Italian Yesterdays, vol. 2

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Giovanni Maria was about ten years old when, romping about the grounds of his father’s country house, he fell into a pond and was nearly drowned. At first the accident seemed to have had only slight effects, but the malady which showed itself a little later and from which he suffered so long was, probably with reason, ascribed to that cause. It was a great sorrow to his father, who was bent upon his son’s entering the army, a desire which the boy was ready to satisfy through filial sentiment, but which went contrary to all his own wishes and to those of his mother. He was sent to an ecclesiastical school, of course—no other could be thought of then for a gentleman’s son—and in spite of bad health worked hard and attained much distinction. As he grew up—tall, handsome, and brilliantly intelligent—his father repeatedly applied for a commission in the Noble Guards for him, but Prince Barberini, then the chief authority in the Papal army, sternly refused to grant it, saying that an officer subject to epileptic attacks would be a danger to himself and others.[4]

By the time he was seventeen, it was fairly clear to all that he could never be a soldier, a relief to him and to his mother, though a terrible disappointment to the old Count. They had already brought him to Rome, and under the care of his Uncle Paulinus, a Canon of St. Peter’s, he worked assiduously at his theological studies, always hoping and praying that the strange malady which had kept him out of the army would not, in the end, keep him out of the Church. Those early years in Rome were illuminated with the crowning joy of seeing Pius VII return in triumph to the Throne of St. Peter, an event which threw the Romans, gentle and simple, into a state of delirious joy. Pius VI had died in captivity at Valence, on the 29th of August, 1799; his, successor, Cardinal Chiaramonti, was elected at Venice (Rome being in the hands of the French) on the 16th of March, 1800, and on the 3d of July of the same year the French, having been expelled from the Papal States by the Neapolitans and Austrians, the new Pope, who had taken the name of Pius VII, came back to his own. Everybody believed that once more “the Church would have peace”; Napoleon, whose genius realised that there was no governing a nation of atheists, had restored Religion to her public place, and was preparing, by the Concordat, to harmonise Church and State as far as the times would allow. But the Napoleon whose unerring eye showed him the necessity of Religion for mankind had counted without the other Napoleon, whose towering ambition demanded the sacrifice of all other claims to itself. With his coronation as Emperor all barriers seemed to break down; the Pope was to become his submissive vassal or cease to reign. His demands became more imperious and unreasonable every day and reached the limit of arrogance when he decided that the centre of Christendom was to be transferred to Avignon; France was to enjoy that glory instead of Italy, and the Pope, no longer an independent sovereign, was to rule the Church for the advantage and according to the caprices of the Emperor.

This proposition was first made soon after the election in Venice, when Napoleon had brought the Pope to Paris to crown him in Notre Dame. Pius VII replied, in an outburst of righteous indignation, that rather than so degrade his office he would resign it, and cause another election to be carried through; Napoleon could then do as he pleased with the obscure Benedictine monk who would be left on his hands!

Surprised at his firmness, the Emperor yielded for the moment and permitted him to return to Rome, but, amidst all the rejoicings with which he was greeted, the good Pope’s heart was heavy. He knew the character of his adversary too well. On the day of his coronation, at the foot of the altar, Napoleon had solemnly sworn to uphold and protect the Church. Immediately afterwards had come the insulting proposal to transfer the seat of her government to his own dominions. Who could say what he would do next?

That question did not long wait for its answer. The notion of having the Papacy established at Avignon was too alluring to be renounced. Again and again was it put forward, each time accompanied by some outrageous demand. The Pope was informed that he was to close all the Roman ports to British vessels; that he was to declare war (!) on Great Britain; that he was to annul the marriage of Jerome, the Emperor’s brother, with a Protestant lady in America; and so on. And always Pius VII replied by his quiet “non possumus”—“we cannot.” Then the great break came. The Emperor permitted himself an outburst of temper in which all considerations of policy and decency were thrown to the winds. On the 13th of May, 1809, the trembling world was informed that the States of the Church had become part of the French Empire. On the 10th of June all the Pope’s insignia in Rome were torn down and replaced by the heraldic réchauffé, which now represented the arms of France; Rome was elevated to the dignity of being proclaimed “a free French city”!

The outraged Pontiff responded by laying the usurper and his supporters under the major excommunication, and then came the crowning atrocity, the one which Napoleon, a contrite prisoner in St. Helena, called the beginning of his own downfall.

In the darkness of a soft summer night the Vatican was surrounded by French troops, and General Radet, sickly frightened at the task laid upon him, made his way with a detachment of soldiers to the Pope’s bedroom. The horrified attendants in the corridors and anterooms were forcibly silenced, and Pius VII was roused from his sleep by the sudden entrance of this sinister company. He was a brave man, and, although it seemed only too probable that they had come to murder him, he lost neither his nerve nor his dignity. He asked them what the errand was which caused them thus to transgress on the rules of respect. At first the General and his aides stood dumb, trembling with fear before the helpless old man. At last Radet found his tongue and delivered his master’s orders. The Pope was to rise at once and come downstairs, where a coach was waiting to take him into France. The instructions were that he was to be taken by force if he resisted, but so great was the awe inspired by his sacred person that, even in pronouncing the arrest, Radet could not bring himself to touch his victim.

There was no question of physical resistance. Gathering courage from the Pontiff’s calm demeanour, Radet gave him a few minutes to put on his clothes, and then hurried him downstairs surrounded by the soldiers. Only two attendants were allowed to follow him, he was hustled into the coach; mounted guards closed in on every side, and the party galloped at full speed out of the Porta del Popolo, heading for the north. By this time the people had learnt what was happening, and they came out in crowds and ran beside the coach, entreating with tears and sobs that their Father might not be taken away from them. The Pope blessed them from the carriage window as he was whirled along; soon all the mourning crowd was left behind, but at each town that he passed through in his dominions the same heart-rending scenes were renewed. His captors dared not pause—some attempt at a rescue might yet snatch him from their grasp—and it was only when they reached Grenoble that they stayed their flight. From there he was transferred to Savona, where he passed three melancholy years of captivity; when Napoleon was preparing to start on the Russian Campaign, he brought the Pope to Fontainebleau for safer keeping, and there Pius VII remained for nearly two years more.

The first care of the Allies after the taking of Paris on the 31st of March, 1814, was to officially reinstate the Pope in his temporal sovereignty, and secure it from future molestation, but Pius VII was even then approaching his own frontier. After Leipsic and the train of disasters which marked the close of 1813, Napoleon had informed his prisoner that he was free to go whither he chose. But it was not until the 25th of January following that the preparations for his journey were sufficiently completed for the Pope to leave Fontainebleau, and then, worn out with suffering of mind and body, he had to travel by stages of only a few miles at a time and to rest for long periods on the way. He finally reached Rome in May of that year, a few weeks after Napoleon had signed his abdication at Fontainebleau. Then for Napoleon came Elba,—the hundred days,—the short triumph, the irrevocable eclipse, and the five years at St. Helena. “Qui mange du Pape en meurt.”

I used to have among my possessions a number of old coloured drawings, the original designs for the decorations put up in Rome for the return of Pius VII. It was a triumph not decreed by politicians, but a spontaneous outburst of overwhelming joy. For five years the entire government of the Church had been suspended; not once had the Pontiff been allowed to make his voice heard in her affairs. There is something strangely sinister in that silence, during which no Bishops were appointed, and not a single line was added to the ecclesiastical archives. The fear and depression that weighed down Catholic hearts was indescribable, and the relief when the cloud lifted almost too overwhelming to be borne. The Papal States had suffered much during those years, and the Pope’s own city worst of all. Business was at a standstill, more than a third of the population had migrated elsewhere, preferring exile to the tyranny of the French rule. Those who remained were frightfully impoverished by heavy taxation and by the general paralysis of commerce which Napoleon’s wars and blockades had brought not only on Italy but on the whole of Europe.