The Pope Who Would Be King, page 13
For centuries, in order to survive, Rome’s Jews had groveled before popes, praising the great goodness and generosity of even the most repressive pontiffs, for this was their only way to gain any relief. But the Jews did feel genuine appreciation for what Pius had done for them. He had allowed some to live and work outside the ghetto’s cramped quarters. He had put an end to the centuries-old humiliating public spectacle of vassalage requiring the officers of Rome’s Jewish community on the first Saturday of Carnival to pay an annual tribute to the Senator of Rome as a large, raucous crowd jeered and mocked them. He had granted permission to Jews who otherwise met the criteria to become members of the Civic Guard, and he had allowed the ghetto gates to be torn down, a symbolically weighty step even if few of the Jews had left the ghetto. In August, the Chamber of Deputies voted to extend the Jews full civil, although not political, rights.30
Yet, following centuries of demonization of the Jews, popular attitudes were far from uniformly benevolent. In their weekly sermons, parish priests railed against them as Christ-killers and dangerous enemies of Christian society. The pope, some were now convinced, had himself become a dupe of the Jews. The people of Rome needed little encouragement to turn against them.
* * *
—
IN OCTOBER, TOO, a new popular uprising erupted in Vienna. On October 6 protesters tried to block imperial troops who were being sent to put down revolt in Hungary. The confrontation quickly devolved into open rebellion, and rebels killed Austria’s minister of war. The next day the imperial family fled to Olmütz, a town in Moravia that today is part of the Czech Republic. For Giuseppe Mazzini and his followers, the time to strike against the Austrians in northeastern Italy seemed to be at hand. In an open letter to the people of Lombardy and Veneto, prefaced with his watchwords, “In the Name of God and the People,” the prophet of Italian independence issued a call for national insurrection. Romans were excited as well, hoping that the Austrian government would fall and its empire unravel. They would soon be disappointed. By the end of the month, seventy thousand imperial troops had surrounded Vienna and crushed the revolt.31
In Rome, Rossi, facing a thousand obstacles, forged ahead. He initiated the construction of rail lines and telegraphs. He ordered clergymen to pay taxes and tried to clean up the corrupt civil service, which was largely composed of priests. Although despised by the upper clergy, Rossi was winning few friends among the liberals. His opposition to having the pope join the war against Austria, and his former role as French ambassador under the now deposed monarchy, provoked the hostility of both liberals and radicals. Nor did his ill-disguised sense of superiority and contempt for hypocrisy help him win allies. “The coldness of his smile, the irony of his glance, the disdain evident in his gestures,” observed one otherwise sympathetic chronicler of the time, “made him as many enemies as did the rapid rise in his political fortunes.”32
Rossi found himself in an impossible situation. Although accused of being a friend of the Austrians, he was not. He had left Italy nearly three decades earlier, he confided in a letter to a friend in September, because he did not want to live in a country where “Austrian bayonets reigned.” The job he had accepted at the pope’s urging, he confessed, was thankless, but how, he asked, could he refuse to help a pontiff in whose land he lived and “who has given me so many proofs of his confidence and his kindness?”
Rossi’s decision to accept the pope’s offer had also been rooted in his belief that he was indeed the only man who had the knowledge of the world, the judgment, and the insight needed to prevent disaster. The problems facing the Papal States could be solved, he thought, by enlightened administration, by eliminating corruption, and by a program of modernization. It would not be an easy task. The clergy, who stood to lose their special privileges, would oppose him, as would the radicals. Rossi, it seemed, believed that by the very force of his will, and his clear-sighted vision of the tasks to be done, he could somehow overcome all obstacles.33
Although Rossi was proving unpopular in many quarters, the pope was pleased with him, very pleased. At long last he had found a man capable of leading his government, a man of boundless self-confidence and vision, a man who understood public administration and finance and could steer the ship of state to safety. After enduring a government that continually pressed him to join the war for Italian independence, the pope felt great relief in having someone in charge who agreed that it was best to stay out. And in those parts of the Papal States where civil unrest was getting out of hand, as it was in the northern provinces, Rossi—in sharp contrast with his predecessor—did not hesitate to call on the army to restore order. In a mark of the unusual regard the pope had for his new minister, he invited Rossi to dine with him, a privilege almost unheard of for a layman.34
On November 4, the saint day for Carlo Borromeo, Pius, accompanied by cardinals and other church dignitaries, went in elaborate procession to the Roman church named in Borromeo’s honor. Jeers and whistles greeted Cardinal Soglia, the secretary of state. “Into the sewer!” people shouted at the red-robed cardinals as they rode by in their gilded carriages. A crowd of three or four hundred young men stood provocatively along the pope’s route on the Corso, their hats remaining firmly on their heads, cigars dangling provocatively from their mouths, ostentatiously blowing smoke as the pope passed. Pius, who had begun to raise his hand in benediction, lowered his arm and looked away.35
The next morning the pope called in his minister of arms, General Carlo Zucchi, appointed the previous month to try to instill some kind of discipline in the notoriously inept papal army. Zucchi was seventy-one years old, small, gaunt, and severe, and his best days were long behind him. Even for an abler man, the task would have been daunting. “I found the greatest disorder in the training, in discipline, and in the administration,” remarked Zucchi on observing his new charges. “No one knew who was in command. Each person did what he pleased, paying no attention to his commanding officer.”36
Having learned of new unrest in Bologna and Ferrara, Pius ordered Zucchi to go north. A few days later the report Zucchi sent back was not encouraging. Bologna was in a fearful state. Revolutionary passions ran high. The fiery sermons of a patriotic priest, Father Gavazzi, had stirred people into a frenzy. The pope responded with a request to have the monk arrested, but a bigger problem soon appeared. The notorious revolutionary leader Giuseppe Garibaldi and his large band of armed men had arrived at the Tuscan border of the Papal States, not far from Bologna. Fearing that they would further fan the flames of discontent, Rossi ordered the army to drive them back into Tuscany.37
Rossi alone stood between the pope and the abyss, but Rossi was ever more isolated. The cardinals had never liked the idea of having a layman in charge of the papal government, and Rossi’s efforts to rein in their privileges only increased their resentment. On the other side, many viewed Rossi as a heavy-handed autocrat and traitor to the cause of Italian independence. Rossi would give no ground. “If they want to destroy the pope’s authority,” he told the Bavarian ambassador one day in mid-November, “they’ll have to do it over my dead body.”38
On November 15, 1848—a day that would long be remembered—a large, restive crowd gathered in the piazza outside the Palace of the Chancellery, where Rossi was scheduled to address the Chamber of Deputies. Scattered groups of unarmed Civic Guardsmen took up their positions around the vast Renaissance palazzo that lay in the heart of the city. Some papal police units, under separate command, were also on hand. Ominously, many veterans of the papal legion that had recently been defeated by the Austrians also appeared, as did many of the city’s best-known radicals.
Rossi spent the morning at home. He’d been receiving death threats for the past several weeks, and rumor had it that radicals were planning to take advantage of his public appearance that day to act on them. Friends warned him, but he brushed them off. At noon Rossi said goodbye to his nervous wife and two sons and headed for the Quirinal Palace to see the pope before his speech.
“For Heaven’s sake, my dear count,” said Pius, “take care! Your enemies are many, and in their anger capable of the most infamous crimes!”
“Holiness,” replied Rossi, “they are too cowardly, I have no fear of them.”
As Rossi descended the Quirinal stairs on his way out, an unfamiliar priest rushed up and seized him by the arm. The cleric had tears in his eyes. Do not get into that carriage, the priest pleaded. “If you leave, you are dead!” Rossi pulled his arm free and continued down the stairs.
The carriage slowed to a crawl as it approached the Chancellery Palace and made its way through the crowd, passing through the gate into the courtyard. As Rossi, elegantly dressed in a black suit, stepped out, sixty legionnaires lined the path that led to the stairway. The men’s scruffy appearance and surly bearing were far from reassuring.1
From the crowd he could hear the boos and the ugly shouts: “Slit his throat! Slit his throat! Kill him!” Rossi did his best to maintain his dignity. As he passed through the legionnaires, those behind him turned to follow, so that he soon found himself surrounded. As he neared the stairway, a man suddenly emerged from the crowd and struck him on his left side. As he turned to see who had hit him, a short young man, beardless but with flowing mustache, rushed up on his right and sliced his neck with the long, sharp blade of a dagger. “It’s done! It’s done!” came the shouts, as the assassins melted back into the crowd. Rossi staggered forward, then collapsed, the blood that gushed from his neck forming a widening stain on the ground. He had but a few moments left to live.2
The deputies heard the commotion outside and soon learned the news. After long moments of alarm and uncertainty, they hurried out. A strange brew of fear, terror, and exhilaration swept the city. Rossi had been the government. Now that he was gone, a great void had opened up. A crowd somehow both festive and sinister soon gathered. Numbering in the hundreds, they began parading through the streets of Rome, stopping outside Rossi’s home, along the Corso, beneath the window of his widow and two sons. “Blessed is the hand who stabbed Rossi!” they chanted. Later, as others joined them, they waved tricolored Italian flags. Amid the poles they held aloft, one attracted special attention. From it hung not a flag but what appeared to be the assassin’s knife, covered with blood. “Blessed be the hand that stabbed the tyrant!” had by now turned from chant to song. The pope’s defenders were nowhere to be seen.3
The men at the Popular Club, headquartered in a building at the midway point of the Corso, rushed to fill the vacuum. In the wake of the pope’s allocution opposing the war with Austria, the recently formed club had become the epicenter of the movement for Italian independence, displacing the more moderate Roman Club. Many of its leaders came from other parts of the Papal States. The investigation into Rossi’s murder would later focus its attention on the club, thought to be the place where the assassination plot was hatched. Now it hummed with activity, as some members worked on a list of demands to present to the pope, insisting that men of their choosing be named to a new ministry, while others were out leading marches through the city’s streets.4
The death of Pellegrino Rossi
* * *
—
THE PARALYSIS OF THE public authorities was complete. An official of the Civic Guard rushed to request instructions from its head, the duke of Rignano. In the absence of General Zucchi, who was up north dealing with the unrest there, the duke was also in charge of the army. “Act prudently” was the only instruction the duke gave before racing home with his servants to gather his belongings and flee to safety in Naples. Pius dispatched a messenger to General Zucchi, ordering him to return immediately to Rome.5
That night the pope asked to see Marco Minghetti, the moderate deputy from Bologna. “I found him sad and pensive, but calm,” Minghetti recalled. “That mystical feeling that always dominated him, left him, even then, resigned to God’s will.” The pope spoke of the need to form a new government but did not explicitly ask Minghetti to head it. Minghetti advised the pope that a new ministry could survive only if it pronounced itself both liberal and committed to Italian independence. The pope asked him to return in the morning, when he expected to make a decision.6
Early the next day the leaders of both the Upper Chamber and the Chamber of Deputies received a request to meet with the pope at 8:45 that morning. “I finally found a man,” Pius told them, “who not only knew how to determine what the state needs…but also told me what the remedies were. And now they have murdered him!”
Monsignor Muzzarelli, president of the Upper Chamber, tried to calm the pontiff. The people, he explained, despised Rossi. His death might in the end make things easier.
Standing behind his desk, Pius was indignant. “What?” he asked. “A monsignor, dressed in this color, a man whom I placed as head of the Upper Chamber, comes in here to make excuses to me for such an assassination?”7
The chamber leaders tried to turn the discussion toward practical issues. The pope had two choices, they told him. He could try to repress his subjects by force, or he could name a new government head who enjoyed popular support. They advised against the first option. Aside from other considerations, they warned, the pope could not count on the loyalty of his soldiers, many of whom had joined the demonstrators the previous evening.
What about the Civic Guard? asked Pius. Unlike the papal soldiers, they all came from the better classes. Surely they would defend him.
They were no more likely to be of help, advised the Upper Chamber president.
Pius told them he was thinking of asking Marco Minghetti to form a new government. That, the council leaders replied, would not be a good idea. Minghetti was seen as a friend of Rossi and would not help win the people’s favor.
The Chamber of Deputies president then, unwisely, brought the conversation back to the assassination. Having the unpopular Rossi out of the way was not entirely a bad thing, he said, seconding the argument of his colleague of the Upper Chamber. At this, recalled one of the men at the meeting, “the pope became so overcome by emotion that the muscles in his face began to tremble horribly.” Recalling that the pope had suffered from epilepsy as a child, his visitors suggested they leave him time to think about what they had said. They would await his summons to return.
As they left the room, they found Minghetti waiting outside. He would never be called in.8
* * *
—
THE PREVIOUS NIGHT, following the assassination, the Popular Club had posted a manifesto on the city’s walls, proclaiming that in light of the emergency, it was taking upon itself the task of ensuring order until a new government could be formed. It called on the Romans to gather at Piazza del Popolo the next day to show their support for a program of national independence and a constituent assembly to devise a more democratic form of government. In response, many Civic Guardsmen and legionnaires joined the large crowd that streamed into the vast, round piazza. With the flag of the Popular Club at their head, they marched in rows, arm in arm, toward the pope’s palace, drummers and a musical band leading the way. They looked, remarked one unsympathetic observer, “like ruffians in a melo-drama…the first act of which had been the foul murder of one old man, and this the second, an attack on another.”
The demonstrators arrived at the Quirinal only to find its huge front door shut. After a delegation succeeded in entering and presenting the cardinal secretary of state with the document they had brought, they returned to the crowd to await the pope’s response. Inside the palace the pope sat, surrounded by the members of the foreign diplomatic corps who had come to be with him in this moment of crisis. He read the list of demands, then sent his reply out to the crowd: Everyone should go home. Christ’s vicar on earth could not bow to intimidation.9
Enraged by the pope’s response, some men set fire to a side gate. Flames soon shot up over the door, and for a moment it seemed that the whole gargantuan palace might soon be ablaze. Men inside the building rushed to the gate with buckets of water and finally succeeded in extinguishing the fire. When others tried to reignite it, one of the Swiss Guards fired a shot at them. Hearing the sound, protesters with rifles of their own climbed up the bell tower and onto the roofs overlooking the piazza and shot at the palace windows. Monsignor Palma, the man responsible for preparing the Latin texts of the pope’s official pronouncements, was hit in the chest by a bullet as he stood looking out from a window not far from Pius. “This is the second victim who dies for my cause,” said the pope, “and I did not want to see a single drop of blood spilled for it!”10
By now, the crowd had grown to ten thousand, many armed. The demonstrators wheeled in carts and turned them on their sides to block off the streets leading into the piazza. Other carts were loaded with incendiary materials, threatening to set the palazzo afire. Men rolled in a cannon and pointed it at the main palace entrance. Pius, observed the French ambassador, had until then acted with admirable sangfroid, but he now realized the situation was hopeless. He would have to give in to the demand that he name new ministers agreeable to the clubs. As for their demand that he declare immediately for Italian independence and join the war against Austria, he would try to win some time by referring the matter to the two chambers.11
“You see the sorry state at which we’ve arrived,” said Pius to the ambassadors. “Hope of resisting, none. Here in my own royal palace, a prelate has been killed. Shots are fired at us, cannons are aimed at us. Encircled, besieged by the rebels. We give in to avoid useless shedding of blood and even worse crimes, but only to force. You see, signori, we give in, but under protest. We give in only under threat of violence, and every concession we make is invalid, it is null and void.”12
