Accession of Pius IX.—The amnesty—His unbounded popularity—His
reforms and concessions—Disasters entailed by the French
Revolution—The encyclical of the 29th April—Revulsion
of feeling—The Mazzinians gain ground—Austrian
intrigues—Assassination of Count Rossi—The Pope's flight to
Gaeta—Efforts of the Constitutionalists to bring about an
accommodation—The republic is proclaimed in Rome—Excesses
in Ancona and Senigallia—Moderation of the Bolognese—Their
courageous resistance to General Wimpffen—Siege of
Ancona—Extreme severities of the victors.
The amnesty to all political offenders with which, in July, 1846, Pius
IX. inaugurated his reign, spread joy and gratitude throughout the
pontifical dominions. Thousands of families received back their loved
ones from exile or captivity, and the country awoke from the lethargy
of despair. This act of grace, it was argued, would be followed by acts
of justice;—nor did the Pope's career for nearly two years belie this
conclusion. He collected around him the most enlightened men, lay as
well as ecclesiastic, of the country, and in spite of the ill-humour of
Austria, who did not scruple to express her disapproval of the course
on which he had entered, proceeded steadily with his ameliorations.
Men spoke little in those times but of what the Pope was doing, or
purposed to do. Unlike his predecessor, who shrunk from any discussion
on public affairs, Pius invited all who had any grievances to report,
or plans of improvement to propose, to come freely to his presence.
He removed the most irksome restraints from the Jewish population;
lent a favourable ear to projects of railroads and other scientific
and industrial enterprises, as well as to the diffusion of instruction
among the lower classes; and permitted the establishment at Rome of a
political journal, the first known in Italy. The provincial councils,
ineffectually recommended in the Memorandum of 1831, were organized;
and the Supreme _Consulta_ selected from their members was convoked.
Finally, on the 8th of March, 1848, constrained by the example of the
other Italian sovereigns, who themselves had yielded to the impetus of
the French revolution of February, he granted a Constitution.
The proclamation of the Republic at Paris was a dire misfortune for the
Italians. It precipitated events for which they were not yet prepared,
and exposed a people still giddy with their sudden emancipation from
a system of degrading oppression and restraint, to the contagion of
the most levelling and socialistic doctrines. Their recently acquired
privileges of discussion and inquiry were grossly abused, and many and
grievous errors committed, which they themselves are now the first to
acknowledge. But it is only fair to remember that the Pope took the
first step in sundering the bonds which had hitherto bound the people
of Italy so ardently to him. The famous encyclical of the 29th April,
in which he publicly disavowed the Italian war of liberation against
Austria, then waging on the plains of Lombardy,—notwithstanding that,
only one month before, he had given unequivocal proofs of his sympathy
for the national cause, and had blessed the volunteers on their
departure from Rome,—for ever destroyed his prestige in Italy. Most
disastrous in its immediate consequences to the success of the Italian
arms, the results to the papacy, though more remote, were still more
irremediable.
The revulsion of feeling all over the Peninsula was terrible; but
nowhere more bitter or hostile than in the States of the Church, where
this declaration was received as a formal retractation of the liberal
policy which had won Pius his popularity.
The war he now branded as UNJUST AND HURTFUL, had been preached in
his own dominions, with his full knowledge and consent, as a new
crusade; his condemnation of it stamped him as Austria's vassal. The
acts and deeds which had been a steady protest against the principles
and the supremacy of the Cabinet of Vienna were at once and for ever
annulled. His conscience had taken alarm: he remembered that above his
obligations as an Italian king were those of Universal Bishop, and the
conflicting principles of the temporal and spiritual attributes of the
Papacy were brought into open antagonism.
From the encyclical may be dated the beginning of the end. The
warnings, the threatenings, so long bravely resisted, all appeared
suddenly to take effect. As if aroused to the conviction that the
innovations he had sanctioned clashed with the independence of the
Church, his mind now bent itself solely to repair the evil into which
he had been led by the sympathies and weakness of the man usurping
the higher duties of the priest. The Constitution especially clashed
with the hierarchical polity; and hence the summer of 1848 was passed
in unseemly contentions between the Pope and his lay-ministers,
zealous on their side to maintain inviolate the power and attributes
of the Chambers. These dissensions were no secret in the country,
and unhappily opened a door to Mazzini, the chief of the republican
party in Italy, and his adherents, who previously, in the enthusiastic
confidence inspired by Pius IX., had found no hearing. Side by side
with these revolutionists were agents of the Austrian police, and the
reactionary party, seeking, under the disguise of the most fanatical
democracy, to urge the population into excesses which should speedily
justify an Austrian intervention. “We can all remember,” writes
Massimo d'Azeglio to the inhabitants of the Legations, cautioning them
against being this time the dupes of similar intrigues, “we can all
remember, in 1848-9, certain journalists and street orators, who were
only too successful in dragging the most ignorant and inflammable of
the population into extravagant lengths; and whom afterwards, on the
return of the Austrian army, we saw impudently walking about arm-in-arm
with the officers, and sneering in the face of those they had led into
error.”[13]
Still the catastrophe would not have been so immediate, but for the
total defeat of the Sardinian army in Lombardy, in the month of August.
The misfortunes of Charles Albert extended their influence to the
furthest parts of the Peninsula. The Constitutionalists lost heart; the
Republicans grew more overbearing. In the Roman States the dagger of an
assassin took the life of the only man who yet stood between the Pope
and the Revolution.
The prime minister, Count Rossi, was murdered in open daylight as he
was entering the Capitol, where the parliament held its sittings. The
upper and middle classes were paralyzed by this calamity; and the Roman
populace, headed by a handful of furious demagogues, were suffered
to assail the Pope in his own palace, and forced him to sanction the
nomination of a democratic ministry.
What followed is well known. Indignant at this coercion, Pius fled from
his capital, but unhappily, instead of accepting either of the asylums
offered by France and Spain, he was induced to claim the protection
of the King of Naples, which was tantamount to throwing himself into
the hands of Austria. From the moment he became the guest of the
unrelenting Ferdinand, his policy bore the impress of the influences
surrounding him.
Great as had been the errors and ingratitude of the Romans, they did
not abandon themselves to anarchy and licence. Count Terenzio Mamiani,
recognised as the leader of the Constitutionalists, and all the local
authorities, were strenuous in their efforts to avert the crisis which
was equally desired by the two extreme parties. The Sardinian cabinet
also laboured to save the constitution, and bring back the Pope to
Rome, without having recourse to foreign Powers. It was not till the
8th of February, 1849, nearly three months after his departure, that
the Republic was proclaimed—not till after the Pontiff had rejected
every overture for an accommodation.
The scenes of bloodshed and excess ascribed to Rome at this time are
almost entirely without foundation. Seven priests fell victims to
popular fury on the discovery of some reactionary plot of which, they
were the promoters; but beyond this crime, there is nothing to lay to
the charge of a population to whom murder is more familiar than to any
other in Christendom. On the contrary, fewer _vendette_, assassinations
from personal motives, and fewer robberies, took place that winter in
the Eternal City than in previous years.
But this moderation was not followed in Ancona, which has acquired
a fatal notoriety from the atrocities perpetrated by its “Infernal
Association” in the name of liberty and the people. In a previous
chapter, I have related the fear and prostration occasioned by this
secret tribunal. The gross culpability of Mazzini, when Chief Triumvir
at Rome, in not immediately commanding the arrest of the assassins,—the
inexplicable supineness of Mattioli, the governor or _Preside_—have
left an indelible stain on the short-lived republic. The pusillanimity
of the Anconitans in submitting to this reign of terror has also not
contributed to raise them in the estimation of Europe. It was too
evident they had degenerated since the days of Barbarossa.
The only other city in which these crimes were at all emulated was
Senigallia, the birthplace of the Pope, about twenty miles distant
from Ancona. Several members of the Mastai family were threatened,
and had to escape for their lives; and in a population of eleven or
twelve thousand, upwards of twenty persons, marked out for vengeance,
were either killed or wounded by the self-styled patriots. _Amongst
the assassins, both here and in Ancona, were men zealous as Sanfedisti
under Gregory._ A band of the vilest rabble were about to commence
similar proceedings at Imola, a town between Bologna and Ravenna, when
they were summarily dealt with by Count Laderchi, the Preside. He did
at once what Mattioli only did after months; or rather what it required
a Commissioner from Rome to compel him to do at all. He collected the
national guard by night, surrounded the haunts of the assassins, and
arrested every one on whom a suspicion rested.
Bologna throughout these agitated times held a firm yet temperate
attitude. The long continuance of their free institutions—for their
distinct autonomy was respected till the end of the eighteenth
century—had given this people a resoluteness of purpose, and
intellectual development, not shared by their brethren in the more
southern provinces, whom they had long ago nick-named the “Somari of
the Marche.”[14] The city, which contained 75,000 inhabitants, ranked
next in importance to Rome, and had long been celebrated for its
university, the fame of which in the Middle Ages attracted students
from all parts of Europe;[15] and its schools of painting and music.
But since the Restoration it had participated in the general decline.
Political restrictions and religious bigotry scared away the votaries
of science and art.
In August, 1848, before any disturbances had taken place in Rome,
an unjustifiable attempt of the Austrian general, Welden, to
possess himself of Bologna, was repulsed with great bravery by the
inhabitants, and the invading force compelled to recross the Po.
This outrage on the rights of nations having been protested against
by the Pope's ministers, Austria was obliged to wait for her revenge
until officially summoned to invade the Legations. The long-desired
moment, brought about by the madness of the Republicans, the weakness
of the Constitutionalists, and the far-spreading intrigues of the
Austro-Jesuits, came at last. In the spring of 1849, the Pontiff
formally invoked the armed intervention of the Catholic Powers. France
undertook to reinstate him in Rome; Austria was to deal with Romagna
and the Marche.
Even the most sanguine might now be permitted to despair. Charles
Albert, the champion of Italy, who had ventured upon a second appeal
to arms, had just sustained a second overthrow. The bloody field of
Novara seemed destined to be the grave of national liberty. General
Wimpffen, at the head of 15,000 men, in all the flush and exultation
of victory, advanced against Bologna. The town had no fortifications,
and the inhabitants were without leaders, regular troops, or artillery.
Nevertheless, they refused to open their gates to the Austrians, and
resisted gallantly for ten days. No further opposition was encountered
by the enemy till they reached Ancona.
Here a few undisciplined troops and volunteers had been got together,
and the citadel put into a posture of defence. A short time before
this, the assassins had all been placed in confinement; and the
inhabitants, relieved from the palsying terror with which they had
been oppressed, gave many redeeming proofs of courage and endurance
during the four weeks of the siege. Unwilling to restore only a heap
of ruins to the Pope, the Austrians were sparing of their fire, and
contented themselves with harassing the citadel, while their ships of
war intercepted all supplies or reinforcements from entering the port.
At intervals, however, they would try the effect of more vigorous
measures; and four or five bombardments of several hours, one of a
whole night's duration, put the constancy of the Anconitans to the
test. Numbers of houses were struck, much damage to property inflicted,
many lives lost, but none shrank from danger. Even ladies of the
nobility went forth amidst falling shot and shells to continue their
ministrations to the wounded in the hospitals.
The defence of Ancona was rather a protest of the citizens against
the forcible restoration of the Pontifical Government, than the
death-struggle of the republic. Gambeccari, the commander of the
garrison, and the Preside, Mattioli, passed their time in a bomb-proof
vault of the Civic Palace, playing cards, satisfied with the knowledge
that when the town thought fit to capitulate, an English man-of-war was
waiting in the roads to carry them in safety to Corfu.[16]
The reconquered provinces were brought to a heavy reckoning. I have
already quoted some instances of the severity with which martial
law was enforced in Ancona. In Bologna, the executions for trifling
infractions of this Draconian code amounted to fifteen. The retention
of a rusty fowling-piece, a broken bayonet, or even the simple
possession of a few ounces of powder and shot, was there punished
with death. As in Ancona, so also in the Romagne, the disarmament
was so rigidly enforced, that landed proprietors were not allowed to
retain the fire-arms necessary for the defence of their country-houses
against brigands. The arms thus sequestrated in the Marche were laid
up in the fortress of Ancona, with a promise of restitution. But
some years afterwards the greater part were broken up and sold as old
iron; the Austrian officers, meantime, having made use of the best in
their shooting excursions. The communes were saddled with the large
expenses always incidental upon a military occupation like the present;
in addition to which they were required to provide new barracks,
riding-schools, and similar establishments for their unwelcome guests
at Bologna, and to defray the cost of additional fortifications at
Ancona.
These restraints and grievances, as well as the domineering insolence
of the Austrian authorities, were looked upon by the Papal Court as a
part only of the chastisement of its rebellious children. The remainder
it took upon itself to inflict.