The Pope Who Would Be King, page 25
Mazzini, whose room was entirely unguarded, opened his eyes to the surprising sight of the French envoy sitting by his bed. Half awake, the Italian prophet asked the Frenchman if he had come to assassinate him.13
In the negotiations that followed, Lesseps swung from admiration for the Italian’s integrity and courage to suspicions that Italy’s prophet of independence was a “modern Nero.” Mazzini, Lesseps complained in mid-May, “is nothing other than a vulgar man of ambition.” It was clear to Lesseps that the Romans despised “priestly” rule and were outraged that the pope had called foreign troops to invade their city. But, he thought, few outside the educated elite could be said to be republicans or cared much about what happened in far-off parts of the peninsula. For most Romans, Sicilians and Venetians were as foreign as the French or Spaniards. It was only, he thought, Mazzini and his small band of enthusiasts—mostly drawn from the middle classes, and many from outside the Papal States—who dreamed of a unified Italy.14
Oudinot kept pushing for an immediate attack on Rome, his impatience growing with each report of the Austrian army’s victorious march in the northern provinces of the Papal States. He knew that the Austrians wanted the French to take Rome, so he was not worried that they would try to beat him to it. But the contrast between his own army’s inaction and the Austrian army’s relentless march was humiliating. Even Harcourt, despite his frustration with the pope, urged the general to attack. “We have not led an army of 20,000 men into Italy to put it at the mercy of Monsieur Mazzini and his colleagues,” he told Oudinot during a visit to the general’s headquarters on May 22. Later in the day Oudinot sent a message to Lesseps at his Rome hotel: “You are, Monsieur, very seductive, no one knows that better than I….But the status quo which you condemn us to is harmful and strikes a most serious blow against the dignity and the interests of France, no less than against our military honor.” The triumvirate had rejected the French proposal. This meant, said Oudinot, that the truce they had announced was over. It was time to attack.15
That same day the Americans’ recently arrived chargé d’affaires, Lewis Cass, Jr., offered himself to Oudinot and Lesseps as an unofficial mediator between the French and the Roman Republic. Cass, whose father, a U.S. senator, had been the unsuccessful Democratic Party candidate for president in 1848, replaced the unfortunate Jacob Martin, who had died within weeks of his arrival the previous summer. Cass brought Oudinot a handwritten counteroffer from Rome, drafted by Charles Bonaparte, then acting as president of the Constituent Assembly. It contained three articles:
The Roman Republic, accepting the French Assembly deliberations that authorized the sending of troops to Italy to prevent foreign intervention, will be grateful for the support that it will receive.
The Roman people have the right to pronounce themselves freely on the form of their government, and the French Republic, which has never put this in doubt, will pledge to solemnly recognize it from the moment that the Constitution to be voted on by the National Assembly is approved by a popular vote.
Rome will welcome the French soldiers as brothers. But the troops will enter Rome only at such time as, a threat being imminent, the Republic’s government asks them.16
Although this counterproposal contained elements that Lesseps could not accept, it gave him hope that a peaceful solution to the crisis might be at hand. He doubted that Mazzini himself would bend but thought pressure could be put on the less ideologically driven members of the Roman government. On the twenty-sixth Lesseps wrote to Drouyn in Paris, begging him to prevent Oudinot from attacking before the negotiations had a chance to succeed. He realized, he said, that the French could not hold off long with the malaria season approaching, but he urged them to give him a few more days.17
* * *
—
WHILE THE FRENCH BICKERED at their military headquarters outside Rome, Austria’s ambassador in Gaeta had the pleasure of presenting the pope with the keys to Bologna. Pius, reported Esterházy, was visibly moved by the gesture and expressed his admiration for the efficiency with which the Austrian army had reestablished papal rule in the second city of his lands. “The rapid success of our action…compared to the scandalous attitude of France…under Rome’s walls,” reported Esterházy, “presents a contrast that cannot fail to impress and is much appreciated in Gaeta.”
Eager as he was to encourage this unflattering comparison, the Austrian ambassador soon found himself in the odd position of trying to cool the pope’s anger at the French. Disturbed by the latest news about the ongoing negotiations in Rome, Pius told Esterházy that he planned to issue a public protest. The Austrian warned him against it. France was now, after all, a republic. If the pope pushed the French too far, he feared, they might be tempted to switch sides, and should the large, well-equipped French army come to the aid of its fellow republic in Rome, the results would be catastrophic.18
Esterházy also found himself having to dampen Cardinal Antonelli’s increasingly belligerent attitude toward France. Angered by a recent memo from the two French ambassadors insisting that the pope declare his intention to retain his earlier reforms, Antonelli told the Austrian ambassador that he would demand that they formally retract it. Again, Esterházy cautioned against any hostile move. Instead, he offered to help Antonelli draft his reply to the Frenchmen, an offer Antonelli readily accepted.19
While the Austrians were guiding Antonelli, the cardinal was guiding the pope. That Pius was not going to do anything that the cardinal did not approve was evident to all in Gaeta. “Without passing through him,” said the Sardinian envoy, “nothing gets done.”20
“There was a time,” observed Schwarzenberg in late May, “when Pius IX declared that he would rather be locked up in Castel Sant’Angelo or retire to a monastery than see a single foreign soldier, and least of all an Austrian, tread upon the soil of his fatherland. How times have changed! Today it seems that the pope is falling into the other extreme since he would like to see his states swarming with foreign—and above all, Austrian—soldiers.”21
The chancellor urged caution. “The pope’s cabinet,” Schwarzenberg told Esterházy, “seems to be of the opinion that the best way to counter the dreadful aspects of French action would be to concentrate the forces of the other intervening powers, Austria among them, around Rome.” That, he thought, would only make matters worse. Given French public opinion, the appearance of the Austrian army at Rome might well drive the French to take the Roman Republic’s side. The result would be a European-wide war.
Indeed, the mood in France at the time was anything but calm. The victory of the right in the recent parliamentary elections had led large, angry crowds to gather in the streets of Paris every night. In a session of parliament on May 22, to the great embarrassment of the prime minister, a deputy of the left read a proclamation that the Austrian General Wimpfen had posted on the walls of newly conquered Bologna. It declared that the destruction of the Roman Republic had been decided upon by the “four great powers,” thus making clear the complicity of republican France with the Austrian, Spanish, and Neapolitan monarchies.22
The pope and the Italian Peninsula were far from the only preoccupations of the Austrian government at the time, for the reverberations of the previous year’s uprisings were still being felt in other parts of the empire. For help in quelling the continuing revolt in Hungary, the Austrians had turned to the Russian tsar. As a result, thousands of Russian troops had recently battled a large Hungarian revolutionary army, resulting in the loss of thousands of Russian soldiers.23
Despite these worries, the Austrian chancellor remained focused on the pope’s plight. Rome, he observed, repeating an old adage, was where the pope was. If France took Rome, but then demanded that the pope accept its conditions for returning, Pius would be better off moving somewhere else in the Papal States. There he would be in a stronger position than if he were residing in Rome as the “docile instrument of the agitators with whom the French general seems ready to reach an understanding.” And of course, most important, there the pope would remain firmly under Austrian influence, protected by Austrian troops. The French would have Rome, but the Austrians would have the pope.24
Returning to Gaeta on the morning of May 28 from his latest trip to French military headquarters, Rayneval found the harbor filled with Spanish ships. Three weeks earlier a Spanish warship had docked at Fiumicino. Now, a larger contingent of forces had arrived, as thirty-five hundred Spanish troops pitched camp outside Gaeta’s walls.25
Pius IX blesses Spanish troops at Gaeta, May 26, 1849
Rayneval went to bring Antonelli the latest news from Rome. He found the secretary of state in a foul mood. On his desk was a copy of a recent issue of Rome’s official newspaper, which had published the latest correspondence between Lesseps and the triumvirate.
How, asked the cardinal, could Rayneval reconcile Lesseps’s “incredible” proposals with what the French ambassadors had said at the Gaeta conference? Rayneval assured the secretary of state that the new French envoy had acted on his own. They were all awaiting further instructions from their government, said Rayneval, and he, too, had grown exasperated with Lesseps.26
In Rome, hopes mixed with fears, and rumors abounded. The new American chargé d’affaires found himself in the middle of the negotiations between the triumvirate and the French, although he denied this in his reports to Washington, rightly suspecting that his government would not be pleased. Having earlier expressed doubt that the Romans would oppose the French army, Cass had now come to a very different view. “The various factions,” he reported, “have coalesced into one attitude, that of defence of the republic; and expressions of patriotism and resolutions to suffer to the last extremity, is the only language heard in the streets.” Cass especially praised Rome’s women, who were donating their jewels—“some of which are reported to be of enormous value”—to the cause. “This city,” he added, “is the last foothold of thousands, who have been fighting for years, from Milan in the North to Palermo in the South, for independence and constitutional government.” He estimated that there were eighteen thousand of these political refugees from other parts of Italy. “Rome,” he observed, “has become their last rallying point, and may be their final resting place.”27
The mood among Rome’s defenders was determined, although they were painfully aware of the swelling numbers of French troops massing outside the city’s walls. Camped out at the monastery of Porta San Pancrazio, atop Janiculum Hill, a young partisan, Leone Paladini, penned a letter to his parents in Milan. Alongside him were the three hundred other volunteers from Lombardy in a battalion composed of idealistic young men of noble and wealthy families. The monastery’s gardens were planted with artichokes, which formed the major part of the men’s diet, along with some bread, salami, and a little wine.
With sunset, a welcome coolness descended, and the music began. “Our company counts two or three excellent opera singers,” Paladini told his parents. “As we are almost all students, in general we are good at modulating our voices, and we organize truly delightful choruses, alternating martial and patriotic arias with others that are more tender and melancholy.” As they sang, the young men’s thoughts turned to their families back home, bringing, he admitted, tears to their eyes. Many would soon lose their lives not far from where they now sang; others would lose an arm, a leg, an eye or two.28
* * *
—
FROM GAETA, HARCOURT WROTE a dramatic plea to Paris. The French forces had to take Rome immediately, peacefully if possible, by force if necessary. “Anything else would be a humiliation for us and will create impossible embarrassments.” Their attempts to get the pope to keep a constitutional system were getting nowhere. A new strategy was needed. They should first take Rome and then, proposed Harcourt, “impose very clear conditions on him, because, if one does not impose them they won’t do anything.”29
Although time was fast running out for Lesseps in his efforts to avoid bloodshed, he was convinced that a deal could still be struck. “There exists in Rome,” he wrote to Paris on May 29, “a complete division between Mazzini and the Romans, who want an arrangement made with France.” Although Lesseps may have been exaggerating—the division was not “complete”—there is no doubt that many Romans saw the futility of a battle against the full force of the French army. The Austrians had taken Florence a few days earlier and were now marching through Umbria, to the north of Rome. That the French were coordinating their action with Austria in an effort to restore the pope could no longer be in doubt.
The same day that he wrote to Paris, Lesseps sent the triumvirate a final ultimatum. The French could wait no longer. He proposed four terms for an agreement:
1. The Romans ask for the protection of the French Republic.
2. France does not contest the Romans’ right to freely decide on the form of their government.
3. The Romans will welcome the French as a friendly army. The French army will position itself as it judges proper, both for the defense of the country and the welfare of its troops. It will stay out of the country’s administration.
4. The French Republic guarantees the land occupied by its troops against all foreign attack.
Lesseps ended with a warning: should these terms not be accepted, he would regard his mission as ended, and the French army would take immediate action.30
Although Lesseps led Mazzini to believe that he was acting in concert with the French general, he was not. Over the past several days, Oudinot’s resentment of Lesseps’s interference had blossomed into open hostility. When, a few hours after Lesseps made this latest offer, the triumvirate sent yet another counteroffer, Oudinot exploded. Mazzini’s new proposal incorporated article five of the French constitution, whose language pledged France never to employ its force against the freedoms of another people. Mazzini also insisted that the stationing of French troops be decided on in consultation with the government of the Roman Republic.
Oudinot ordered his senior officers to prepare the troops to attack. Lesseps pleaded for more time but found the French command united against him. “Wait!” cried one of the generals incredulously. “Wait for the season of heat and fever to arrive? Wait until our soldiers are decimated?” Lesseps suggested that the army move into the hills to the south and so escape the heat and disease while also preventing the Neapolitans and Spanish from approaching. Oudinot rejected the idea. Such a move would be seen as a humiliating retreat.31
The next morning, as French troops moved into position outside Rome’s walls, Lesseps, in full diplomatic uniform, went to meet with the triumvirate in a final, desperate attempt to reach an agreement. After a day of intense negotiations, he succeeded in striking a deal. Under the threat of imminent attack, Mazzini agreed to drop both the reference to the Roman Republic and to article five of the French constitution.32
Lesseps hurried back to French headquarters, bringing the new agreement to Oudinot to sign. He refused. “Ever since the seventeenth of this month”—the date of Lesseps’s arrival—the general told him, “you have paralyzed all the movements of the expeditionary corps under my command.” In a letter he hastily wrote to the triumvirate, Oudinot disavowed the accord and told them that Lesseps had exceeded his authority in signing it. “The instructions that I have received from my government,” wrote the general, “formally forbid me from associating myself with this latest act.”
Irate, Lesseps said he would board the next ship for France and take the agreement to Paris, where he was sure he would be vindicated. He then sent a note to Rome’s triumvirate: “I have the honor of declaring to you that I stand by the agreement signed yesterday, and I am about to depart to Paris so that it can be ratified.”33
Lesseps was packing his bags when a messenger rushed in with a telegram. Sent by Drouyn in Paris, it was brief, and brutally to the point: “The Government of the Republic has ended your mission. You will return to France as soon as you receive this message.” At the same time, another telegram from Paris instructed Oudinot to launch his attack on Rome: “All further delay would be harmful given the approach of the fever-filled season. The path of negotiations has been exhausted….Concentrate your troops. Enter Rome as soon as the attack is virtually assured of success.” Oudinot was told to summon Harcourt and Rayneval to his headquarters to better coordinate diplomatic and military action.34
Lesseps had been ill used. The government had sent him as a sop to the members of the Assembly, whose denunciations had showered down on Barrot and company, but in the wake of the army’s humiliating defeat at the end of April, only a triumphal entry into Rome would serve Louis Napoleon’s ambitions. The election of the new, more conservative National Assembly in mid-May had sealed Lesseps’s fate.
* * *
—
ROME, THE BEACON OF CHRISTIANITY for so many centuries, had become remarkably hostile to the Roman Catholic Church. Father Faurs, confessor to Pius IX’s predecessor and as opposed as he could be to the Roman Republic, offered an alarming account of how low the church had sunk in the Romans’ eyes. Popular religion still flourished in the Eternal City, he observed. Indeed, it would be hard to find a door without a cross or a room or workshop without an image of the Madonna on its wall. But most Romans viewed government by the priests with repugnance, and as a result they had come to despise the clergy, and now even women, reported Father Faurs, rarely attended mass.35
