The Pope Who Would Be King, page 28
The pope told Lambruschini that he was working on a plan for what to do when Rome was retaken, which he promised to discuss with the cardinals. He outlined the principles that would guide him. “Constitutional Government,” he wrote, “NO.” Here he used capital letters for emphasis, aware that this would come as a great relief to the cardinals. “But,” he added, “it is indispensable to do something because…the people are in such a state of agitation that to deny them entirely is impossible.”1
While the pope was writing to Lambruschini in Naples, Esterházy was preparing his latest report to Vienna. The Austrian chancellor had recently written to Esterházy to tell him how pleased he was to hear that the pope was holding out against French entreaties to embrace reform. “The firmness which Pius IX has had the wisdom to deploy in the face of the French pressures,” wrote Schwarzenberg, “already seems to have borne its fruits.”2
“Up to now,” replied Esterházy, “all my efforts are aimed at encouraging and helping the Roman court in its legitimate resistance to France’s arrogant demands.” He had found a receptive audience.
Antonelli needed little encouragement to do all he could to thwart the French. In a circular to his nuncios in early July, he again criticized Oudinot for being too eager to avoid bloodshed. “This pernicious slowness,” he wrote, “makes an all the more sinister impression if one considers the speed with which the Austrian army…has occupied much of the state, overcoming the strong resistance that it encountered in Bologna and in Ancona.”3
The pope was of the same view. Why, Pius asked, were the French not raising the papal flag in the towns they occupied? Harcourt, who was shuttling back and forth between Gaeta and the French base outside Rome, offered a reply that could not have endeared him to the pontiff. They had very much wanted to raise the papal flag, he explained, but “we have made it a policy up to now not to impose anything on the population. We have been waiting for some demonstration in support of the pope so we can act, and we even have tried to provoke one in every way possible.” Despite all their attempts, said Harcourt, they had been unable to spark even the most modest popular demonstration in favor of restoring papal rule.4
Outside Rome, the new French envoy was growing impatient with the army’s plodding pace. “Imagine my surprise,” Corcelle told Tocqueville on June 25, when, at a war council called by General Oudinot, “I learned that this council estimated that it would probably take another fifteen or twenty days to take possession of the right bank of the Tiber.” There was no reason, thought Corcelle, why they should not break through immediately.5
Tocqueville was more cautious, urging that the city be bombarded only if absolutely necessary. The kind of all-out attack that might permit the speedy conquest of Rome risked producing a level of destruction to its buildings and monuments that would horrify the civilized world. “You can be sure,” warned the French foreign minister, “that the noise of our bombs will be heard in all of Europe and that nothing will be more harmful for our expedition’s honor than the explosion of these projectiles in Rome.” Rome, he added, “is not like any other city.”6
Tocqueville was also nervous about what would happen after the city was taken. They must, he told Corcelle, get the Holy Father to announce his intention to install “an enlightened, liberal government.” How else could France justify to its own people, and to the rest of the world, what its army was doing in Rome?7
The French foreign minister had another concern as well. Radetzky, commander of Austria’s troops in Italy, had recently announced that the pope intended to move to Austrian-held Bologna before returning to Rome. “I do not have to tell you,” wrote Tocqueville, “how such a trip would be harmful, what a blow it would be to the Holy Father in the opinion of liberal Europe, and I must say, what a disaster it would be for us, making us look ridiculous.”8
The French kept up their bombardment as they fortified their newly won position inside Rome’s wall. “Bombs kept falling on the city all night long,” wrote the Roman diarist Nicola Roncalli. “In just a quarter of an hour seventeen were launched. In all, it is estimated that over a hundred and fifty fell…for the most part on a line leading to Capitoline Hill.”9
In an effort to save Rome from further destruction, a group of Rome’s foreign diplomats gathered at the home of the British consul, John Freeborn, and drafted a protest addressed to General Oudinot. Signed by ten men—including the American consul, Nicholas Brown, as well as the Prussian, Dutch, Danish, and Swiss consuls—it expressed “their deep regret at his having subjected the Eternal City to a bombardment lasting several days and nights.” The assault, they charged, “puts the lives and property not only of neutral and pacific residents in danger, but also those of innocent women and children.” They added that bombs had already destroyed many priceless works of art. “We place our confidence in you,” urged the consuls, “that in the name of humanity and of the civilized nations, you will want to desist from further bombardment, to spare from further destruction the monumental city, which is considered to be under the moral protection of all the civilized countries of the world.”10
Oudinot’s reply came quickly. “The bombardment of Rome,” he acknowledged, “will cause the shedding of innocent blood and will destroy monuments that ought to be eternal.” He reminded them that he had said as much in his June 12 ultimatum to the Roman government. “The longer the surrender of the town is delayed,” warned the general, “the greater will be the calamity that you so justly fear. But the fault for such disasters will not lie with the French. History will absolve us from any such charge.”11
Knowing how unhappy Tocqueville would be to learn of the consuls’ protest, Corcelle hastened to offer his own gloss on the episode. If Oudinot had decided not to deny the foreign diplomats’ accusation that he was destroying Rome, it was not because the charge had any validity. In the entire time of the siege, claimed Corcelle, “not a single bomb has been aimed at the city.” All the French artillery had been directed at the wall, even if, he acknowledged, some might have overshot its mark and inadvertently hit homes in the neighborhood below. “One even speaks of a projectile falling on the Constituent Assembly,” he added, “but that is the exception. Rome has not been bombed.”
Why, then, did Oudinot appear to accept the charge? It was, argued the French envoy, a ploy aimed at instilling fear in the Romans. If he promised not to bomb them, he would only encourage further resistance and so cause more useless bloodshed.12
Notwithstanding Corcelle’s denials, bombs continued to fall on Rome. The makeshift hospitals overflowed with the wounded and the dying, as the constant cannon fire gradually began to penetrate the city’s thick walls.
“Nothing would be more welcome for me,” said Ugo Bassi, “than to die for Garibaldi.” It looked like the bearded monk would get his wish, for he was constantly in the midst of the fighting on Janiculum Hill, assisting the wounded and the dying. He rode a white horse, a red shirt over his black priestly tunic, his long dark hair flowing beneath his distinctive broad-brimmed black hat, armed only with the cross around his neck. “Italy,” Bassi told the men, “needs martyrs, many martyrs, before it can be free and great.”13
On June 26 Garibaldi was surprised to see his twenty-seven-year-old South American wife, Anita, appear in the doorway of his headquarters. Although he had told her not to come, she had left safety in Nice to join him. By the next day, although both Garibaldi and Anita somehow escaped unharmed, cannon fire had reduced Garibaldi’s headquarters to rubble.
With the situation seemingly hopeless, the Hero of Two Worlds proposed a new plan. The Roman Republic’s political leadership and military, he thought, should abandon Rome and continue their battle in the nearby mountains. Mazzini rejected the idea. It was in Rome, he insisted, that they needed to make their last stand. Their martyrdom would serve as a testament to the nobility of their cause, an inspiration to those who would follow them in fighting for freedom.
Angered by the rebuff, Garibaldi ordered his legionnaires to leave Janiculum Hill and follow him across the Tiber to the eastern side of the city. Those left behind to face the French assault alone were horror-struck. It took the pleading of Luciano Manara, the young head of the Lombard volunteers, to persuade Garibaldi to return to the front line the next day.14
June 29 honored Rome’s two patron saints, Peter and Paul, and nothing, it seemed, could stop the Romans from celebrating. At eight p.m. a huge storm erupted, the thunder initially indistinguishable from the cannon blasts. But the torrential rains soon ended, and the festa got under way. Above St. Peter’s Basilica, fireworks in Italy’s three colors illuminated the massive dome. Torches were then lit atop the cupola. Throughout the city, Romans placed candles at their windows. In the piazzas, military bands played, although few others ventured into the streets.15
Romans grasped at any rumor that suggested help might be on the way. According to one, a joint British-American flotilla had arrived at Civitavecchia, aimed at blocking the French supply route. Another reported that a cholera epidemic had broken out among the French troops and that even General Oudinot had been stricken. But for the men on Janiculum Hill, there was little solace. Constant nighttime bombardments made sleep impossible. One comrade after another crumpled to the ground, hit by bullets or shrapnel. Wagons creaked by carrying the latest mutilated bodies. The overwhelming French superiority in arms and in fresh men became clearer by the day, as did their own lack of ammunition, food, and water.16
At two a.m. on the night following Rome’s patron saints’ day, the French finally poured through the breaches in the wall. With bayonets fixed and muskets firing, they charged at Rome’s weary defenders. In the darkness, amid the mud and the smoke-filled air, it was hard to tell friend from foe. Garibaldi led his men, brandishing his heavy saber, soon dripping with blood. French troops surrounded Villa Spada, the command post of the young Lombard volunteers. As the encircled men stood at the windows shooting their rifles, many were struck by incoming fire. Others were crushed as the masonry above them collapsed, shattered by French cannon blasts. The previous day the idealistic leader of the Lombard legion, Luciano Manara, had sent a letter to a friend. “They will win,” he wrote, “because materially forty large guns aimed at a single point demolish and destroy. But every bit of rubble will be defended. Every ruin that covers the cadavers of our men is mounted by others who die rather than surrender.” He concluded, “Rome is great at this moment, as are its memories, great as the monuments that adorn it and that the barbarian is bombarding.” In a second letter that he was somehow able to send off amid the slaughter, he wrote, “We must die to bring ’48 to a serious conclusion. For our example to be effective, we must die!”17
On June 30, as the bearded Manara stood peering at enemy positions through his telescope, a bullet opened a hole in his chest. “I am a dead man,” he muttered as he fell to the ground.
Garibaldi led one last desperate charge of his legionnaires into the French lines and somehow again escaped unscathed, but the man who had so long stood at his side was not so lucky. Fragments of an exploding bomb punctured the left side of Andrea Aguyar’s head. Garibaldi’s black bodyguard and companion would die within hours, his body placed alongside Manara’s in one of Rome’s overcrowded hospitals. The next morning a truce was declared, allowing both sides to gather up their dead and wounded.18
* * *
—
ATOP CAPITOLINE HILL, THE men of the Constituent Assembly watched as Mazzini came to the lectern. In title, Mazzini bore no greater authority than his two fellow members of the triumvirate, yet as all knew, it was Mazzini alone who had guided the republic’s course. In the president’s chair sat Charles Napoleon, cousin of the man whose armies were poised to conquer Rome. Although Mazzini’s face was unusually pallid, he betrayed no other sign of tension. The heroism of Rome’s defenders, he told the men, had won the world’s admiration, but, he admitted, they could not hold the French off much longer.
They had a fateful decision to make, Mazzini said, for only three choices remained. The first, he told them, was surrender, a prospect he dismissed as too shameful to contemplate. The second was to stay and fight. After all, they had spent weeks building the barricades for just such an eventuality. In Rome’s narrow streets, the French could not use their artillery and would have to fight house to house against an armed population. This offered one honorable alternative. The other, and the one, he told the Assembly, he hoped they would adopt, was a version of the path that Garibaldi had urged a few days earlier. The Assembly, along with the government and its military, could regroup in the provinces. There they would enlist the support of the local population and continue the battle for freedom.
Murmurs of unease and unhappiness greeted the prophet’s remarks. Someone suggested that Garibaldi be summoned to tell them what he thought, and so a messenger was sent to get him. Before long the Hero of Two Worlds strode in to excited shouts and prolonged applause, his mud-encrusted clothes torn, his poncho soaked with blood, his face covered in dirt congealed with sweat. “He shook his thick blond hair,” recalled one observer, “like a lion who senses he has been wounded….His expression was, rather than sad, fierce.” Asked how they could fight on, Garibaldi replied that they would have to evacuate Trastevere, the neighborhood on the French side of the river, and blow up all the bridges. That this would only delay the inevitable was clear to all. Asked about the possibility of continuing the fight through the barricaded streets of the city, Garibaldi replied that the plan would never work. The French would not risk street-to-street combat but would simply set up their cannons closer and closer to the city center, wreaking ever-greater carnage until the city capitulated. Romans, said Garibaldi, had already done all that a heroic people could do. He added his support for Mazzini’s proposal: the government and the army should take to the hills.19
Mazzini’s influence over the Assembly had dramatically weakened. His reputation as someone all too willing to sacrifice other people’s lives to his grandiose theories was now again much on people’s minds. To take to the hills—and who knew exactly where?—with four enemy armies on their trail, with a dispirited and depleted military, with few munitions, little food, and no money, expecting to be supported by impoverished peasants, seemed foolhardy, if not suicidal.
Twenty-eight-year-old Enrico Cernuschi, son of a wealthy Piedmontese family, a member of the Assembly and the man in charge of the barricade defense, rose to speak. “You are well aware,” he began, “how devoted I have been to defending this unhappy land, this people. But now”—here his voice began to break as he struggled to keep composed—“I am the one to declare that the French now have their path clear, and that Rome, this good people…after all its efforts, must resign itself to being occupied.” As tears flowed from Cernuschi’s eyes, many of the deputies began to weep with him. “For several minutes,” recalled one of the men there that day, “nothing could be heard in that hall but stifled sobbing.”20
The resolution approved by the Constituent Assembly and posted throughout the city was brief:
In the name of God and the People
The Roman Constituent Assembly ends a defense that has become impossible, and remains at its post. The Triumvirate is charged with the execution of the present Decree.21
The Romans would not surrender, but they would no longer fight. Within hours another notice appeared on Rome’s walls, announcing the triumvirate’s resignation. After praising the Romans for their courage in fighting for freedom, their new message to the Romans concluded with a typically Mazzinian plea:
A cloud rises over you today. It will not last long. Keep constantly in mind your rights and the faith for which so many of the best among you, armed apostles, have died. God, who has gathered up their blood, is your guarantor. God wants Rome to be free and to be great; and it will be. Yours is not defeat. It is the victory of the martyrs for whom burial is the stairway to heaven.22
* * *
—
THE NUMBER OF THOSE who died defending Rome from the French attack would never be known. Perhaps it was a thousand, although the figure cited by the French general in charge of the assault was 1,700 to 1,800. Many more were injured. The French, eager to minimize their own losses, officially counted 162 dead and 842 wounded.23
With Mazzini having resigned, the task of notifying Oudinot of the Assembly’s decision to end all resistance fell to General Roselli, head of the Roman Republic’s army. Roselli sent Oudinot a brief note, along with a copy of the Assembly’s resolution. “I will immediately stop all hostilities,” wrote Roselli, “as I hope you too, General, will do as well.” He added that representatives from the city government would come to French headquarters that evening to discuss arrangements.24
The four-member delegation arrived at French headquarters outside the wall after midnight. Oudinot complimented them on the valor with which the Romans had fought, and he expressed regret at the damage and loss of life that had resulted. His demands, he said, were simple: The French army must be free to enter the city peacefully and to occupy those positions it judged useful. The delegates replied by saying they would consult with the city council and return the next evening.25
The next day, still harboring some hope that the French might content themselves with ensuring that the Austrians and other armies were kept out of Rome, the city council came up with its own additional terms of surrender. The Romans would be allowed to retain some of their armed forces, and these would work in concert with the French in ensuring public order. The National Guard would also be allowed to remain. In addition, the French would guarantee “individual freedom and property for all” and not involve itself in the city’s “internal administration.”26
