon in the morning's conversation, and Francis Joseph, having made some modifications to it - which were then also approved by the French Sovereign - signed it. The document sanctioned the cession of Lombardy to Napoleon III so that it might be transmitted to Victor Emmanuel II; the restoration of the Duke of Modena and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, thereby tacitly authorizing Francis Joseph to annex Parma to Sardinia; the creation of an Italian Confederation, to be placed under the honorary presidency of the Pontiff, as well as the promulgation of a full and entire amnesty in favor of all those who had been politically compromised in Venetia and in central Italy. In order to translate the preliminaries of Villafranca into a definitive instrument, the city of Z. was chosen as the seat of a peace conference, and there the negotiations dragged on from August to November 1859. Austria was represented by Count of Colloredo and Baron of Mayenburg; France, by Baron of Bourqueney and the Marquis of Banneville; Sardinia, by Cavalier Luigi Desambrois and Baron Alessandro Jocteau. While the negotiations lasted, grave events took place in the Duchies, where Farini in Emilia and Ricasoli in Tuscany assumed the dictatorship, it being evident from clear signs that the liberal agitators would not tolerate the return of the former sovereigns.

For his part, Victor Emmanuel opposed the inclusion of Austrian Venetia in the projected Italian Confederation and threatened to abdicate (Oct. 21) if the pure and simple annexation of Tuscany and the Legations to the Kingdom of Sardinia were not agreed to. With equal concern the conference was followed in Rome, where Pius IX reaffirmed (Sept. 26), with the allocution Maxima animi nostri, the allocution Ad gravissimum of June 20, threatening the gravest ecclesiastical censures against any who might dare to lay hands on the temporal dominion of the Pontiffs. In turn, England favored the enlargement of the Sardinian State in order to have in the Mediterranean a friendly power sufficiently strong to counter French predominance there.

In this situation, the congress of Z. closed on Nov. 21 with the simultaneous signing of three separate treaties between Sardinia and Austria, between Austria and France, and among the three States together, which left entirely unprejudiced the definitive arrangement of central Italy, which was to have been decided by an international Congress.

Pius IX then wrote a letter to Victor Emmanuel II (Dec. 3) to commit him to upholding the rights of the Holy See within the Congress, at the same time as he solemnly protested against the publication of a pamphlet entitled Le Pape et le Congrès, inspired directly by Napoleon III, in which the Pope was advised to renounce spontaneously his temporal domains, with the exception of Rome and Latium. A few weeks later, with Walewski replaced by Thouvenel in the direction of French foreign policy and with Cavour, who had resigned after Villafranca, back in government, the French Emperor consented to the annexations in exchange for the cession of Nice and Savoy, so that the plebiscites of Emilia and Tuscany could be carried out (March 11-12, 1860), with the idea of the Congress falling away entirely, no less than the agreements stipulated at Z.

Renzo U. Montini