ROME AND THE REVOLUTION.
In June, 1846, the death of Gregory the Sixteenth, and the election of
Cardinal Mastai and his elevation to the Papacy, under the name of Pius
the Ninth, summoned us to Rome, the Eternal city. I felt a momentary
grief, as I saw the mouldering ruins of pagan Rome, the ancient capital
of Gentilism, and felt indignation at beholding the diminutive Rome that
had supplanted it; but I felt sure that the old gods lingered still in
those ruins of the Capitoline and Palatine hills, and that the time was
drawing near when we might evoke Jupiter Tonans and the fiery Mars, and
the Goddess of Victory, from their slumber of centuries; revive the old
Roman spirit, and reëstablish the old Republic, so long triumphed over
by the barbarism of the cross. Never before had I felt how thoroughly
alienated from the Christian world, and assimilated in my feelings to
the old Gentile world I had become. I was in the capital of the
Christian world, the centre of Christian art, and of the most glorious
Christian associations for two thousand years, and my heart was touched
only at sight of the monuments of pagan antiquity, which time and the
still more destructive hand of man had spared.
But we had no leisure for sight-seeing, and still less for
sentimentalizing over the ruins of that stupendous superstition of which
Rome was the capital, and which had gradually supplanted the patriarchal
Christianity, only slightly corrupted, of the primitive Romans. The
superficial politicians, Catholic and non-Catholic, regard the Papacy as
comparatively of little political or social significancy in our times;
but whoever looks a little below the surface of things, knows very well
that the Pope, though weak as to his temporal states, is not only the
oldest but the most influential sovereign in Europe. The death of one
Pope and the accession of another, is an event which reverberates
through the whole civilized world; and the policy of the sovereign
pontiff, the feeble old man of the Vatican, with hardly a regiment of
guards, has not seldom the preponderating weight in the councils of
princes, although unseen, unrecognized—so much the more inexplicable, as
there no longer remains a truly Catholic government on the globe, and
not a Catholic nation in whose heart lives and breathes the old Catholic
faith. Not a nation in Europe would, to-day, for the sake of religion
alone, rush to the assistance of the Pope; yet the Papacy is everywhere,
and not a court in Europe but trembles when it thinks of the Pope, even
weak and unsupported as he is.
All the Liberals throughout the world held a jubilee as soon as they
heard of the death of the old Pope, who had, no one could tell how, held
them in check. The whole world seemed to have been suddenly relieved of
an invisible burden, and bounded with a wild and frantic joy. The good
time that had been a-coming, now could come. This joy grew wilder and
more frantic still, when it was known that Cardinal Mastai was the new
Pope. He was known to be gentle and humane, kind-hearted and pious, and
suspected of leaning to liberal views, and of being a Giobertian; and
nobody doubted that he would attempt a policy the reverse of Gregory’s.
We, who were in the secret, knew that he was not the choice of Austria,
and had no doubt that he would incline to France, and follow, to no
inconsiderable extent, the advice of Count Rossi, the French Ambassador,
and one of our friends.
At that time Guizot was at the head of the government of France under
Louis Philippe, a Protestant and a quasi-conservative statesman, but
with many sympathies with the European Liberals. He believed, or
professed to believe, that a change in the institutions of the
monarchical states in Europe, giving the people a moderate share in the
government, was demanded by the exigencies of European society, and if
freely offered by authority, and not given as a concession to the people
in arms to effect it, would be a wise and beneficial public measure, and
in an eminent degree politic too, as it would tend to extract the point
from the declamations of the radicals, and prevent, or at least
indefinitely postpone, the revolution with which all Western and Central
Europe was threatened. He had urged this policy upon Prussia, perhaps
upon Austria, certainly upon the smaller German states which had not yet
adopted the constitutional _régime_, and upon the Pope and the other
Italian princes.
We were perfectly well aware of Guizot’s policy, and knew equally well
how to turn it to our account. Your _doctrinaire_, _juste-milieu_, or
_via-media_ statesmen, who follow expediency, and govern without
principle, are generally regarded as wise, prudent, and eminently
practical, but they are among the shortest-sighted mortals to be
encountered, and are as miserable humbugs as the Genevan banker, M.
Necker, who could never understand that government was any thing more
than a question of finance, or its administration any thing more than
the administration of a joint-stock bank. When there is no serious
discontent on the part of subjects, and not the least danger of
revolution or insurrection, authority may modify without danger,
immediate danger at least, the constitution, in favor of popular power,
as the English government did in 1832; but when there is grave
discontent, with or without just cause, and a secret conspiracy is
forming in behalf of liberal or popular institutions, nothing is less
wise or statesmanlike than for authority to make popular concessions
with a view of forestalling and disarming it. The disaffected attribute
such concessions solely to the weakness and fears of the government, and
only rise in their demands, and conspire with the more energy and
courage.
The government, in times of general discontent, as was the case in
Europe from 1839 to 1848, should either concede all and abdicate itself,
or concede nothing, because, if it is to defend itself it needs all its
prerogatives and the concentration of all its powers. The advice of
Guizot was fitted only to weaken the powers that entertained it, and to
render them, in the hour of trial, timid and undecided; and it is only
where authority is timid, hesitating, and undecided, that a popular
revolution can ever succeed. The only wise and even merciful way in such
times is, to make, on the first outbreak, a free use of grapeshot and
the bayonet. There will be no second outbreak, however powerful or well
concerted the conspiracy may have been. Napoleon understood this, and
his nephew understands it, also, tolerably well. No man understands it
better than Nicholas, Autocrat of all the Russias, although his single
unarmed presence is ordinarily all that is necessary to quell an
insurrection in his capital.
There is no doubt that Pius the Ninth, during the first days of his
pontificate, followed, in temporal matters, the advice of the French
government, which, as far as I have been able to learn, never, since
Philip the Fair, has been guilty of giving the Pontiff advice not to his
own hurt. France advised the fatal amnesty and some sort of
quasi-popular institutions. The former was granted, the latter were
promised, and the world was made to believe that for once it had a
liberal Pope. There was nothing heard but _Evviva Pio Nono!_ throughout
Rome, Italy, France, England, and the United States. Radicals, Infidels,
Protestants, and even the Grand Turk, united in one grand chorus of loud
and prolonged exultation. It seemed, to those who saw only the external
manifestation, that all hostility to the Papacy had ceased, and that all
the world were on the eve of becoming Papists. Rome became one perpetual
festival. Songs, hymns, processions, benedictions, speeches, addresses,
congratulations, became the regular order of the day. Multitudes of
Catholics, honest, simple souls, really felt that the day of heresy and
schism, of conflict and trial, for the Church, was over. Some shrewd old
cardinals at Rome took their pinch of snuff, shrugged their shoulders,
and retired to their palaces. We, who knew what agencies were at work,
laughed in our sleeve, and, with all the chiefs of the liberal party,
called upon all the powers which we had prepared, visible and invisible,
to aid in increasing the general intoxication, not doubting but the
Papacy was at its last gasp. For we felt sure that if, by flattery, by
enthusiasm, by loud, long, and reiterated shouts of _Evviva Pio Nono!_
we could get the Pope fairly to enter the path of reform, or what was,
we supposed, the same thing for us, make the Catholic world believe he
had entered it, it was all over with the Papacy, therefore with
Christianity, law, and social order.
No doubt some of the enthusiasm manifested was real, but a great deal of
it was feigned, for the precise purpose of imposing upon the public. We
were not ourselves for a moment deceived. We felt sure that Mastai was a
genuine Pope, that he could hardly be deceived by the demonstrations
which must have been painful to him; which, in fact, gave him no rest,
and which, under pretence of unbounded devotion to him, were becoming
unmanageable, secretly undermining his throne, and growing into a real
conspiracy against his freedom of action. We knew well there must come a
point beyond which he could make no further concession, and our plan was
to get the Catholic populations of Europe so committed to the cause we
pretended he favored, that when that point was reached, we could turn
the popular enthusiasm against him, and he find himself disarmed and
powerless to resist it. In this it is well known that we fully
succeeded.
We should not have gone so far, and succeeded so rapidly, perhaps, had
we not been aided by English politics. Lord John Russell and Lord
Palmerston did not disappoint my expectations. At the time of our visit
to Rome, the government of Louis Philippe was in the zenith of its
glory. The wily monarch seemed to have fully confirmed his throne, and
his prime minister was successful in urging upon a large number of
princes constitutional reforms, and it seemed likely, for a moment, that
the revolutionary party would spend its fury harmlessly under the lead
of the sovereigns themselves. But he deeply offended England by the
Spanish match, the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier with an Infanta of
Spain. By this marriage, he seemed to have completed his circle of
alliances, and to have made himself too powerful for English politics,
and was rendering himself still more so by the constitutional reforms he
was urging upon German and Italian princes. It was necessary to thwart
him, and put an end to his illegitimate reign. Lord Minto was
despatched, and other agents instructed to confer with the chiefs of the
revolutionary party in Italy, and also in France, and encourage them to
insist on reforms effected by the people from below, and to refuse to be
satisfied with reforms effected from above by the princes. These chiefs
were assured of the sympathy, perhaps they were promised the assistance,
of the English government, which makes it a point to support a
revolutionary party in every foreign state.
In the mean time, all the batteries we had erected were opened. Exeter
Hall, and the Protestant Alliance were in full operation, and I thought
it quite certain that a force was accumulated and brought to bear on the
Rock of Peter that would shiver it into ten thousand atoms. Our presence
was no longer necessary at Rome, and after Easter of 1847, we went to
Paris, to fire a train in that city of combustibles. We were not needed
there, for having had interviews with the chiefs of the revolutionary
party in Geneva, we had already prepared them. They had more than
profited by our instructions; they had even improved on them, and stood
in closer relation to the Unknown Force than we did ourselves. All we
could do to aid on the revolution which broke out the following
February, was to persuade some of the leading Liberals to introduce the
“peaceful agitation,” reduced to so perfect a system by O’Connell in
Ireland, which was done in what were called the “Reform Banquets.”
All France at that moment was, in some sense, revolutionary. Guizot, at
the head of the government, was a reformer, as I have shown, but only on
condition that authority took the initiative. But, to admit the
necessity or propriety of any reforms or changes was a tacit concession
altogether to the prejudice of the existing order. After Guizot and his
party, came the dynastique reformers, such as Thiers and Odillon-Barrot,
who wished the Orleans family to possess the throne, but to deprive the
throne of all effective power, and to establish a parliamentary
despotism. The watchword of these at that moment was, the extension of
the electoral franchise. There were at that time, out of a population of
thirty-six millions, only about two hundred thousand electors. After the
dynastique reformers, came the Catholic party, led on by the noble,
learned, eloquent, and singularly pure-minded Montalembert, a man of
principle, of faith and conscience, with whom religion was a living and
all-pervading principle. This party consulted, first of all, the freedom
and independence of the church, and was comparatively indifferent to the
dynastique question. Its drapeau was neither that of Henri Cinque nor
that of the House of Orleans, but religion and social order. The
watchword at that time was, Freedom of Education, denied by the monopoly
secured to the University, which educated in a pantheistic, Voltarian,
or an irreligious sense. As the government sustained the University, and
denied freedom of Education guarantied by the constitution, they opposed
the government.
Behind these came the Legitimists, the adherents of the elder branch of
the Bourbons, filled with old Gallican reminiscences, and whose
watchword was Henri Cinque. They were opposed to the existing
government, ready to take active measures to overthrow it, and were
ready to support the church, in so far as she demanded nothing for
herself, and would lend all her resources to uphold and decorate the
throne. They were a set of superannuated old gentlemen, with polished
manners and courtly address, decorated with some very respectable
prejudices, but wholly ignorant of their times, and incapable of
learning. They were a clog on the Catholic party, and were chiefly
answerable for the reëstablishment of the Bonapartists and the present
Napoleonic Cæsarism in their beautiful country. However, they were
opposed to Louis Philippe, and ready to effect a change.
After the Legitimists, who were royalists and opposed to the existing
government, came the Republicans, moderate and immoderate; the moderates
having for their organ _Le National_, the immoderates _La Réforme_.
These, however, were all opposed to monarchy, whether in the elder or
younger branch of the Bourbons, and wished the _république_,—some, as
Lamartine, Arago, with the Girondins, those phrase-mongers of the old
revolution, the république of the respectables, of the Bourgeoisie,
attorneys, professors, and hommes de lettres; others, such as
Ledru-Rollin, and the Montagnards, a république démocratique, une et
indivisible, with Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, Danton, and Marat;
while others still, too numerous to mention, wished, with Barbeuf, La
République démocratique et sociale; and not a few wished no government,
no political or social order at all. These were the Subterraneans,
reformers after our own hearts, and on whom we chiefly operated, and
through whom we brought the odic force to bear on the revolutionary
movement.
Aside from all these, but ready to coöperate, for the moment, with any
or all of them, as would best serve their purposes, were the
Imperialists, the Bonapartists. After the fall of Napoleon, and the
Restoration of the Bourbons, the Bonapartists had affected liberal, I
may say, democratic ideas, and had lent their powerful influence
throughout Europe to democratize the public mind; and at the time of
which I speak, the chief of the family was very nearly an avowed
socialist, and was hand-and-glove with the Subterraneans. They knew well
that they could be healed only when the waters should be troubled; and,
whether they were troubled by an angel of light or an angel of darkness,
was a matter of perfect indifference, unless, indeed, they had more
confidence in the latter than in the former.
Add to these parties the intrigues of England, who could not forgive the
Spanish match, that crowning act of the Philippine policy, also the
illusions we were able to keep up as to the views and intentions of Pius
the Ninth, and it required no messenger from another world to announce
that France was on the eve of a tremendous convulsion; that the days of
the King of the Barricades were numbered; and that, whatever might be
the afterclap, the reigning dynasty must fall, with a crash that would
be reverberated throughout all Europe. The only care of our party was to
push forward in front the more moderate reformers, more especially the
dynastique reformers, while we organized a Subterranean force that would
drive them, in the moment of their success, beyond the point at which
they aimed, and compel them to accept the République, which, if
proclaimed at Paris, we felt certain that we could, during the panic
which would succeed, fasten upon the nation.
The history of the events that followed is well known, and need not be
repeated. The old king, in the moment of peril, proved that he was a
true Bourbon, incapable of a wise decision or an energetic act. All at
once he had a horror of bloodshed, sacrificed his ministry, called to
his council Thiers, Odillon-Barrot, and other dynastiques, who, vainly
imagining that their bare names would allay the storm which they still
more vainly imagined that they had conjured up, ordered the troops back
to their barracks, and gave up the king and his dynasty to the armed and
infuriated mob. The king abdicated; the Regency, under the Duchess of
Orleans, was scouted; the royal family scampered for their lives towards
England, that _refugium peccatorum_; monarchy was abolished; the
République was proclaimed; a provisional government was organized
impromptu, and a convention of delegates, to be chosen by universal
suffrage, was ordered to meet and give France a regular political
organization.
But a few days elapsed before the movement in Paris was followed by
insurrections in Berlin, Vienna, and a large number of the smaller
German states. The Italian peninsula was all in a blaze; democracy was
in the ascendant in all Europe, except Russia, Spain, Belgium, and
Holland. Hungary demanded independence of Austria; the Slavic
populations of the Austrian Empire at Prague and Agram were preparing to
join in a panslavic movement; Pius the Ninth was deprived of all freedom
of action, and held virtually imprisoned; Naples and Sicily were in full
revolt, and the king ready to concede every thing, and, Bourbon-like
thwarting every effort of his loyal subjects to protect him; Charles
Albert declared himself the sword of the Holy See; the Lombardo-Venetian
kingdom rejected Austrian supremacy, and chose him for king. He marched
at the head of his troops, swelled by contingents from all Italy, to
drive the barbarians back over the mountains, and to clear the peninsula
of every vestige of foreign dominion.
We were elated; we felt that success was sure, and that our grand
philanthropic World-Reform was on the point of being completely
realized. But alas! _homo proponit, Deus disponit_. The spirits had
deceived us. Pius the Ninth displayed a passive courage that we had not
counted on, and nothing could induce him to sanction the war against
Austria; and in spite of all we could do, it finally leaked out, that he
had not sanctioned it, and that the revolutionists had belied him, and
entirely misrepresented his principles, conduct, and wishes. Old
Radetzky, after retreating before Charles Albert till he had obtained
reënforcements, turned upon his pursuer, defeated him, and drove him,
with shame and loss, out of Lombardy. Prince Windishgrätz beat the
rebels in Prague; the lazzaroni flogged the republican heroes in Naples,
and the people seized the throne, in spite of its weak and pusillanimous
occupant. In fine, Cavaignac, after four days of hard fighting,
prostrated the Subterraneans of Paris, and became Dictator of the
Republic. We were no longer in the years of grace ’91, ’92, or ’93. The
age was not as far gone in unbelief as we had reckoned, and the friends
of religion and society were more numerous and more energetic than we
had believed.
Our hopes were damped, but not extinguished. We had thus far used the
Pope, but we could use him no longer, and we must get rid of him, and
completely secularize the Roman government. We had used the Italian
princes; we must now reject them, and abandon Gioberti for Mazzini. We
succeeded in wresting the government entirely from the Pope, but he
himself escaped us, and fled to Gaëta, which was a serious injury to our
cause. The Pope in exile is more powerful than in the Vatican. We meant
to have confined him in his palace, and held him as a puppet in our
hands, and still for a time continued the use of his name; but in this
his flight defeated us. We were obliged to proclaim the Roman Republic,
and the temporal deposition of the Pope, prematurely; but still we
hoped, as we took care not to touch his person or his spiritual
prerogatives, that we should not lose the sympathy of the Catholic
public.
But it was all in vain. Our magic failed us; a more powerful magician
than we intervened, and everywhere the reaction gained ground against
us. Austria, whom we thought we had disposed of, rose Antæus-like from
the ground; the Giobertians, predominant in the Subalpine kingdom, would
not own us. Florence was deserting us; Venice held out, indeed, but
Lombardy was chained by old Radetzky. Great Britain wished us well, gave
us good advice, but came not to our aid; and Spain and Portugal, that we
thought dead, suddenly started into life against us. Russia, though she
loved not the Papacy, detested us, and was ready to interpose to bring
Prussia to her senses, and to assist Austria. And last of all, the
French Republic, which we had been the principal agents in creating,
fearing the preponderance of Austria, and anxious to have an outpost in
the Eternal City, sent her troops against us.
It was in vain to struggle. I saw clearly that the battle was against
us, and that we should never succeed, by political and social
revolutions, in effecting our purpose; and I made up my mind at once to
have nothing more to do with them. I resolved to return home, and fall
back on what I have hinted as an ulterior project. It was in the Autumn
of 1849. The abortive attempt to reorganize the German Empire had
failed, and not to our regret, since we saw, if reorganized at all, it
would not be on democratic principles; the authority of St. Peter was
reëstablished at Rome; the Magyars were forever prostrated in Hungary,
and our friend Kossuth had taken refuge with his friends the Mussulmans,
and France was becoming an orderly government under the Presidency of
Louis Napoleon and the conservative majority of the Legislative
Assembly. There was nothing more that we could do.
It is true, that many of our friends thought differently from me, and
wished to continue the struggle; but I told them that, if they did, they
must do so without my active coöperation; that I should leave them to
their simple human strength, and they would find all their plans
miscarry. The time is not opportune. Christianity has yet a stronger
hold on the European populations than you or I had calculated, and the
Christian party can no longer be duped and made to fight for us. They
thrill with horror now to hear us say, “Christianity is democracy, and
Jesus Christ was the first democrat.” They are beginning to see, as
clearly as we do, that all this is at best absurd, and that our movement
is essentially anti-Christian. They see, they admit, they deplore a
certain number of political and social abuses; but they believe these
abuses more tolerable than the reforms we would effect.
We have given the bishops, the clergy, and the pious laity a horrid
fright; and you will see them, almost to a man, before three years
expire, exultingly consenting to the reëstablishment of pure Cæsarism,
in order to be relieved of their fears of us. Louis Napoleon will
succeed in making himself, almost with the unanimous voice of France,
proclaimed Emperor, with absolute, or virtually absolute power, with no
effective check on his arbitrary will; parliamentary government will be
scouted, as hardly a step removed from Subterranean democracy; free
discussion of public affairs will be closed; the press will be muzzled,
and no voice will be heard throughout the empire, save a voice in praise
or flattery of the new Emperor.
But herein is our consolation and our hope for the future. The new
Emperor will have to deal with Frenchmen; and he counts without his
host, if he thinks he can, for any great length of time, silence
thirty-six millions of French voices, or make them all speak one way.
Mortal man cannot do it. Satan himself could not do it; and only One,
whom we name not here, could do it. Now they are afraid of us, and have
had even an excess of talk. They will consent for a time, even as a
novelty, to be silent, or shout, as an admirable change, _Vive l’
Empereur_, instead of _Vive la République démocratique et sociale_,—_à
bas les Démocrates_, instead of _à bas l’ Aristocrates_, or _l’
Aristocrates à la lantern_, and _à bas les socialistes_, instead of _à
bas les Rois_. But rely upon it, that after a brief repose, these same
Frenchmen will be desirous of _mouvement_, and will by no means be
pleased to find themselves doomed to the silence and stillness of death.
Then will be our time once more, and perhaps then we may be more
successful. Till then I engage no more in political and social reforms.
I shall take myself to that which underlies all political and social
ideas, and slowly, perhaps, but surely, prepare a glorious future. You
will hear from me again, or if not, you will feel the influence of what
I shall do.
With remarks like these, I took my leave of my European revolutionary
friends. I communicated to Priscilla, who had faithfully served me
throughout the time I had been abroad, and powerfully contributed to
such successes as we had had, my design of returning home. We were in
Paris. She would, perhaps, have rather returned to Rome. She had, in
fact, began to droop, and to be weary of the part I had forced her to
play. She had, during our stay in Rome, become a mother, and new
feelings and affections had been awakened in her heart. Her husband had
treated her kindly, forbearingly, but he had much changed, and no longer
favored philanthropy or reform, and it was rumored that he had become
devout. Priscilla evidently began to turn to him with something
approaching the love and esteem she owed him, and would gladly have
broken her _liaison_ with me. But I would not hear of it; she must
return with me.