It said: Cardinals, 42 pro and 4 contra; Patriarchs, 6 pro and 2 contra; Primates, 6 pro and 2 contra; Archbishops, 80 pro and 18 contra; Bishops, 349 pro and 47 contra; Abbots and Generals, 40 pro and only 1, a Chaldean, contra. The same article, however, does not shrink from asserting that "many" of the minority voted Placet in the public session.
The heaviest solicitudes of the Curia were now to begin. Events had been so guided that so long as they were dealing with their own instruments, the bishops and the clergy, they were left completely to effect their purpose. Now came the point where they were to operate upon mankind. That society which they had meant completely to subjugate, flattering themselves that they were about to restore it, was now placed face to face with them in an awful aspect, one which neither priests nor kings could fully interpret. Certain it was, however, that neither kings nor "peoples" were upon their knees before the Vicar of God, or were inclined to go down upon them. Some feared that instead of kings and nations appealing to him to save them, he would soon be found appealing to some one to save him. The fortunes of the restored empire of the Bonapartes, and those of the restored Papacy, had been bound up together. Men now watched and whispered, saying that as they had been strangely united in their lives, perhaps they would not be divided in their fall. The 13th of July, the day of the voting which gave the Pope his fatal majority, was the day of the incident at Ems. It was the day also on which the Duc de Gramont informed the French Chambers that, although the Hohenzollern candidate for the throne of Spain had been withdrawn, that did not close the dispute. The 18th of July, the day on which the Pope read out by candlelight the Decree upon his own infallibility, was the day on which Napoleon despatched his fatal declaration of war to Berlin. A baptism of fire had been often and pompously foretold as the result of the great dogma. After its promulgation all that the world ever heard of a baptism of fire was when Napoleon telegraphed to the Empress, whom the devout regarded as the true author of the war, telling her, in loud brag before the nations, how her boy had received his baptism of fire. That again was but two days before simultaneous sorrows sounded the knell of the empire and of the throne which sheltered under the shadow of its wing—the two embodiments of arbitrary will calling itself authority.
On August 4, the Pope was chafing at the news that the French troops at Civitá Vecchia had actually commenced embarkation. On the same day Bonaparte read the telegram from Wissenberg. On August 6, Count Arnim on the Capitoline was writing to Berlin to tell his government that Napoleon had declined an offer of the Pope to mediate between the belligerents, assigning as the ground that after the declaration of war negotiations were too late. That same day came upon Napoleon the double disasters of Wörth and Spichern. The reply of the King of Prussia to the same offer of mediation on the part of the Pope was to the effect that if the Pontiff would procure for him assurances of the pacific intentions of Napoleon, and guarantees against similar violations of the peace in the future, he would not refuse to receive them from the hands of his Holiness.[476] The total result then of the first attempt at political action abroad, in the new character, was a simple failure. At the same time political embarrassments at home were thickening, as they had done every day since the fatal July 13.
It was after Rome had learned that the sun of Austerlitz had not shone on the fields of Wörth and Spichern, that the first formal act occurred showing that the Council had neither been dissolved nor prorogued. All that the Pope had done was to give the bishops a general leave until November 11. Had everything gone smoothly, this arrangement would have enabled the men of the Curia to go on as if they were a General Council. The step to which we allude was merely the formal addition of certain names to the Committee on Church Discipline, to replace those who had left Rome. And this is registered on August 13.
Meantime an intimation was given of the style of adhesion to the Papacy in its renewed glory which would be acceptable at the Vatican. The Civiltá selected for publication, "by preference," as it expresses it, an address from the Society of Catholic Youth in Bologna. It stated that, as if in recompense of the new and lofty honour to the Virgin Mary procured by the word of Pius IX, Divine Providence had exalted in his person the divine dignity of the successor of Peter to the summit of glory and power—
We shall ever keep our eyes fixed on Thee, the mirror of eternal Truth. We shall ever keep them directed to this Apostolical Chair, whence the waters of true wisdom and of eternal life perennially flow. Speak, then, O Infallible Teacher, and we, the youthful sons of the Catholic Church, will hear Your words as the words of eternal wisdom; Your judgment shall be for us the judgment of God; Your definition shall be as the definitions of God; Your instruction as the instruction of God. In your authority as Vicar of Christ we venerate the authority of God, and submitting our mind and our heart to that authority, we have faith to sustain the dignity of human nature in face of the pretentious tyranny of haughty intellect spoiled and blinded by guilty passions.[477]
The historical tales which had for years been carried on in the pages of the Civiltá under the title The Crusaders of St. Peter, from which we have occasionally given scenes, rather strangely happened, in the number of the Civiltá for August 24, to come to an end. It concluded with the list of the immortal dead, as recorded for the world in a monument which Italy may well preserve. The Pope did not know what a record of the exotic character of his own power he was putting up. The ideal of this monument, and of the methods by which the world was to be made Catholic, is given by the Civiltá in a very few words—
It was the conception of Pius IX that, in the Agro Verano, on soil consecrated by the tombs of the ancient martyrs, should arise the memorial of the crusaders of the nineteenth century. And another conception of Pius IX was the colossal group in marble which represents St. Peter in the attitude of committing the sword to a warrior in armour, who with the cross bears a flag, with the legend, The Catholic World. Peter is Pius; the warrior is the Christian army. The idea of the mission of that army glows in the authoritative action of him who gives the commission, and in the humble and generous action of him who receives the commission, and is admirably expressed in two texts of Scripture beneath, drawn from the Book of the Maccabees: "Take this holy sword, a gift from God, wherewith thou shalt overthrow the adversaries of my people Israel.... For victory standeth not in the multitude of the army, but strength cometh from heaven."
The names of the martyrs of this crusade are given, and among those who fell in the Battle of Mentana is only one Italian. France, Belgium, Holland, England, Ireland, and Germany are all represented, and Switzerland still more strongly. In the other most considerable engagement, that of Monte Libretti, there is again but a single Italian. Among those who perished by being blown up in barracks in Rome were several Italians, in large part musicians. That record is certainly worth the keeping of Italy at any cost, and the setting of it up is only one of the manifold evidences of how blinded the Papacy was in the last days of its temporal power.[478] Well might the Pope in the Syllabus condemn the doctrine of non-intervention.
On August 15, a great "function" was celebrated at Rome, in the Church of St. Louis of the French, in commemoration of the name-day of the Emperor Napoleon—that modern Charlemagne who restored the Roman Catholic Church in France, and whose nephew restored the Pope to his holy city. Cardinal Bonaparte, the Marquis de Banneville, and all the French notables attended in state. About the same time a sorely smitten man, accompanied by his boy, was crossing the drawbridges of Metz, turning their faces to the rear, amid gibes and nicknames from the French soldiery. While winding up the heights of orchard and of vineyard which overhang the beauteous dale of the Moselle, and when looking on the fair uplands of Lorraine, upon which were sleeping, in happy obscurity, villages like St. Privat and Gravelotte, like Rezonville and Mars La Tour, the withered Emperor and his yet unripe son might see French soldiers marching in retreat, but could not see the Germans by whom they were being already outmarched. Meanwhile in Paris the two elect ladies of the Golden Rose—Isabella and Eugénie—were spectators, the first sighing after a crown already lost, the second trembling for a regency attained as if only to expedite the breaking of the sceptre of her husband. Had either of them faith enough to believe that the Virgin could reward them for services done to the Holy Father by giving them the necks of their enemies? Our Lady of Victories, "terrible as an army with banners," to quote a favourite text with Jesuit writers, was propitiated at least by the Empress Regent.