So far the political calculations of the Curia had all been turned to vanity. Bavaria had not fraternized with the French, much less carried Würtemburg and Baden with her. The blast of invasion which was to sound the death-knell of German unity had proved to be its mustering-cry. Italy up to the present moment had stood in awe of France, but if the latter should receive another blow or two, matters might reach a pass at which the Italian government would have more cause to fear Garibaldi than Napoleon—and then?
News soon arrived that the Germans, out-marching the French, had met them in the villages which we have lately mentioned, the names of which were by that meeting written large on the memory of nations. The poor Pope saw that Bonaparte, whom he had used and hated, was not likely to retain power any longer to guard his temporal throne. He knew that Italy was wiser than the first Bonaparte, who taught the French that the Pope was to be treated as if he had two hundred thousand bayonets—a lesson that has cost them dear. Italy adopted the principle that, in respect of bayonets, the Pope was to be counted as worth just as many as he could command. Italy would also treat him more wisely as a teacher. She would not incarcerate, exile, or personally insult him, but would leave him free to bless or curse as he felt moved, and to be heeded or disregarded according as every man felt persuaded in his own mind.
It was with hearts weighted with the heavy news from the banks of the Moselle that the Fathers of the Council met in their Congregation on August 23. How changed that gathering from the proud assembly of last December, which challenged the homage of all kings, and at the sight of which the Margottis and the Veuillots spoke of our Parliaments as puppet-shows! Those whose organs of the Press a few months before wrote as if neither kings nor presidents had any long tenure of power, except as they might make their peace with the Church, felt themselves to sit amid the indifference of mankind, and under the menacing strokes of Providence. The bishops who had warned them of their ignorance and folly, but had been crushed, were now far away. In the Congregation, the Fathers discussed some matters of Church discipline, but as the shadow of Sadowa had arrested all preparations for the Council during fourteen months, and that of Garibaldi for three or four, now a darker shadow, projected from Wörth and Gravelotte, was falling upon the remaining ecclesiastics, as the evening gloom of the Aventine falls on late gamblers in what was once the Circus Maximus. They had played for the certainty of the temporal power, and for the reversion of the lordship of the world. They had boldly staked all episcopal and clerical rights. The upshot was that the losers had lost, and that the one winner was to be a loser too. The next news showed them that, on the very day when they thus met, was completed the investment of Metz. Thus did they see the thrice beaten but still coherent army of Bazaine altogether cut off from the routed and disorganised army of MacMahon. They had fixed to meet again on September 1.
The Fathers probably felt that it was doubtful whether the Congregation fixed for September 1 would meet; but it was highly politic to keep up the airs of a General Council, because it increased the sanctity of the city, and made it morally more difficult for Italy to attack. Ere they met, it became known that at Beaumont, Failly—the faithful General Failly, the leader of the expedition of Mentana, lauded and blessed for his "prodigious chassepots"—had met the Bavarians, soldiers of that king whom the Unitá never wearied of insulting, and that at their hands Failly had lost his guns, his baggage, and his camp, a large part of his men, and all his reputation. The Congregation of September 1, did meet, and it was the last. While Bishop Quinn, of Brisbane, in Australia, was offering up the Mass, the undulating plateaux around Sedan were reeking with an incense which had, within the last few years, been invoked with lamentable frequency by the organs of the Vatican. As the Fathers were rising from their afternoon siesta, tens of thousands of blue and grey eyes, from all the heights commanding the city of Turenne, began to dance for joy at seeing the white flag waving from the old castle lying low down in the hollow—ay, the white flag waving over the Imperial head of him who to them represented the traditional devastators of the German Fatherland, but who was, to the bishops of the Council, the prince who for twenty years had been the stay of the temporal power.
No sooner had the news from Sedan reached the Agro Romano, than Curia and peasant alike knew all that was to follow. One week after that day the Fathers gathered, on September 8, for the last great ceremony, or, as it was called, "the last extra conciliar act."[479] The remains of the world-transforming host of December now speckled the noble Piazza del Popolo, pressing to the great church of Santa Maria. It was the Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin. All that the Civiltá tells of the day is that there were great expectations, and that the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, then three months distant, would witness a splendid session. We should say that there was no expectation of the sort, except indeed among the few who really counted on the Virgin as being certain at last to work for the Pope the miracles which it had been so often suggested that she was in gratitude bound to perform. The majority calculated that she had acquitted all her debts to him by making him infallible. Desirable as it was to keep up the appearance that Rome was just then the seat of a General Council, they knew that though for us and other remote people beyond the mountains that might have a sacred sound, for the Italians it was not a name to conjure with.
On the very day when the Fathers were cheerlessly performing this final ceremony, a notification was sent forward by Victor Emmanuel that he was unable longer to stay the impetus of the nation, which panted to take possession of its capital. The letter of the king was weak and disingenuous. It was more like the work of a priest than of a soldier. He affected to be a good Catholic, while deliberately dethroning the Vicar of God. He affected to hope that the Pope would acquiesce in his own dethronement. The reply of the Pontiff was more worthy of his position, and more becoming his professions.
This hostile movement called out a quality in which Popes are surely infallible, that of appealing to foreigners for armed intervention against their own countrymen. Of all men, to whom should the Pope now turn but to the King of Prussia—as if the King of Prussia did not know at what the Pope and his instruments had been aiming! The date of the reply of King William was in itself a history. He wrote from the capital of fair Champagne. Already had the tide of war closed round the hot infallibilist Räss in his stately Cathedral of Strasburg; and, rolling on, it had, under the shadow of St. Remy, enveloped the deserter from the Opposition, Landriot, in his thrice beautiful fane at Rheims.
St. Remy sent no sufficing homage by the hand of King William. The soldier-king quietly declined to undertake any such political intervention as the priest-king desired. In one word, he dispelled the idea of the venerable applicant, that the cause of Prussia was implicated. The matter, said King William, is one "which does not, as your Holiness appears to think, in any way affect the interests of Prussia." That calm word would provoke many a vow to make the heretic feel that the Pope could affect the temper of millions of his subjects, and therefore the interests of his government.
Yet one week from the notification of Victor Emmanuel, and on September 15, rode up an Italian staff officer, with all the forms of war, to the Milvian Bridge—that Pons Milvius ever memorable for the victory of Constantine and the death of Maxentius. The latest addition to its history of military incidents, which began with the conspiracy of Catiline, had been made one-and-twenty years previously, when the insurgent Romans defeated an attempt to carry the bridge made by the French under Oudinot. The point of meeting did not, therefore, seem to be one of good omen for Pius IX. The Italian officer was Colonel Count Caccialupi, or Chase-the-Wolves. He came from General Cadorna to demand, in the name of the King of Italy, the surrender of the city. On behalf of his Holiness, General Kanzler at once gave his reply. The place was to be defended. General Bixio on that day closed in upon Civitá Vecchia.
Meanwhile, Count Arnim, in the hope of averting bloodshed, plied between the city and the Italian camp. The Pope, however, was resolved upon resistance. He did, indeed, give orders that it should be continued only so long as to compel the Italians to open a breach, in order, as he said, to attest the fact that his capital fell by violence. That end, we might have thought, would have been equally well answered, without bloodshed, by surrendering after the first gun. The forces of the Pope numbered eight thousand, and those of Cadorna fifty thousand. Rapidly as the temporal power and the Second Empire were both rushing downhill, it appeared as if they were constantly to keep step. So did it fall out that on that very September 19, when the Prussians, defeating Vinoy, closed round Paris, Cadorna, coming up from the north, sat down before gates of Rome. His lines stretched from the Salara Gate to the Gate of San Giovanni, thus enclosing that cemetery of St. Lorenzo, where stood the monument to the Crusaders, with so many foreign and so few Italian names. Coming up from the south, General Angiolotti stretched from the Gate of St. Giovanni to that of St. Sebastiano. Early the next morning Bixio, coming up from Civitá Vecchia, which he had captured, took post before the Gate of San Pancrazio, remembered for the contest between Garibaldi and the French.