The Austrians in the period from 1849 to 1859, known as the _decennio della resistenza_ (decade of resistance), were made to feel that they were in a conquered country where they could have no social intercourse with the people; for no self-respecting Lombard or Venetian would even speak to an Austrian. Austria, on the other hand, treated her Italian subjects with great severity. The Italian provinces were the most heavily taxed in the whole empire, and much of the money thus levied was spent either for the benefit of other provinces or to pay for the huge army of occupation and the fortresses in Italy. The promise of a constitution for the empire, made in 1849, was never carried out; the government of Lombardo-Venetia was vested in Field-Marshal Radetzky; and although only very few of the revolutionists were excluded from the amnesty, the carrying of arms or the distribution or possession of revolutionary literature was punished with death. Long terms of imprisonment and the bastinado, the latter even inflicted on women, were the penalties for the least expression of anti-Austrian opinion.
The Lombard republicans had been greatly weakened by the events of 1848, but Mazzini still believed that a bold act by a few revolutionists would make the people rise _en masse_ and expel the Austrians. A conspiracy, planned with the object, among others, of kidnapping the emperor while on a visit to Venice and forcing him to make concessions, was postponed in consequence of the _coup d'état_ by which Louis Napoleon became emperor of the French (1852); but a chance discovery led to a large number of arrests, and the state trials at Mantua, conducted in the most shamelessly inquisitorial manner, resulted in five death sentences, including that of the priest Tazzoli, and many of imprisonment for long terms. Even this did not convince Mazzini of the hopelessness of such attempts, for he was out of touch with Italian public opinion, and he greatly weakened his influence by favouring a crack-brained outbreak at Milan on the 6th of February 1853, which was easily quelled, numbers of the insurgents being executed or imprisoned. Radetzky, not satisfied with this, laid an embargo on the property of many Lombard emigrants who had settled in Piedmont and become naturalized, accusing them of complicity. The Piedmontese government rightly regarded this measure as a violation of the peace treaty of 1850, and Cavour recalled the Piedmontese minister from Vienna, an action which was endorsed by Italian public opinion generally, and won the approval of France and England.