The Pope Who Would Be King, page 20
Pius himself, so angry with Austria only a few months earlier, was now also counting on the Austrian army to save him. “The Pontiff is weak,” observed the Sardinian envoy to Gaeta in late March, “and easily impressionable. Taking advantage of the right moment, one can get him to do things that don’t seem to be in his nature.” Or as a British envoy in Italy put it in a report to London, “the Pope had come to the determination to be for the future entirely guided by the advice of Cardinals Antonelli and Lambruschini.”21
In Rome, the triumvirate issued a public call to rally support. “It is our task to prove to Italy and to all of Europe that our cry, God and the People, is not a lie—that our work is religious, educational, moral to the highest degree—that the accusations of intolerance, of anarchy, of disorder are false.” It was crucial to inspire confidence in the new government among people who had every reason to be skeptical about its prospects. “The Government of the Republic is strong,” proclaimed Mazzini, who knew all too well that it was anything but.22
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CARDINAL ANTONELLI HAD HOPED that the four-power conference that the Spanish had proposed would never have to meet. It would, he thought, only delay military action, offering France yet another opportunity to get in the way. But despite the cardinal’s pleas, Austria insisted it would not act without the French. Reluctantly, Antonelli informed Austria, France, Spain, and Naples that the first session of the conference would meet in Gaeta on March 30. He also told them that he planned to chair the sessions himself.23
As the day of the conference approached, Harcourt complained to Paris that even the air they breathed in Gaeta seemed to be Austrian. There was little likelihood, he thought, that the four powers could ever reach agreement. The French government had to face the painful truth that the solutions it had been urging on the pope were no longer realistic. A negotiated settlement between the pope and Rome would, of course, be best, but Pius was unwilling to make any concessions, while the new authorities in Rome insisted that any settlement include the end of the pope’s temporal power. Nor was there any chance that the people of the Papal States would themselves rise up and restore the pope’s rule. As for the idea of having an all-Italian force come to the pope’s aid, and so avoid invasion by foreign armies, this too was not going to happen. The Sardinian kingdom would not send its army to defeat the people who had long been pleading its cause in its fight with Austria, and King Ferdinand’s army was still busy trying to put down the Sicilian revolt.
In short, Harcourt advised his foreign minister, France was left with only three options: it could simply leave the pope to his fate; it could allow the Austrians to act alone; or it could take military action by itself. “I recognize,” he added, “that all three of these choices are bad, but I don’t believe that it is possible to find any better.” After having publicly proclaimed that France would defend the pope, how could the French do nothing while he spent the rest of his days in a small room in a Neapolitan fortress? Nor could they stand by while Austria acted alone, for that would mean allowing Austria to occupy all of the Papal States and to become the guarantor of Christendom’s most sacred sites and of the pontiff himself. Only one option remained, unappetizing as it was. “We find ourselves,” concluded Harcourt, “virtually forced by the fateful coincidence of circumstances to reestablish the pope ourselves.”
For the French ambassador, there was an additional reason why it was so important that it be French armies that returned the pope to Rome. If the Austrians were to restore the Papal States, they would simply “reestablish the old state of things….France alone,” he argued, “can demand guarantees conforming to the principles of freedom that are in the true interests of the church itself.”24
On March 30 Cardinal Antonelli called the first session of the four-power Gaeta conference to order. France alone had two representatives: Harcourt, ambassador to the Holy See, and Rayneval, ambassador to Naples. Count Esterházy represented Austria, Count Giuseppe Ludolf represented the Kingdom of Naples, and the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, Francisco Martínez, represented Spain. Over the next months those six men would meet many times, but their often-heated arguments all took the same shape. The two Frenchmen found themselves isolated, facing the combined forces of Cardinal Antonelli and the Austrian, Spanish, and Neapolitan ambassadors. The division was clear from that first meeting, when Harcourt and Rayneval argued that restoring the pope through foreign armies would poison the people against him. Antonelli was dismissive. On first sight of a foreign army, insisted the cardinal, the pope’s subjects would rise up against the small band of fanatics who oppressed them. “Even if the Turks were to come,” said the cardinal, “the people would bless them.”
Antonelli estimated that thirty thousand troops would be needed. The Neapolitan ambassador, Count Ludolf, enthusiastically supported armed intervention but noted that, given the ongoing revolt in Sicily, King Ferdinand did not have enough men available to do the job. The Spanish envoy likewise acknowledged that Spain could at best provide only a third of the needed troops. For his part, Esterházy informed his colleagues that Austria was prepared to send its army to restore the pope but would not act without first securing an agreement with France.
Cardinal Antonelli then offered his own proposal: each of the four powers would be responsible for reconquering one part of the Papal States. The Austrians would retake the northeast and the Adriatic coast; the Neapolitan army would take the southern provinces; the French would occupy the northwest; and the task of taking Rome would be given to Spain. Involving France would hopefully satisfy the Austrians, while the plan would keep France out of any of the major cities of the Papal States. The meeting ended without reaching any decision.25
Antonelli again felt frustrated. His hope of being able to rely on Austrian arms alone had been rebuffed by Prince Schwarzenberg, and France refused to take part in any jointly planned invasion. The cardinal vented his anger in a letter to his nuncio in Vienna:
It is therefore to be deduced that by virtue of France’s action alone the Head of the Church is not to be restored to his full freedom and independence, and thanks to the obstacles placed by a Catholic Power the cause of religion cannot prevail.
And so the revolutionary party, perhaps aware of France’s reluctance to intervene, while it places obstacles to the joint action of Austria with Spain and Naples, becomes ever bolder, tyrannizing ever more, oppressing, satiating its impious desires. Therefore as long as France does not quickly intervene in the Papal States, or does not agree to have Austria do so…the Church will continue to suffer under a most cruel servitude.26
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CONCERNED THAT THE POPE’S absence from Rome for the popular Easter rites might provoke unhappiness among the Romans, Mazzini was eager to ensure that a proper Easter mass be held at St. Peter’s. The occasion would also show the people that the republican government posed no threat to their religion. Doing all this over the strong objection of the prelate in charge of St. Peter’s, the republicans arranged the ceremony on their own. On Easter Sunday thousands of Romans, mingling with brightly dressed peasants who had come into the city for the occasion, crowded into the vast basilica and overflowed into the piazza. A patriotic Venetian priest, assisted by a dozen other priests, chaplains in the various militias that had recently formed throughout Italy, said the mass. Members of the Cappella Giulia, the regular Vatican choir, sang, dressed not in their customary white linen surplices but in street clothes. Nor were all the words they sang familiar ones. Salvam fac Republicam nostrum—“Save our republic”—they chanted to close the mass, echoing the words that, in the wake of the French Revolution, had replaced “God save the king” in concluding the mass in France.
Following the ceremony, the priest who had presided over the mass emerged onto the balcony above the great door of the basilica, festooned with Italy’s tricolored banners, and offered his benediction. Amid the thousands in the crowd below stood Mazzini. “It is useless,” observed the Italian prophet, as he surveyed the people on their knees. “This religion lives and will yet live for long years to come.” He could attack the corruption of the priests, but he knew he would not get far if he attacked the rites over which they presided.
While Mazzini’s mood was melancholy, for most it was a time of celebration. From the windows of the Vatican palaces facing the piazza, members of the Constituent Assembly waved their handkerchiefs to the crowd. The cannon of Castel Sant’Angelo sounded as squads of the republican army, scattered through the piazza, raised their rifles and pointed their bayonets to the sky. That night, rather than the normal bright lanterns that illuminated the great dome of St. Peter’s on such occasions, the dome flickered in the pulsating light cast by tricolored fireworks.27
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IN MID-APRIL ADMIRAL BAUDIN, head of French naval forces, met with the pope in Gaeta and told him that a French frigate was about to arrive there to be put at his disposal. It was large enough, said the admiral, to take the whole papal party to France. The pontiff had initially been in a good mood, but as he mulled his options, it darkened. He could go to France, he said, and he knew that if he went personally to request French help in restoring him to Rome, it would undoubtedly be forthcoming. “But how would it look,” he asked, “for the head of Catholicism and vicar of Jesus Christ to go begging on a foreign land for the means to make war against his own subjects?” It was best, thought the pope, to make his requests for military aid behind Gaeta’s closed doors.28
The pope then met with Harcourt, again urging him to reach an agreement with Austria so that his kingdom could be restored. Only Austria and France, said Pius, had the military means to return him to power.
The French ambassador tried to explain the difficulty his government faced. “Even with all the good will in the world in wanting to restore the Holy Father,” he told the pope, “it is impossible for us not to take account of the state of public opinion in France.” The notion that France could act in league with archrival Austria to restore the papal theocracy, even were it desirable, was, said the French ambassador, wholly unrealistic. Nor, he tried to convince the pope, was it in the church’s own interest. “Whether rightly or wrongly,” said Harcourt, “people view Austria as representing the principle of absolutism and the Austrians as the oppressors of Italy. We, on the contrary, are seen as the defenders of freedom, as the protectors of the emancipation of peoples….So it is very difficult to combine two such different elements, and to have them march under the same flag.”
Should the pope embrace the Austrians, “well-known enemies of Italy,” Harcourt warned him, “you will only be able to stay on your throne with cannons.” The time would inevitably come when the cannons would be withdrawn, and when that day came, predicted the Frenchman, “your temporal power will disappear amid a shower of the curses of all of Italy.” The pontiff had a fateful choice to make. He could either throw himself in the arms of Austria or follow the path urged by France.
How, asked the pope, could he be expected to depend on France? It was, after all, now a republic, and who was to say that whatever position it took today would not be changed as a result of the next election? The French said that they could not join forces with the Austrians in restoring his temporal reign, but what, asked the pope, would they do if they heard that the Austrians were marching on Rome themselves? Would they stand by and allow the Austrians alone to bask in the glory of rescuing the Holy See?29
Having failed to convince Harcourt, the pope turned to France’s other ambassador, Alphonse de Rayneval, a man he found easier to deal with. “His Holiness,” reported Rayneval, following their conversation, “was very upset and this time did not have the calm, the serenity that ordinarily surprises all those who have the honor of approaching him.” “My heart bleeds,” the pope told him, “seeing the infinite evils that pile up day after day on my unhappy subjects.” Pius looked into the face of the French envoy. “It is up to you to bring an end to this cruel situation. Do it, I beg you in the name of God, in the name of humanity. I beg you with tears in my eyes. Put an end to this great tragedy!” As Pio Nono said these words, tears did in fact trail down his face and drip onto his clasped hands.
Rayneval again tried to persuade the pope to come to France, where he could rally the French people to his cause. “I understand that,” replied the pope.
But how do you imagine I can follow your advice? How do you think I can abandon the position that I have taken up to now, that I turn my back on those who have up to now constantly shown themselves ready to support me? Can I put the fate of the papacy in the hands of one Power without provoking the jealousy, the sensitivities of all the others? Wouldn’t that compromise the exercise of my spiritual power? Note that the majority of Catholic nations are monarchies. Can I turn to the only European Catholic power that is republican? Do you believe that the result of this will not be unending mistrust and difficulties? And who is to say what conditions you would impose on me?
It was not a matter of imposing conditions, replied the French envoy. It was a matter of adjusting to the times and to the challenges the French government faced.
“Certainly,” said the pope. “But how far would this go? Where did the previous attempts I made end up leading me?
“I promised to go to France,” said the pontiff, “and I will go. But in the meantime, note how Rome is becoming the rendez-vous of all the most dangerous and worst elements in all of Italy. The remnants of the Lombard, Livorno and Sicilian bands, as well as the Neapolitan rebels who have been pushed out of their own land, are all flocking to Rome. That’s where the resistance is finding its last source of support. Just think of all the tragedy that can result! Reach an agreement with Austria,” urged the pope. “That’s the whole question.”30
That veterans of other uprisings against Italy’s reigning monarchs—from Sicily to Florence and Milan—were streaming into Rome was very much on Antonelli’s mind as well. The dithering of the great Catholic powers, the cardinal complained in a letter to the nuncio in Madrid, “is calamitous beyond belief.” Now that the other parts of Italy had been pacified, he explained, “all the rebel leaders are turning to Rome.” But it was another worry that had prompted the cardinal to write his letter: he had heard a rumor that France might try to take Rome alone. Antonelli urged the nuncio to get the Spanish government to help dissuade Paris. The last thing he wanted was to have Rome in French hands.31
Two days after his meeting with Rayneval, the pope called in the cardinals and gave an allocution that was among the most violent papal addresses of the nineteenth century. Rome, he charged, had turned into “a forest replete with furious beasts.” Commerce was at a standstill, the public treasury was bare, private property and church possessions had been seized, churches had been profaned, nuns had been driven from their convents, “the most virtuous and distinguished ecclesiastics and religious [were] cruelly persecuted, put in chains, and slain; the…Bishops…[were] violently dragged away from their flocks and thrown into dungeons.”
Again he gave vent to his bitterness about the Romans’ “black ingratitude.” Early in his papacy, he recalled, he had granted amnesty to political prisoners and offered a raft of reforms aimed at bettering his subjects’ lives. But, he lamented, “the concessions freely and willingly granted by us in the very beginning of our Pontificate, not only could never yield the wished-for fruits, but could not even take root, because those crafty architects of deceit abused them to excite new agitations.” In an apologia pro se, aimed at counteracting what he knew to be the cardinals’ belief that he was himself to blame for the disaster, the pope chronicled all the attempts he had earlier made to keep things from getting out of hand. He had recognized the danger of popular demonstrations and had tried to rein them in. He had seen the risk that the newly instituted Consultative Council might overstep its authority, and so at its very first meeting had warned that it would be only an advisory body. His list went on. Once again he called on the four Catholic powers—Austria, France, Naples, and Spain—to send their armies to restore him to Rome.32
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LOUIS NAPOLEON, THE FRENCH PRESIDENT, was torn. Personally, he regarded the pope’s political role as a vestige of the Middle Ages. As a young man, he had even taken up arms against it. But if there was one thing he did stand for, it was a return of France’s glory. When Alfred de Falloux, his minister of public education, and a fervent Catholic, came to plead the pope’s cause, he knew what note to strike. How, he asked the president, could he stand by and simply watch while the Austrian army marched down the Italian Peninsula and occupied Rome?
“You’re right,” replied Louis Napoleon, “France cannot remain as a mere spectator….Facing the prospect of a triumphant Austrian flag in Italy,” said the president, with a large dose of wishful thinking, “our own will be greeted with universal applause.” The French had no territorial ambitions in Italy, nor did they have any economic interests to protect in the Papal States. What did matter to France was that the troops of archrival Austria, already in control of all northeastern Italy, not come to occupy all the pope’s lands as well.33
