Italian Yesterdays, vol. 2

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

When, in the summer of 1809, Napoleon sent orders to Rome for the arrest of the Pope, he did so under the impulse of one of those blind rages of his which upset all the calculations of his wisest advisers, and which only ended in raising up insurmountable barriers in the way of his ultimate triumph. For years he had been angered by the Pope’s refusal either to close the ports of the Papal States against English ships and merchandise, or to expel the English residents in his dominions. In answer to the Emperor’s repeated demands, Pius VII had said that, as the Universal Spiritual Father of all the Christian family, he absolutely refused to close their home and his (i.e., the Papal States) against his English children. Whereupon, in 1807, Benevento and Pontecorvo were taken from the Papal States and erected into French Duchies for Talleyrand and Bernadotte, to be held by them as fiefs of the Empire. The next year, Rome itself was occupied by French troops, and the “legations” of Ancona, Urbino, Macerata, and Camerino seized by Napoleon’s orders; and, in 1809, the Eternal City was declared to be annexed to the Empire as the capital of the French département or county of Rome. Finally, in the night of July 5-6, 1809, Pope Pius VII was arrested by General Radet and taken as a prisoner to Savona.

Napoleon’s idea, in thus imprisoning the Pontiff and isolating him from his accustomed friends, counsellors, and surroundings, was to wring from him by suffering that compliance with the imperial diplomacy which the good old man had hitherto refused so uncompromisingly. To be sure, now that Rome and the Papal States were in the hands of his soldiers, the Emperor had no difficulty either in expelling or arresting the English residing there, or in closing the whole of Romagna to British merchandise; but, in his haste and anger, he had reckoned without the religious difficulties of the new situation.

To begin with, in thus laying violent hands upon the person of the Pope, he struck a blow not only at a fellow-Sovereign, but at the Head of the Catholic Church on earth; and, in so doing, wounded the whole of the Church in its tenderest feelings, stirring up against himself a resentment that knew no bounds, not only in France, Belgium, and Italy, but, also, in Spain and Austria; as well as throughout the Catholic parts of Germany and the Netherlands. Protests multiplied on every hand, becoming increasingly violent, until Napoleon was forced to admit to himself that he had made a terrible mistake, and that his glory and power were insufficient to seduce the souls of men from their religious allegiance to the successor of St. Peter. Moreover, the dangers and discomforts of his situation were rendered intolerable by a Bull of Excommunication issued against him in that summer of 1809, in the tour of his triumph over the Austrians at Wagram; which Bull was served upon him in person, whilst surrounded by his marshals, by a solitary ecclesiastic who, true to his mission, did not honour him with any kind of salutation, but merely delivered the parchment into the Emperor’s hand, turned his back upon him, and walked away. Napoleon, indeed, feigned to make light of the excommunication, asking of those about him whether the Pope expected the muskets to fall from the hands of his, the Emperor’s, soldiers; but, in his heart, he was greatly troubled. He had known for some time that such a Bull was on its way to him, but had contrived to evade the service of it on him. For Lebzeltern, himself, who was Secretary of the Austrian Embassy in Rome at the period of the Holy Father’s arrest, and who had long been a valued and intimate friend of Pius VII, had been entrusted with another such document at his departure from Rome on an order transmitted to him from Napoleon through General de Miollis, ordering him (albeit a foreign diplomatist) to quit French territory immediately. Bearing with him, therefore, the Bull of Excommunication, Lebzeltern had departed from Rome, being escorted on his way to Vienna as far as Klagenfurt in Styria by a French officer. On reaching Schönbrunn, however, he was arrested by the French military police; his baggage and, even, his person was submitted to a degrading search, and, at length, every other means of purloining the Bull having been tried in vain, Lebzeltern was threatened with being shot unless he gave up the document—for Napoleon would appear to have entertained a superstition that, if only he could escape from having the Bull served on him, its effect would be annulled! But nothing would induce Lebzeltern to reveal its hiding-place; and so he was sent off as a state prisoner to Munich, with a special recommendation to the Bavarian Government to treat him as harshly as possible. Having passed some months there, however, he was exchanged against a Baron d’Arétin, and came to Vienna, believing himself to be free at last; but now Wagram had been fought, and Napoleon was master there; and Lebzeltern was again arrested on a trumped-up charge of seeking to escape from giving satisfaction to a French officer in an affair of honour! Nor would Napoleon let him go until compelled to do so by the insistent demands of Metternich, who was just then negotiating the peace preliminaries at Altenburg. At long length, however, Lebzeltern was released, and joined the Austrian headquarters near Schönbrunn a few days before the signing of the treaty of Vienna; and it was he to whom Emperor Francis unburdened himself with tears in his eyes on the subject of the Treaty.

Soon afterwards, Lebzeltern went to Paris as Secretary of Embassy under Metternich; and when, in the late spring of 1810, Napoleon asked Metternich to find him a man to entrust with the errand of persuading the Holy Father to accede to his views (i.e., the removal of the Excommunication and the abdication of the Temporal Power in favour of the Napoleonic dynasty), Metternich recommended Lebzeltern as the one person qualified to speak to the Pope with any chance of being accorded a favourable hearing.

The whole hinge of the matter was the Pope’s renunciation of the Temporal Power; only in return for which would Napoleon (as he made perfectly clear to Metternich) allow the Pontiff to return to Rome, whence, alone, it was possible for Pius VII to direct the way of the Catholic Church. And, unless the Pope would surrender the patrimony of Peter, he should never see Rome again; and the Emperor would nominate another Pontiff in his stead. The position was certainly simple enough, according to Napoleon.

But Metternich had added, in private, a little word of his own in the ear of his estimable subordinate on the eve of the latter’s departure for Italy. “Do all,” said he, with a peculiar emphasis, “or else, do nothing.” And Lebzeltern, grasping the significance of the words, had bowed, smilingly, before withdrawing to prepare for the journey. He perfectly understood; what Metternich meant was that he was either to effect “in toto” what both of them knew to be impossible or else he was to effect nothing at all. That is to say, he was not to attempt any compromise by which the Pope might be hoodwinked into doing what Napoleon wanted; for it was perfectly certain that Pius VII would refuse to meet the Emperor’s views as laid down by the Emperor himself for transmission by Lebzeltern. And, as Metternich realised, the salvation, not only of Austria but of all Europe, depended upon the Pope’s holding out against Napoleon; for the only thing that must inevitably, sooner or later, bring about the Emperor’s downfall, was the sense of their outraged religion in the hearts of the vanquished.

After sending in his request for an audience to Monsignor Doria, Lebzeltern went to call upon General Berthier, who was the commandant of Savona and the Pope’s gaoler. Berthier had heard of his arrival, and began by telling Lebzeltern—who had told him that the object of his mission was to discuss some Austrian religious business with the Holy Father—that he could only be allowed to converse with Pius VII in the presence of witnesses. To this Lebzeltern replied that it was impossible for him to speak freely of the affairs of the Austrian Court in the presence of any third party whomsoever; that, according to Napoleon himself, the Pope was under no kind of restraint; and, lastly, that Napoleon both knew and approved of his, Lebzeltern’s, mission. But it was not until Lebzeltern threatened to go back to Paris immediately and to complain of the obstacle placed in his path that Berthier finally surrendered the point—albeit not without a violent scene in which he complained bitterly of the Emperor for placing him (as was true enough) in so equivocal a position by first forbidding him to allow any one to have access to the Pope without direct orders to do so from Paris, and then sending Lebzeltern thus (underhandedly and without as much as a line from any French official excepting a passport) to match, as it were, his, Berthier’s, intelligence against his obedience. Finally, he himself decided to give the preference to his intelligence.

So it was all of four days after his arrival at Savona that Lebzeltern was ushered by Monsignor Doria into the Pope’s presence.

At that time, Pius VII, although in his sixty-eighth year, looked considerably younger, his hair being still jet-black and abundant, and his dark eyes full of life and light. The smile, too, which rarely left his pale, kindly face, was peculiarly winsome in its frankness and its serenity. The only signs about him of what he had endured of late at the hands of the French administration were a weariness in his voice and a marked stoop like that of a very old or very tired man. On seeing Lebzeltern, though, he showed a greater animation and pleasure than he had done for many months; especially was he delighted to learn that their interview was to be an absolutely private one—for this he regarded as a great indulgence on the part of his gaolers, it being the first time in his captivity (then nearly a year old) that he had been allowed to speak with any except in the presence of a third party.

At first, records Lebzeltern, the Holy Father spoke of his sufferings in the journey from Rome and of all he had endured since being torn from the Eternal City; also, he expressed his sympathies for his visitor in what the latter had undergone of unjust imprisonment at the hands of the French and the Bavarians. In return[9] Lebzeltern, as he tells himself, gave the Pontiff an outline of public events since their last meeting in Rome, prior to the battle of Wagram—the Treaty of Vienna and its results; the progress of the war in Portugal; and the marriage of Napoleon to the Archduchess Marie-Louise. All of which events Lebzeltern, a professional diplomatist and an Austrian official, believed to be hitherto unknown to the Pope—wherein lies one of the most curious points of modern history. For, if Pope Pius VII was supposed, even by such men as Metternich and Lebzeltern, to be still, in May, 1810, in ignorance of the marriage of Napoleon to Marie-Louise, how can it be claimed that the Supreme Pontiff’s sanction had ever been given to that marriage? Apparently to Lebzeltern’s surprise, Pius VII had, however, actually learned of the imperial marriage through some secret channel: “... outwitting the watchfulness of his gaolers, he received news day by day...!” For, amongst other indignities, no letters were ever permitted to reach or issue from the Holy Father except such as had been approved by Berthier and by a certain Chabrol, Prefect of the “département” of Montenotte, by whom the Papal correspondence was always read and censored; so that it was evidently Napoleon’s purpose to keep his august prisoner in total ignorance of the majority of the world’s events.