General Head-quarters, morning of June 26th, 1849.
Garibaldi.
General commanding the 1st Division.
The following editorial passage follows the preceding report, in the same paper, the Monitore Romano. As it relates to a subject of which much use was afterwards made by the French and Popish writers, to justify themselves, and falsely to accuse the Romans, it seems proper to insert it here, for the information of the reader. In spite of what is here said (greatly to the disgrace of the French invaders), many of the statues, buildings, pictures, and other valuable "monuments of the city," were injured, and some destroyed, by their bullets, grape-shot, cannon-balls and bomb-shells. They chose their point of attack near St. Peter's church and the Vatican palace, and sometimes appeared to aim their artillery for the wanton destruction or injury of those and other edifices.
From the Monitore Roman of June 26th, 1849.
The Paris Constitutionnel, and all the other journals of the (French) government, make known the reason why General Oudinot has not yet entered Rome, in the following passage:
"It is wrong to believe that Rome can be, in a few days, rescued from the state of defence in which it has been placed by the foreigners who occupy it. Even if the possibility of success in an attack by main force were demonstrated, with the use of all the means authorized by war, other considerations should prescribe the greatest circumspection to our general-in-chief. In reality, the order to attack, which was sent to Gen. Oudinot, contains an express recommendation to adopt the most complete measures to avoid the exposure of the monuments of the city, which are now placed under the safeguard of France. Considerations of humanity are no less in the plans of our generals, who in no case will confound the Roman population with the bands of adventurers who ruin and oppress it. For all these reasons, the besieging forces will confine themselves to the attack of exterior works, and of positions from which the city and the monuments can not receive any injury."
[Remarks on the preceding extract from the Constitutionnel, by the editors of the Monitore Romano.]
"This, it cannot be denied, is an ingenious expedient to justify the slowness of the brilliant successes of Oudinot under the walls of Rome. It is not a posthumous expedient, but a witty one, invented after the act. The General had first to think how to let his bomb-shells by hundreds fall, not upon the foreigners who defend Rome, but upon the heads of the harmless population whom he has come to protect. He must think first how to ruin the edifices of Raffaelle, the Aurora of Guido, the temple of Fortuna Virilis, and, only yesterday, the most beautiful fresco of Poussin, in the palace Costaguli, now irreparably lost, because it has never been copied or engraved.
"But this does not prevent the Roman monuments from being placed under the safeguard of the French arms! This did not prevent them from having within their scope the defence of the liberty of the people, oppressed by foreigners! Hypocrites and wretches! you do not possess even the brutal frankness of Austria!"