Rome: June 23, 1849.
I advertise you that I hope to be in the Geneva country in August, reposing in the bosom of nature from the fatigues of art and the turmoil of war!!! Quid Romæ faciam? What’s politics to he, or he to politics? But it is impossible to get out, and if one did, Freeborn, Vice-consul, who however is a Caccone, says the French avan-posti shoot at one.
July 3.
Well, we are taken; the battery immediately to the left (as you go out) of St. Pancrazio was carried by assault, on the night of the 29th or morning of the 30th, while we in this corner got bombarded by way of feint. The Roman line in several cases has behaved ill, and certainly gave way here rather early; afterwards, however, under Garibaldi’s command, it seems to have fought well, at least two regiments, who are now off with him and his free corps to the Abruzzi.
On Saturday morning (30th June) the Assembly resolved to give in; Mazzini & Co. resigned; and a deputation went off to Oudinot. Sunday was perfectly tranquil; yesterday evening Garibaldi withdrew his troops from the Trastevere, and went off by the S. Giovanni. To-day they say the French will enter. Altogether, I incline to think the Roman population has shown a good deal of ‘apathy’; they did not care about the bombs much, but they did not care to fight very hard either. The Lombards are fine fellows, and the Bolognese too; the only pity there were not more of them. If you put the whole lot of them together, Poles, Lombards, Tuscans, French, they would not exceed 3,000. On the whole, the French were not very barbarous, but if we had not yielded, I believe they meant to bombard us really; and as it was, their shells might have done irreparable harm.
At noon to-day the Assembly proclaims the Constitution! which it had just completed.
To F. T. Palgrave, Esq.
Rome: July 4, 1849.
If you should happen to read in the ‘Constitutionnel’ that ‘on Tuesday, July 3, our army entered Rome amidst the acclamations of the people,’ perhaps you will not be the worse for a commentary on the text.
On Monday evening Garibaldi, with all the free corps except some Lombards under Medici, and with a good many Roman troops in addition, set off for the Abruzzi. On Tuesday at noon the Assembly proclaimed the Constitution on the Campidoglio. I went there and heard it. There were present perhaps 800 or 900 people. This done, I presume the deputies dispersed, the labours of the Constituent being clearly completed. The French had already begun their entry, and occupied the Ponte Sisto, and, I believe, the Trinità dei Monti. About half-past four I went out, and presently saw a detachment coming up from the Palazzo Borghese to the Condotti. I stood in the Corso with some thirty of the people, and saw them pass. Fine working soldiers indeed, dogged and business-like; but they looked a little awkward, while the people screamed and hooted, and cried, ‘Viva la Reppublica Romana!’ When they had got past some young simpleton sent a tin pail after them; four or five faced round with bayonets presented, while my young friend cut away up the Corso double quick. They went on. At this moment some Roman bourgeois, as I fancy, but perhaps a foreigner, said something either to express his sense of the folly of it, or his sympathy with the invaders. He was surrounded, and I saw him buffeted a good deal, and there was a sword lifted up, but I think not bare; I was told he got off. But a priest who walked and talked publicly in the Piazza Colonna with a Frenchman was undoubtedly killed I know his friends, and saw one of them last night. Poor man! he was quite a liberal ecclesiastic, they tell me, but certainly not a prudent one.