The Pope Who Would Be King, page 31
The third member of the commission, forty-four-year-old cardinal Prince Lodovico Altieri, came from an old, aristocratic Roman family. Appointed archbishop at age thirty, he had served as papal nuncio to Vienna before, at thirty-five, becoming a cardinal. More easygoing than Della Genga, and more open to change, he was viewed warily by the Austrians. “Cardinal Altieri,” Esterházy told Schwarzenberg after singing the praises of the other two members of the new commission, “most assuredly represents the other side of the coin. I greatly regretted his nomination, as did Cardinal Antonelli and all those of good sense.” But they need not worry, remarked the Austrian ambassador. Altieri would have no influence, given the firm hand of Cardinal Della Genga, who knew what needed to be done and who would have the support of Cardinal Vannicelli.29
If Esterházy was pleased, Rayneval was not. On learning of the appointments, he went to complain to the pope. Curiously, rather than defend his choices, Pius blamed them on the lack of any good men for the job. In any case, he added, what had been done was done. “I did not insist,” Rayneval recounted to Tocqueville. “Besides, I sympathized with all his embarrassments and with all the uncertainties that weighed on this upright and well-intentioned but vacillating and weak soul.”30
“You French,” said the pope, “you are always in such a hurry. You want to move too quickly. We Romans are different. We take our time, and sometimes, I admit, we take a great deal of time. But this shouldn’t frighten you. Be patient.”31
In Paris, Tocqueville read the reports from Italy with mounting anger. “It is clear,” he complained to Corcelle, “that they are playing with you and they are laughing at us. The Roman court is making a fool of us with its promises, as if we were children, while by faits accomplis it resumes all its old abuses. The pope himself, believe me, is not being sincere.” Perhaps, acknowledged Tocqueville, Pius thought that what he was doing was for the good. “But toward us,” the foreign minister concluded, “he has that variety of insincerity that men who are good but weak have to compensate for—and to use their amiable appearances as much as possible to cover up for—the damage their actions have caused.”
Tocqueville had finally had enough. The French could abide no further humiliation. If, after all they had done for him, the pope continued to refuse French requests, he vowed, he would publicly denounce the pontiff to all of Europe and to the whole Catholic world. “Voilà,” he told his old friend Corcelle, “for my part this is what I would do—alone from the tribune as minister or as a simple deputy—rather than suffer the shame and the ridicule that they are preparing for us.”32
THE GOVERNING COMMISSION OF THE STATE
IN THE NAME OF HIS HOLINESS
HAPPILY REIGNING
TO ALL THE SUBJECTS OF HIS TEMPORAL DOMINION
Divine Providence, through the unvanquished, glorious Catholic armies, has rescued the peoples of all the Papal States, and especially those of the City of Rome, seat and center of our most holy Religion, from the stormy vortex of the blindest and darkest passions. Thus, faithful to the promise announced in His venerated Motu proprio, dated from Gaeta the 17th of this past month, the HOLY FATHER now sends us among you with full powers in order to repair, in the best manner, and as quickly as possible, the grave damage wrought by the anarchy and the despotism of a few.
The proclamation, dated August 1, 1849, from the Quirinal Palace, signed by the three recently appointed cardinals, announced the return of papal government to Rome. Within hours, virtually all the copies posted along the Corso had been ripped from its walls, a fact the cardinals blamed on “the bile of the democrats.”
Romans dubbed the cardinals’ commission the “red triumvirate,” a reference not only to the color of their robes but to their presumed thirst for the blood of those who would oppose them. People had hoped that there would be at least one layman among them. Instead, as many saw it, the pope had sent a group of retrograde clerics bent on bringing back the Inquisition. For their first public act on August 1, the cardinals had intended to go in solemn procession to St. Peter’s Basilica, but both French army officials and the city’s highest-ranking clergymen advised against it. Rome, they told the cardinals, had not yet been sufficiently “purged.”1
The next day the commission announced its first decisions, nullifying all government measures put into effect since Rossi’s assassination. It brought back the ecclesiastical tribunals, the courts presided over by priests that were so dreaded by the Romans. All government employees hired since November 15 were dismissed. All who had refused to serve the Roman Republic were welcomed back to work. A special council would determine which, if any, of those who had remained on the job during the republic would be allowed to stay. A day later the cardinals announced that the currency used by the Roman Republic would be recognized at only a fraction of its face value.2
Although the repressive powers of the church are most closely identified with the Inquisition, what most alarmed the Romans was the decision to bring back the cardinal vicar’s tribunal. The Inquisition dealt mainly with disciplining the clergy. The vicariate tribunal dealt in good part with the people of Rome. With the power of the papal police behind it, and aided by the watchful eye of the lower clergy, the tribunal struck deep into people’s private lives.3
Fearful that the new cardinals’ commission would trigger disorder, on August 3 the French army made a great show of force. The city again took on a warlike appearance, with cavalry and infantry encamped overnight in the main squares, horses saddled, and guns loaded. The French wheeled three large pieces of artillery into the Piazza del Popolo, positioning them so that they aimed down the main streets that radiated out into the city. All this, observed the newly arrived Austrian consul, “did nothing to improve public attitudes.” Nor did the cardinals’ first meeting with the French generals go well. The Frenchmen knew no Italian and were surprised at the cardinals’ lack of fluency in French. For their part, the cardinals, offended by the generals’ failure to kiss their rings, thought them boorish.4
“If the Quirinal was not guarded by French soldiers,” reported Rome’s London Times correspondent, “it would not be safe for one hour. That unpopularity will be increased a hundredfold for all that may emanate from Gaeta, when it is seen that nothing in the shape of a benevolent promise can be extracted from the Pope.” The British correspondent noted a change in local attitudes toward the French military. Before the cardinals’ arrival, the Romans had viewed the French force as an extension of the pope’s. Now they realized that only the French army stood “between them and the vengeance of the Cardinals.”5
Tension between the French and the new papal government kept growing. The cardinals were eager to round up those they held responsible for the Roman Republic. This, Tocqueville was convinced, would be disastrous. If political trials were conducted under the protection of French troops, he warned Corcelle, “we would be dishonored before the entire world.” He ordered Corcelle and Oudinot to make sure that no such trials were held.
But the persecutions soon began. On the night of August 8, two papal policemen barged into the home of Pietro Ripari, the doctor in charge of medical services for one of the military divisions of the republic. Imprisoned, he demanded to know what the charges were against him. They were based, he was told, on his correspondence with Mazzini, dating to the time they were both in Switzerland in 1848, and on his writings critical of the pope. Moved from prison to prison and subjected to a series of trials, the doctor was finally sentenced, two years later, to twenty years in jail for “illicit epistolary correspondence.” The pope’s dungeons were full of such unfortunate souls.6
Tocqueville was furious. The pope’s refusal to agree to even modest reforms “is causing me,” he confessed to Corcelle, “an irritation so great that I am unable to overcome it….We have sacrificed money and soldiers for him. We have placed our worldwide reputation for liberalism in jeopardy. We have exposed ourselves to a revolution in which we could have all perished and, after all that, they are refusing us, can that be?”
France, he reminded his envoy, had had three goals in intervening in Rome. They had accomplished the first two: ensuring that France exercised its proper influence in Italy, and ensuring the pope’s independence. But they could not leave Rome without accomplishing their third: the people of the Papal States had to be governed by “serious liberal institutions.” France’s honor, insisted Tocqueville, demanded it. “It would have been a thousand times better never to have undertaken this enterprise,” he declared, “than to abandon it without having obtained the necessary result.”7
As the first reports of repression came in, Tocqueville wrote General Oudinot, upbraiding him for failing to prevent it. “All the news I am receiving here from Italy,” wrote the French foreign minister,
convinces me more and more that you have not understood…your role since the restoration of papal authority in Rome. You seem to believe that there now remains nothing more to do than be a passive spectator to the acts of the Pontifical government….I see from the newspaper and from correspondence that with your concurrence or at least under your eyes the institutions that have been denounced by all Europe, such as the Inquisition and the detestable jurisdiction of the tribunal of the cardinal vicar, have been reestablished.8
What Tocqueville did not tell Oudinot was that on the same day he wrote his letter, he had finally succeeded in getting Louis Napoleon to have him dismissed. “Every single day for the past month,” he informed Corcelle, “I have demanded General Oudinot’s recall, and only the force of inertia has kept him despite me. Today I declared that I would refuse to conduct this affair any longer if he were not recalled. They have finally agreed.”9
Early that same morning, August 4, Oudinot, not yet knowing of his dismissal and feeling the time had come to finally meet Pius, arrived in Gaeta aboard a French ship. With a benevolent smile, the pope embraced the general and praised him for all he had done for the papacy and for the church.10
The next day Oudinot had a long conversation with the pontiff. Had the pope had a decent army in the first place, the general told him, his prime minister would never have been assassinated and the whole sad subsequent series of events would never have taken place. Oudinot offered his own services, and those of his senior staff, to advise the pope on how to put together a modern military. At the same time, he urged him to return quickly to Rome.
Pius demurred. The public mood there, he feared, remained too agitated for him to go back anytime soon. Again he bemoaned the Romans’ ingratitude. Perhaps, he suggested, he would first move to Castel Gandolfo, the castle nestled in the hills outside Rome where the popes had long had a summer residence.11
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IN PARIS, REPORTS OF the repression in Rome sparked anger in the National Assembly. In response to the deputies’ demand for assurances that the goal of the French expedition was going to be met and that a medieval theocracy was not being restored, Tocqueville reluctantly got up to reply. Throughout his remarks, deputies of the left constantly interrupted him.
The French, said the foreign minister, were at that very moment in the midst of negotiations with the pope, aimed at ensuring that he retain the liberal institutions that he had earlier created. In light of their delicacy, he told the deputies, it would be inappropriate to discuss them publicly. Loud ironic laughter greeted these remarks from the left, while voices of approval rose from the right.
“I am authorized not only to believe, but to say in the most formal possible manner,” concluded the foreign minister, rattled perhaps less by the jeers from the left than by his own discomfort at so brazenly lying to them, “that these are the firm intentions of the Holy Father. What Catholic, what man of good will could doubt the word of Pius IX? Based both on his firm will and on ours, we can affirm that our expedition in Italy will not lead to a blind and implacable restoration.”12
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DEEP IN THE APENNINE MOUNTAINS, it looked like the end might be near for Garibaldi and his men. Abandoning his earlier plan of establishing a base to the north of Rome, Garibaldi had fixed his sights on Venice, the last part of Italy still holding out against the Austrians. As the weeks passed, his army had dwindled. The sick, the injured, the hungry, and the discouraged stayed behind or drifted away.
In late July, Garibaldi had led his men to the tiny mountain principality of San Marino, cutting his own trail through thick woods and rushing waters, with Austrian soldiers close behind. There he released the men from their vow to fight to the death with him. “Remember,” Garibaldi told them, “that it is better to die than to live as slaves to the foreigner.” Leaving most of the men behind, he then set out with his pregnant wife and three hundred of his followers, still hoping to reach Venice. Through the mediation of the San Marino authorities, the Austrian army, camped nearby, offered to allow the remaining men to go home if they would throw down their arms. Nine hundred of them agreed to do so. They would soon come to regret the faith they had placed in Austrian honor.
When they reached the Adriatic coast, Garibaldi and his followers overpowered an Austrian outpost, seized thirteen fishing boats, and set sail for Venice. Having begun life as a sailor, Garibaldi felt at home on the sea, but before long the speedier Austrian warships caught up with them, guns firing. Most of the boats were seized, and the men were sent in chains to a nearby Austrian fort. Miraculously, Garibaldi, his wife Anita, the monk Ugo Bassi, and Ciceruacchio and his two sons escaped.
Making land in a desolate part of the coast north of Ferrara, Garibaldi decided it best if they broke into smaller groups. He and Anita headed toward Ravenna, hoping to find help there. On the third day of their flight, with the Austrians on their heels, Anita, seven months pregnant, could go no farther. Weakened by the frenzied flight through the mountains, she had grown feverish. A day later she died, in her womb their fourth child, never to be born. Distraught, Garibaldi pushed on. With the aid of sympathizers along the way, he made his way across the peninsula to the Tuscan coast and from there to safety in Genoa.13
Garibaldi with his dying wife, Anita
As Garibaldi was making his escape, the men who had laid down their arms in San Marino were marched in chains into Bologna. A local diarist recorded the sight: “At noon today, the sixth, in the midst of a troop of infantry and cavalry, the unfortunates who were part of Garibaldi’s militia began to arrive….The poor men are all torn up, shoeless and reduced to such a state as to move even the most unfeeling to compassion….No one knows what their fate will be.”14
Ugo Bassi had succeeded in reaching the town of Comacchio, along the coast east of Ferrara. There a local informer reported the monk to the police, who handed him over to the local Austrian commander.15
The arrest of the monk Ugo Bassi
For the Austrian general in Bologna, the famed preacher, reputed to be Garibaldi’s chaplain, was a prize catch. Frustrated that Garibaldi had eluded him, the general was determined to take his revenge. Using the bogus charge that the Barnabite monk had been found carrying arms, and without according him the benefit of a trial, the Austrian sentenced him to death. On August 8 soldiers hoisted the manacled Bassi onto a military wagon, and the procession began. A priest walked on either side of him, as a drummer pounded out a funereal beat. When they reached the site of the execution, Bassi got down on his knees to pray. A soldier came to put a blindfold over his eyes, but the monk asked that a priest put it on him instead, so it would be a priest’s touch that the monk would last feel. The officer in charge raised his sword high. Bassi’s voice could be heard, in prayer, as the Austrian lowered his arm. It was a moment that the patriotic monk from Bologna, who had braved French bullets to care for the wounded and bring God’s words to Rome’s weary defenders, had long envisioned. He crumpled to the ground as bullets pierced his body.16
Ciceruacchio, Rome’s popular hero, met an even crueler fate. Together with his two sons, he was captured on August 9. With them were five other garibaldini, including a young priest who had, along with Ugo Bassi, ministered to the wounded and the dying. The next night the Austrian soldiers marched their eight prisoners, in four pairs, hands bound to each other, to the place of their execution. The Austrians made no pretense of a trial. Ciceruacchio, who was tied to his younger son, Lorenzo, begged the Croatian officer in charge to spare the boy—he was only thirteen years old. With an ironic smile, the officer instead ordered his men to shoot the child first. Only then did they aim their bullets at Ciceruacchio and his older son, Luigi.17
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IN GAETA, IN YET another effort to persuade the pope to embrace a path of reform, Rayneval brought Pio Nono a letter that Tocqueville had recently sent his ambassador, and read it aloud to him. It was unsparing in describing France’s frustrations with the pope and warned of dire consequences should he fail to follow French advice.
“You don’t trust me,” said the agitated pontiff, interrupting Rayneval, “and it is not fair. My language has not changed. What I have promised, I will do. Why suppose that I would fail to honor my commitments?”
