The Pope Who Would Be King, page 14
It was eight p.m. by the time the pope’s decision to appoint new ministers was announced outside the Quirinal. Some of the legionnaires fired their rifles in the air in celebration. Others marched through the city’s streets carrying torches and singing patriotic songs. Civic Guardsmen disarmed the pope’s Swiss Guard and confined them to their barracks. As morning dawned, it was the Civic Guard and not the Swiss Guard who controlled access to the Quirinal. A new era, it seemed, had begun.13
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IN THEIR SLATE OF PROPOSED government ministers, the protesters had listed a variety of prominent laymen known for their close ties to the radicals, some of whom were thought to have been involved in planning Rossi’s murder. But one name struck the pope as offering some hope. The protesters had named Antonio Rosmini as a potential head of government. As a past envoy of the Sardinian king, known to have been urging the cause of Italian independence on the pope, the abbot was viewed as sympathetic to the patriotic cause. That night after the protesters had marched off, Pius sent word to him that he wished to appoint him to lead the government. Rosmini was shocked by the news and embarrassed that his name appeared on the radicals’ list. He informed the pope that he would not serve. Pius understood and did not insist.14
Rome’s streets were no longer in the pope’s control. He could not count on the loyalty of the Civic Guard. The general in charge of his army was in the northern provinces of the Papal States, while the volunteers who had fought with the papal army against the Austrians had returned and were among the most hostile to his cause. The cardinals had largely deserted him. The aristocrats were nowhere to be seen.
In the wake of Rosmini’s refusal, his options painfully limited, Pius turned to the head of the Upper Chamber, Monsignor Muzzarelli, whose cavalier attitude toward Rossi’s assassination had so incensed him, as the best choice he had to head the government.
Shortly after announcing the new government ministers, drawn from the protesters’ list, Pius called the ambassadors back to renew his protest. “I am like a prisoner,” he told them. “They’ve taken my Guard away from me and replaced them with men of their own. What guides my action now that I lack any defense is the principle of doing all possible to avoid the shedding of fraternal blood….But Europe and the world must know that I take no part in the acts of the new government, and I regard myself as entirely extraneous from it.” The pope was especially eager for the ambassadors to tell their governments to ignore anything the new lay foreign minister of the Papal States said. Only the cardinal secretary of state could serve in such a role. In short, while Pius publicly authorized the new government, he was privately telling the foreign powers it had no legitimacy. “Given its current fanatical mood,” worried the Sardinian ambassador, after his return from the papal palace, “if the public were to come to hear of this, it might well cause an outbreak even worse than what we witnessed yesterday.”15
“Today,” reported the French ambassador, the pope’s “authority is absolutely gone, it no longer exists other than in name.” “I must also tell you,” he advised Paris, “that in this situation I have no doubt that sooner or later he will want to leave Rome, if it is possible for him, and in this case he will most likely go to Marseilles. However,” he warned, “this is something that he must not let get out in order not to compromise his situation.”16
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CARDINAL LAMBRUSCHINI, SECRETARY OF STATE until Gregory’s death two years earlier and widely reviled as the head of the pro-Austrian, reactionary faction of the Curia, became a particular target for the people’s rage. On the night of November 16, the day after Rossi’s murder, a group of legionnaires invaded his quarters in the Palace of the Consulta, the imposing Baroque building that bordered the same piazza as the Quirinal. Not finding him, they smashed his furniture and tore his bed to shreds with their daggers and bayonets. The cardinal meanwhile lay cowering beneath a pile of hay in the nearby palace stable. Two Civic Guardsmen—among the minority of their comrades who retained sympathy for his plight—had helped hide him there. They returned three hours later, after the legionnaires left, and, disguising the terrified cardinal in a heavy, ill-fitting soldier’s coat, they put him in a carriage bound for Naples, where he would be out of harm’s way.17
Nor were the aristocrats who had for so long enjoyed all the privileges of proximity to the pope anywhere around when he most needed their support. Curious to know the pope’s situation but not inclined to risk going to see him, Prince Doria Pamphily asked the Belgian chargé d’affaires what he had seen in his recent visit to the Quirinal.
“You should ask me instead,” he replied, “what I haven’t seen, and that is the Roman princes.”18
It did not take long for news of the shocking events in Rome to reach Paris. On the seventeenth, the French government sent warships to Civitavecchia, Rome’s principal port, with instructions to do whatever was needed to save the pope’s life but to avoid getting mixed up in “political” questions.19
The Spanish government was similarly eager to help the pope. Queen Isabel sat uneasily in power, having come to the throne fifteen years earlier at age two. Her long and flowery title, after all, began, “Isabel II by the Grace of God, Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, of the Two Sicilies, of Jerusalem, of Navarre, of Granada…” The list went on, including many lands—among them Sicily, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia—over which the Spanish monarchs had not in fact ruled for decades if not centuries. If she was queen by the grace of God, by divine right, she had, first of all, to ensure the reign of God’s vicar on earth. She could not allow the pope to be driven in disgrace from his rightful throne.
During the siege of the Quirinal following Rossi’s murder, Cardinal Soglia had turned at one point to the Spanish ambassador. What instructions, asked the secretary of state, had his government given him? “My orders and instructions,” the ambassador replied, “are to put at His Holiness’s disposition the army, the navy, and all the power of the queen of Spain.” In fact, a few months earlier the pope had talked to the Spanish ambassador about the possibility that he might one day need to flee the city. The Spanish government had subsequently kept a ship at Civitavecchia for this eventuality, which Pius had found reassuring, but now that he needed it, the ship was gone. It had recently been sent back to Spain to be resupplied. The ambassador sent an urgent plea to Madrid to have the ship return quickly. Although he was undoubtedly concerned for the pope’s welfare, he was likewise concerned that, should the Spanish ship not arrive quickly, one of Europe’s other powers might get the pope in its hands and see its own influence and prestige rise accordingly.
He had reason to worry. The British government had sent its new steam-powered paddlewheel warship, the Bulldog, to Civitavecchia, where it would arrive on the twenty-third. In secret instructions, the Bulldog’s captain was told that, should “the commotions in Rome” place the pope in jeopardy and cause him to want to escape, “you will be ready to receive him…for conveyance to any port to which he may desire to retire.”20
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PIUS FELT PAINFULLY ALONE. Cardinal Soglia, appointed in June, his sixth secretary of state, had proven unequal to the task. Cardinal Antonelli, who had briefly been secretary of state the previous spring and now served as prefect of the sacred palaces of the Vatican, was the only man he felt he could rely on. Although hobbled by the gout that had confined him to bed much of the previous summer, Antonelli was now ever at the pope’s side, urging him to flee.
Two days after Rossi’s assassination, Pius secretly informed the few cardinals still in Rome of his intention to leave. Word that the pope might try to escape soon circulated among the diplomatic corps as well. In reporting this suspicion to Turin on the eighteenth, the Sardinian ambassador noted that, with the Quirinal surrounded by Civic Guardsmen, it would not be a simple matter. And if the pope did succeed in abandoning Rome, the ambassador worried, there was little to keep the radicals from declaring the end of papal authority and proclaiming a republic in its place. This was the last thing the Sardinian government wanted to see. King Charles Albert viewed the republicans as a greater threat than the Austrians and worried that if they succeeded in overthrowing the pope-king, his monarchy might well be the next to fall.21
On Tuesday, November 20, the lower chamber was at last called to order. Seeking to avoid a break with the pope, one of the moderates proposed that they send an official delegation to express the deputies’ sense of devotion to him.22
At this point, Charles Bonaparte, encouraged by the packed gallery, rose to speak. As recently as August he had expressed his firm belief that the pope was essential to the Italian cause. “Pius IX,” he had told the deputies then, “began the Italian movement. Only he was able to move the masses.” Now the great Napoleon’s nephew, an implausible revolutionary, sang a very different tune.23
“This is not the time, colleagues, to speak of thanks, still less of devotion,” he said. “It is time for the promises that the people have obtained from the sovereign to be put into action.” The people in the gallery roared their approval, but when the vote was first taken the moderates’ motion to express solidarity with the pope passed. This provoked such an outpouring of abuse from the spectators that a new vote was called. This time the motion failed. Outraged, Marco Minghetti, committed to a constitutional monarchy under the pope, announced his resignation from the chamber and left Rome. The vote, he explained, had deprived the Chamber of Deputies of any legitimacy, for it contradicted the constitution on which the chamber was based, one that outlined a system in which the two chambers came under the pope’s authority.24
It remains a matter of dispute whether the lack of public support for the pope in these tense days reflected the loss of the Romans’ faith in him or simply intimidation by the radicals. In the years ahead, a Catholic account of this period would point to the latter, along with a belief among the more devout that the unfolding tragedy was some kind of divine punishment for a city that had strayed far from God’s path. For the patriots, and for the Italian patriotic historians who would come to see the drama as the first step in the creation of modern Italy, it had a different meaning. It signaled the end of an era and of a theocracy that had its roots in the early Middle Ages. After centuries of oppression, the people were at last rising up to assert their rights. The tide of history had changed.
Pius IX had few moments of doubt. The Almighty, he was convinced, was testing his faith. As the Lord’s vicar on earth, he vowed not to fail Him. God, he knew, would not long allow this sacrilege to endure.
Pius had been pondering the idea of exile for months. In March, on the day the pope granted his people a constitution, the Spanish envoy in Rome wrote an urgent note to Madrid asking for instructions should the pope decide to leave. Spain’s foreign minister replied by offering the pontiff asylum on Spanish soil and suggested the Mediterranean island of Majorca; the offer was renewed by Francisco Martinez, the new Spanish ambassador, when he arrived in Rome in early August. Pius had also raised the subject of escape with the French ambassador during the summer, and at a meeting in late August, he had gotten yet another offer of help, this time from the commander of the British ship Bulldog.1
In October, Pius received a gift from the bishop of Valence, the French town where Pius VI had died in exile a half century earlier. It was a pyx, the small silver box in which Pius VI had kept the Eucharist. As the bishop explained in his accompanying note, it had been a great comfort to the exiled pope throughout his ordeal. Remarking that he hoped Pius IX would not suffer the same fate as his namesake, the bishop added, “But who knows God’s secret plans, or the trials through which His Providence will lead Your Holiness?” Church history was filled with cases of popes living far from Rome. Seven successive pontiffs in the fourteenth century had set up their courts in France, at Avignon. More recently, both Pius VI and Pius VII had been forced into exile. Prone as he was to look for heavenly omens to help divine God’s will, Pio Nono saw the gift of Pius VI’s little box as a sign. He would hold it in his hands when the time came to leave his capital.2
With the Civic Guard now surrounding his palace, it was far from clear how he would be able to escape. Who could extract him from the Quirinal and get him out of the city? And assuming he could leave, where should he go? Several governments had offered him asylum, but which would let him act freely? Where would he be in the best position to try to persuade the other European powers to help restore him to his rightful place as pope-king in Rome?
The pope turned to Cardinal Antonelli to devise a plan. They needed to find people they could trust, for they could not make their escape on their own. The foreign ambassadors to the Holy See were among the few who had stood by the pope, and in the end, his escape depended on two of them: Duke Harcourt, the French envoy, and Count Karl von Spaur, from Bavaria.3
Remarkably, the secret was well kept. At four p.m. on Friday, November 24, the captain of the Bulldog, which was moored at Civitavecchia, came to see the pope to renew his offer of assistance. Pius told him that at present he had no plan to abandon Rome. He would leave all in God’s hands. But the British officer had barely exited the Quirinal Palace when the pope set his escape plan in motion. The French ambassador entered the pope’s quarters at five p.m. and pretended to talk to him while Pius hurriedly put on the black cassock and hat of a simple priest. He then rushed out the back entry into the awaiting two-horse carriage. It was only a short trip to the modest Church of Sts. Marcellino e Pietro, where Spaur, Bavaria’s ambassador, awaited him. With a pistol in his right hand, the ambassador extended his left to help the pope into his carriage.4
At about the same time, back in the Quirinal, the French ambassador, judging the forty-five minutes he had spent in conversation with the absent pontiff to be sufficient, got up to go. He had done his part in the belief, encouraged by Antonelli, that Pius was now on his way north to the port of Civitavecchia. There, thought Harcourt, he would soon join the pope aboard the Ténare, the French warship that awaited them, and set sail for France.5
As the carriage carrying the disguised pontiff made its way out of the city, it turned not north toward Civitavecchia but south. While Harcourt was rushing to the Papal States’ port, imagining his triumphal arrival with the pope in Marseilles, the Bavarian ambassador was hurrying the pope to the seaside fortress town of Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples.
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SPAUR KNEW ROME WELL, having served there for sixteen years as Bavaria’s envoy and having married a young Roman woman well known in high society. Teresa Giraud, famed for her beauty and the niece of a prominent Roman playwright, had turned her home into one of Rome’s most prominent salons for artists, politicians, aristocrats, and cardinals. A strong-minded woman accustomed to having her way, she had pried out of her husband the details of the pope’s plan. She then insisted on accompanying the men to Gaeta.
In order not to attract attention, the Bavarian ambassador had fetched the pope in a small, nondescript, open carriage. Ten miles south of Rome, it came to a stop. Spaur explained to the pontiff that to make their way to Gaeta, they needed a more substantial carriage, and one was meeting them there. Much to Pius’s astonishment, the large, luxurious carriage that greeted them contained the ambassador’s elegantly dressed wife, along with her fourteen-year-old son. This, thought the pope, was only one more indignity he would have to bear, as he sat in the coach cooped up with the garrulous woman and her son, the ambassador having been relegated to a narrow, rear-facing bench on the back of the carriage with one of the servants.6
They traveled all night. In early morning, having gone close to ninety-five miles, they came to the small fishing village of Mola di Gaeta. There in the shadow of Gaeta, two men stood on the road awaiting them. Looking out from the carriage, the countess recognized one as the first secretary of Rome’s Spanish embassy. The other, wearing a scarlet scarf that half covered his face and dressed as a layman, looked oddly familiar. When the pope saw him, he crossed his hands over his chest and, with some relief, said, “Lord, I thank you for having brought the good Cardinal Antonelli here safely.” Antonelli carried a passport identifying him as the Spaniard’s assistant.7
The cardinal led the group to a modest inn nearby. There he told Pius to pen a letter to the king of Naples, who knew nothing of the pope’s plans. “Majesty,” the pontiff wrote, “the Supreme Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Sovereign of the Papal States has found it necessary to abandon the capital of his dominions in order not to compromise his dignity, and lest he appear by his silence to approve the enormous excesses that have been and are being committed in Rome.” He planned to remain in Gaeta, he added, “only for a brief time, not wanting to embarrass the king in any way.” Count Spaur left for Naples immediately in his Spanish colleague’s carriage, carrying the pope’s letter to the king.8
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LATER THAT AFTERNOON, the Bavarian ambassador’s luxurious carriage appeared at Gaeta’s gate. The officer in charge, checking the passengers’ papers, was led to believe that the carriage contained the Bavarian ambassador and his wife, along with their son and the son’s two tutors. The Spanish diplomat presented himself as Spaur to account for the fact that Spaur himself was on the road to Naples. They were not eager for too many questions to be asked about the two “tutors” accompanying them. Once inside the fortress city’s walls, they checked into a modest guesthouse. Fearing that someone might recognize him despite his disguise, the pope decided it best not to venture out.9
