In striking contrast to this, the most peaceable of all the March risings, was the movement which was going on at the same time in Lombardy. It seemed, indeed, as if the Austrian Government were determined to drive the Lombards into violent action. In Vienna Metternich was at least talking about extending the power of the Estates; in Hungary Kossuth was able to speak freely in the Presburg Diet; in Bohemia the Government seemed to drop into the hands of the people almost without an effort; but in Lombardy the savage proclamation of February had been followed on March 2 by an announcement from Spaur that the people must abandon all hope of any reform in the organic institutions of Lombardy which could imply a relaxation of the union with other parts of the Monarchy; and so rigorously were the repressive laws carried out that on March 11 there were 700 political prisoners in Milan.
Yet, in spite of this tremendous rigour, there were still signs of the irrepressible aspirations of the Lombards. On March 10, a feast was held in Brescia in honour of the proclamation of the French Republic; and the Italian soldiers quartered in that town showed sympathy with this demonstration. Even during the actual rising at Vienna, Metternich still showed his determination to hold down Lombardy by force; he suddenly recalled Spaur and Ficquelmont from Milan, and sent Count O'Donnell, a man of fiercer type, to take the place of Spaur. Even Metternich's idea of Lombard reform was not changed by the rising in Vienna; for on March 16 there appeared in Milan a proclamation which must either have been prepared by Metternich just before his fall, or adopted by the Camarilla directly after it; and in this the Lombards were offered exactly the same programme of reform which had been proposed to them in January.
But in the meantime the people were not idle. The Italians in Vienna managed to keep up a secret correspondence with their countrymen in Lombardy, and to warn them that new troops might be sent against them; while the Milanese managed to circulate secret proclamations which stirred the hopes of their fellow Lombards. On the 16th or 17th of March one of these proclamations appeared, containing a final protest against all the tyrannies exercised by Austria in Lombardy since 1815, down to the massacres of 1848. The composers of the proclamation concluded by finally declaring their resolution "to feel as Italians, to think as Italians, to will once for all to be Italians; to resolve to break once and for all the infamous treaty that has sold our liberties without our consent; to exercise our rights as men, our revenge as Italians." Thus, by some mysterious freemasonry, the champions of liberty in Milan had gradually been drawn together and prepared for action; and when on the 17th of March the news arrived that the Viennese insurrection had succeeded, that liberty of the Press had been granted, and that the Congregations of Lombardy as well as the estates of the other parts of the Empire were to be called together, the news gave the signal for insurrection. The Congregations which, up to the time of Nazari's speech, had been so silent and helpless, and whose uselessness had been further proved by the failure of that very protest, could not be accepted as the representatives of national life; and the suggestion of freedom of the Press while Radetzky remained in Milan could only supply a subject for a caricature.