REVOLT AGAINST THE POPE; ROME A REPUBLIC
In the papal states, the enthusiasm for the pope declined when he did not satisfy the exaggerated demands quickly and completely enough, and when he earnestly rejected the desired declaration of war against Austria as incompatible with his position and religious dignity. Even the expulsion of the Jesuits, who were oppressed and threatened in all the Italian states, and the maintenance of a constitution as the “fundamental principle for the worldly rule of the papal state,” did not succeed in winning back his former popularity. The celebrated allocution in a consistory of cardinals, with the determined declaration that he would not wage war with Austria, was generally interpreted as the beginning of a reactionary change. What was the position, then, of the Roman troops and volunteers under the able general Durand which the liberal government had sent to join the army of fighters for independence across the Po? They were looked upon as rebels until Pius himself placed them under the protection of Charles Albert.
One of the Entrances to St. Peter’s, Rome
The allocution was the first backward step from the flag of national uprisal. Pius IX, therefore, soon became as much an object of hatred and enmity on the part of the patriots as he had before been their idol. In vain did he nominate the liberal champion Mamiani as president of the ministry, a position which as yet only clericals had held, and the historian Farini as under secretary of state; the feeling that the head of the church had been faithless to the national cause alienated the hearts of the Roman people more and more. He also had to endure the mortification of having his peace proposals rejected by Austria, proud over her new successes at arms. The reactionary coup d’état in Naples was regarded as the direct result of the allocution, and influenced the popular passions more and more against spiritual rule.
The clever Italian Rossi of Carrara, who had once taught law in Geneva, and had then occupied an influential position in Paris with Louis Philippe and Guizot, and had executed important diplomatic missions, was called by Pius IX to form a constitutional ministry, in order more tightly to seize the reins of government which threatened to slip out of the weak hands of the princes of the church. But, by his energetic measures against the increasing anarchy, Rossi so drew upon himself the hatred of the Roman democrats that at the opening of the chambers he was murdered on the steps of the senate on the very spot upon which Cæsar once fell.
Thereupon the unrestrained populace, led by the democratically inclined Charles Lucien Bonaparte, surrounded the Quirinal and forced the pope, through threats, to name a radical ministry, in which the advocate Galletti and the old democrat Sterbini had the greatest influence, next to Mamiani who had been recalled. From that time law and order disappeared from the holy city. The chamber of deputies was without power, and became so weakened by the withdrawal of many members that it was scarcely competent to form legal resolutions; the democratic popular club, together with the rude mob of Trastevere, controlled matters. Many cardinals withdrew; Pius IX was guarded like a prisoner.
Enraged at these acts and threatened as to his safety, the pope finally fled to Gaeta, in disguise, aided by the Bavarian ambassador Count Spaur. Here he formed a new ministry and entered a protest against all proceedings in Rome. This move procured at first the most complete victory for the republican party in the Tiberian city. A new constitutional assembly was summoned, which in its first sitting deprived the papacy of its worldly authority, established the Roman republic, and resolved to work for the union of Italy under a democratic-republican form of rule. A threat of excommunication from the pope was met with scorn by the popular union. A provisory government under the direction of three men undertook the administration of the free state, while the constitutional assembly laid hands on the church lands in order to form small farms out of them for the poor, and Garibaldi organised a considerable militia out of insurrectionary volunteers and democrats.
Garibaldi of Nice (born July 4th, 1807) was a bold insurrectionary leader who had wandered about in America and elsewhere as a political refugee for a long time, and who, on his return to his native country, had taken an active part in the struggle of the Piedmontese and Lombards against Austria. The unfortunate outcome of the renewed war in upper Italy, which had brought a large number of refugees to Rome, and the arrival of Mazzini, who for so long had been the active head of the “young Italy” party and the soul of the democratic propaganda, increased the revolutionary excitement in Rome. The union of revolutionary forces determined the powers protecting the papal states, whose help the pope had summoned, to common action and armed intervention.