end of the last century, she was practically ruled by the Popes, and was a city of the Papal States. Her immense convents and churches were filled with monks and nuns. In 1549, Julius III. restored to her some of her ancient privileges of which Paul had deprived her, and in some sort she regained her old forms of government, but she could never again be called by her historians an independent State. In 1797, during the general upheaval of Europe which followed the revolution in France, she underwent a quite new phase, and became a French Prefecture under the title of Departimento del Trasimeno. General la Valette levied tribute from the citizens, who were further harassed by the sudden break up of the Roman Republic and an Austrian occupation. After the Battle of Marengo, in 1800, Perugia ceased to be Pontifical, and in 1809 she was formally annexed to the French Empire, and made a canton of Spoleto under a sub-prefect. By Napoleon’s orders the convents of both sexes and of all orders were suppressed, the bishops and prelates were sent to Rome in carriage loads, and the poor monks and nuns were unfrocked and literally carted through the streets to their homes. When a turn came in the fortunes of the empire, Perugia became the victim of another change, and with the partial introduction of the papal sway, the monks and nuns returned to their convents.
In spite of its tyrannies, the Napoleonic occupation had given the Perugians a taste for better things than a papal despotism, and they never again found rest in the care of the Pope. They fretted and chafed under the Pope’s people; the Pope’s fortress became a veritable eye-sore to them, the daily sight of its walls burned into their hearts like red-hot nails, and whenever they could they pulled a part of it down.
At last, in 1859, they rose in open rebellion, and Papal troops were sent by Pius IX. to besiege the town. Some 2000 of the Swiss Guard, led by Colonel Schmid, arrived from Rome to quell the insurrection. Bonazzi gives a vivid account of the atrocities these men committed in the city. They killed all whom they laid hands on in their raids as they passed through the streets, crying aloud as they went that “their master the Pope had given them orders that none should be spared.” S. Pietro was forced, and, notwithstanding the protests of the Abbot and his monks, its vestments were torn to threads, gold and silver ornaments carried away, and not even the archives with their wealth of long accumulated missals escaped the vandalism of the papal troops. (See p. [162.])
In 1860 the Swiss were finally dislodged by Victor Emanuel’s envoy, General Manfredo Fanti; and, unarmed and closely guarded by a double file of the King’s soldiers, the last representatives of papal power were driven from the fortress of Paul III., and having passed a night in the cathedral, they were ousted for ever from the precincts of Perugia. Paul III.’s fortress had now been entirely pulled down by an infinite number of willing hands, and the present great buildings of the Prefettura, which represents the modern government of a prosperous town, took their place on the former site of the Baglioni palaces.
* * * * * * * *
With the loss of Perugia’s independent existence in 1540 the light of romance was lost to her history. But from that minute, and in spite of all her anguish and humiliation, she learned the final lesson of how to live at peace within herself, and be at peace with all her neighbours. This lesson she had never learned through all her battlings in the past. She had risen fighting, and fighting she had flourished. It would be inaccurate to say that fighting she fell.
Perugia never fell. She was merely caught and tamed. Anyone familiar with the cities of Umbria will at once recognise in this, their head, something forcible, strong, grand, and enduring, which neither nobles, emperors, nor popes were able to beat out of her; something which has kept her what she was at the beginning: Perugia, the city of plenty, and fitted her to be what she is now: Perugia the capital of Umbria; as grand in her unity with her great mother, as she was powerful in her strife.
CHAPTER IV
The City of Perugia
“C’est une vieille ville du moyen âge, ville de défense et de refuge, posée sur un plateau escarpé, d’où toute la vallée se découvre.”—H. Taine, Voyage en Italie.