The Pope Who Would Be King, page 32
“France,” replied Rayneval, “has waited a long time and has yet to see any result….The old laws are being reestablished without any indication that they will soon be revised. Is it any surprise that the unhappiness and disappointment in Paris are so great?”
Spain, Austria, and Naples, the pope responded, were all pleased with the course he had taken. Why, he asked, should France alone find fault?
“France,” said the ambassador, “risked its government’s existence to save your Holiness.” The French government had to answer to its people. “To whom,” asked Rayneval, “do the King of Naples or the Emperor of Austria have to answer?”
“All in good time,” said the pope.
Rayneval would not let the matter rest. “I don’t see it that way,” he countered. “Where I come from, when a new power is organized, there is nothing more pressing than announcing what it plans to do. We believe that uncertainty is the worst condition to be in when one wants to calm people’s spirits, and we have quite a bit of experience in this regard. So we have been waiting for Your Holiness to lay this out from the very first day.”
“There, where you say, Monsieur, that we should change our attitude,” replied the pope. “Voilà! Your threats, your intimidation. Just because you have thirty thousand men behind you, do you think you can impose your will on me?”
“Your Holiness is mistaken,” replied Rayneval, trying to cool the pope’s temper. “We had begun by asking you for a constitution—”
“And if you had persisted,” interjected the pope, “I would never return to Rome.”
“We did not persist, but we came to content ourselves with what Your Holiness himself suggested to us. Is it possible to be any more moderate than that?”
Rayneval was growing ever more discouraged, as his report back to Paris made clear. “The history of these past years,” he observed,
shows us many examples of the complete uselessness of employing violent means with the pope. The pope, in these cases, displays the quintessential attitude of a priest. In saying nothing, he says everything. One exhausts oneself in vain. He remains unmoved and, in the end, one is forced to compromise. We have no hold on him. Any other sovereign, once outside of his states, would no longer be anything. But this one loses little if he remains in exile. Our only means of action is persuasion. We can tell him of the dangers, and urge him to avoid them, but from the moment when we seem to want to impose on him, we can regard our cause as lost.18
* * *
—
WHILE THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR sparred with the pope in Gaeta, and as the executions were running their grisly course in the northern provinces of the Papal States, a change was under way in Rome. Oudinot was replaced by the fifty-nine-year-old general Louis de Rostolan. It was Rostolan who, the previous month, as head of the city’s military government, had tried to quell the violence there. He was, an unenthusiastic Tocqueville told Corcelle, “a man of little consequence, it is true, but precise, punctual, and honest. Lacking anyone better, that will suffice, I hope.”19
Tocqueville instructed the new army head to follow Corcelle’s advice in all political matters, but this would not be easy to do, for Corcelle was bedridden. “My bowels have hardly any blood in them anymore,” Corcelle reported to Tocqueville with some satisfaction in mid-August. He wrote to advise the French foreign minister that, following his doctor’s advice, he was planning to move from Mola di Gaeta south to convalesce in Castellamare, on a point of the gulf of Naples where the heat was less oppressive. There he would be nursed by his wife, granddaughter of General Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution.
Pius received a rather different account of Corcelle’s indisposition. Although the French envoy was said to be suffering from inflammatory dysentery and cerebral fever, someone in the French legation informed the pope that the envoy’s sudden departure was in fact caused by a mental, not a physical breakdown. It was not the first time, it was said, that this had happened to him.20
In mid-August, when Gaeta’s four-power conference reconvened, Rayneval found himself fighting a lonely battle. Having abandoned the earlier French demand for a constitution, the ambassador urged that the pope at least create a lay council with authority to set taxes. Antonelli rejected the idea out of hand. Such a council, he explained, risked triggering “all the excesses and all the dangers that had led to the exile in Gaeta.” Esterházy voiced strong support for Antonelli, as did Martínez, Spain’s ambassador. Martínez was one of Spain’s most prominent men of letters and had earlier been considered a political progressive. But for the Spaniard, the Roman question was unique, to be viewed in purely religious terms. A pope could not govern as a constitutional monarch. It was the church that properly ruled in the Papal States, and so laymen could never play more than a minor, supporting role. The combination of Martínez’s geniality, literary sensibility, and clear devotion to the papal cause had made him one of Pius’s favorites, and his support helped stiffen the pope’s resolve.21
Rayneval was distraught. He had assured Tocqueville that, in compensating the French for his refusal to retain a constitution in Rome, the pope would allow this one fig leaf, the tax-setting council. Now this, too, was being rebuffed.
“The game is up,” lamented Rayneval. “If they leave us some time to complain, it is only a courtesy.”22
* * *
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IN ROME, ALL THE REPRESSIVE elements of the old papal theocracy were being brought back. In mid-August the cardinals announced the creation of a council to investigate all employees of the government, police, courts, and public administration to determine who among them merited punishment due to their participation in the “past political upheavals.” It would also investigate all those on public pensions to determine whose payments should be stopped. Similar councils were established throughout the Papal States. The cardinals also reintroduced tight censorship, aimed at “preventing the damage that the periodical press, guided by a partisan spirit or infused with democratic passions, could cause to the public morality of these people, and to public safety.”23
New government ministers were also being appointed. Of these the most important, and the only one with real power, was the man named minister of internal affairs, in charge of the police. For this the pope had brought back the infamous “Monsignor Bulldog,” Domenico Savelli, the widely despised former police head. “A hard man, mean, vindictive,” as one unsympathetic chronicler put it, the bulldog immediately came into conflict with the French. “An unfortunate choice,” commented Rayneval. Within days of his appointment, Savelli was trying to get the French army’s help in hunting down the former members of the Constituent Assembly.24
On August 23 the cardinals made a new public announcement. The crimes committed against the Catholic religion, its priests, and its august head in the recent rebellion, they told the Romans, had remained unpunished too long. They were creating a special commission to oversee the trials of all those charged, under the supervision of Monsignor Savelli.25 The mood in Rome was gloomy, as Colonel Niel observed in a letter to his brother back in France:
Political affairs are going poorly. The streets of Rome are paved with Capuchins, Dominicans, of priests in all kinds of outfits, whose haughty manners grate on the army. They are in every public place and are far from having the decent attitude of our priests in France. These are for the most part political men. They are clamoring for their old positions. On the other hand…the immense majority of the lay population is strongly opposed to the government of the priests and views the return of their political influence with disgust.26
Convinced that the pope and his entourage were taking them for fools, and in danger of appearing to the world—and to their own people—as allies of the Austrians in restoring autocracy to Rome, the French cabinet could hold back no longer. At a mid-August meeting, the French prime minister, who had long had doubts about the wisdom of their military mission in Rome, reviewed the latest outrages. The pope had promised that Rome’s governing commission would be primarily composed of laymen. Instead, he had appointed three cardinals. On first receiving the French general and his senior staff in Rome, the cardinals had not even bothered to put on their formal scarlet robes, and they had made Oudinot and his men wait an unconscionable amount of time outside their door before allowing them in. When the French officers finally were admitted, the cardinals had greeted them coldly. The cardinals had then begun issuing their orders without consulting Oudinot, as the French had demanded. And then, in one of its first acts, the newly restored papal government announced it was bringing back the Inquisition. French honor, said Barrot, demanded that they suffer such abuse no longer.
Following the prime minister’s tirade, Tocqueville read the cabinet a letter he had recently received from Lord Palmerston. The British foreign minister expressed doubts about whether the two governments could continue to collaborate, if the word of the French government—which had claimed it sent its army to Rome to defend freedom—meant so little. The Roman expedition, already a huge embarrassment, now threatened France’s alliance with Britain, the centerpiece of French foreign policy. The French had shed much blood and spent an enormous amount of money to restore the pope to Rome, said Barrot, but rather than show his gratitude, Pius had treated them abysmally. The time had come to end the charade.27
Alarmed, Alfred de Falloux, French minister of education and religion and fervent papal defender, urged his colleagues not to take any precipitous action. When the meeting adjourned, postponing a final decision, Falloux rushed to see the papal nuncio. If he had not attended the cabinet meeting that day, he told the horrified nuncio, the decision to withdraw the French army from Rome would certainly have been made. As it was, he added, the president’s good sense alone had saved them. Only Louis Napoleon, and to a lesser extent Tocqueville, he said, had any understanding of Roman affairs. As for the rest of the ministers, they knew neither “what the Pope is or what Religion is.” He could not hold them off much longer. Falloux told the nuncio:
For the good of the church, I beg you to write to Antonelli to have him show at least some deference to France’s envoys and, even more importantly, to indicate what political paths the Holy Father wants to follow. Whatever then happens will happen, but for heaven’s sake, have him say it publicly and soon. If not, the government will feel obliged to take a measure that will be most grievous for every Catholic heart, and ruinous for the Holy Father’s temporal government.28
* * *
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WITH CORCELLE STILL CONVALESCING, Rayneval continued to meet with the pope but had little to show for it. Typical was Pius’s response to the ambassador’s complaint about the large number of arrests of the pope’s political opponents. “In Rome, they think that [the arrests] are so numerous,” said Pius, “but it’s just the opposite, and I myself complain that there haven’t been more.” Far from excessive rigor, the problem was overindulgence. “The course of justice,” complained the pope, “is at a standstill. Crimes remain unpunished. The men who have acted most openly against me walk freely through the streets of Rome….What really should alarm us is the complete absence of repression and ensuring impunity for all crimes. In a situation like this,” asked the pontiff, “can I offer an amnesty? Can I dream of returning to Rome?”
“The pope,” recalled Rayneval, “was animated, and I recognized…clear signs of the feelings of bitterness that were beginning to get the better of him. He is getting tired of our demands. Our complaints are irritating him. He is no longer on the path that leads to concessions, but rather to resistance….He has gone so far as to let it be known that as long as the French do not change their attitude, the pope would not return to Rome.” Yet, wrote Rayneval, with the cardinals eager for revenge and the other foreign diplomats lining up behind Austria, “the pope is our only support. Besides him we have no one on whom we can count. He was always, deep in his heart, more French than Austrian. Soon,” predicted the French ambassador, “it will be the reverse.”29
As Rayneval left the pope’s quarters and made his way back to Rome, a French colonel was also headed there. He carried with him an ultimatum from Louis Napoleon.
Falloux had persuaded the French president to delay the army’s withdrawal from Rome, but neither Louis Napoleon nor his prime minister was willing to leave matters as they were. It was the only time, recalled Barrot, that he had ever seen the normally placid Napoleon so emotional, angry at the pope for embarrassing him. Following that dramatic cabinet meeting, the president decided to deliver an ultimatum in the form of a letter addressed to his aide-de-camp, Colonel Edgar Ney, to be brought to General Rostolan in Rome.
The French Republic did not send an army to Rome to extinguish Italian freedom but, on the contrary, to regulate it in order to preserve it from its excesses, and to give it a solid basis in returning to the pontifical throne the prince who first boldly placed himself at the head of all useful reforms….It pains me to learn that the benevolent intentions of the Holy Father, as well as our own action, have been thwarted by the presence of hostile passions and influences of those who would instead like to make banishment and tyranny the basis for his return….Make clear to the general [Rostolan] on my behalf that in no case can he allow any act to take place under the shadow of our flag that can alter the character of our intervention. I would have the pope’s temporal power resume in this way: general amnesty, secularization of the administration, and a liberal government.
The president also used his letter to complain of the poor way that the three cardinals in Rome were treating French officers and their lack of appreciation for the great sacrifices made by French soldiers. Ever conscious that his own greatest strength lay in the power of his family name, Louis Napoleon cast himself in his uncle’s image:
When our armies made their way through Europe, they left everywhere, in their wake, the destruction of the abuses of feudalism and the seeds of freedom. It will not be said that, in 1849, a French army could act in a different direction and lead to different results.1
At a cabinet meeting the morning after Ney left Paris with the letter, the prime minister passed a copy to Falloux. Realizing the enormous storm it would provoke if it were made public, the Catholic minister asked who in Rome would get to see it. The letter, Louis Napoleon assured him, was meant for General Rostolan alone.
“Well, then, Monsieur le Président,” asked Falloux, “you promise that it will never be published?”
“Oh! No! Never!” replied Louis Napoleon, who had already given Ney instructions to do exactly that.2
Tocqueville himself only learned of the letter at that same meeting. He wrote to alert Corcelle: “For several days all the news from Italy has been disastrous….They tell of the people’s extreme discontent with the papal government and of a perhaps even greater anger against us.” The result, reported the foreign minister, had been two cabinet meetings where he had found himself trying to keep his colleagues from acting precipitously. “They spoke of nothing less,” Tocqueville recounted, “than refusing to recognize the papal authorities in Rome and in the provinces that we occupy.”3
On his arrival in Rome on August 27, Colonel Ney showed the letter to Rayneval—himself having just returned to Rome from Gaeta that day—and informed him that the president wanted it published in Rome’s official newspaper. The ambassador immediately recognized its importance. “It will produce a profound impression,” Rayneval advised Paris, adding, “It is difficult to predict all the consequences this publication will have.”4
The letter did not appear in the newspaper the next day, for General Rostolan refused to permit it. Given the tense state of public opinion, as well as the widespread discontent among his own troops, the general worried, it would be too dangerous to have the letter published.5
Rebuffed by the general, Colonel Ney made copies on his own, so that by the next day the letter was circulating throughout the city. No one, it seemed, was talking of anything else. Having gotten a copy themselves, the cardinals of the governing commission summoned Rayneval and told him that the letter not only offended the pope’s dignity but risked stirring unrest among the people of the Papal States. If the French went ahead and published it anyway, they threatened, they would leave Rome and move the papal government to a part of the Papal States where the flag of a friendlier power flew.6
By the next day, as more illicit copies of the letter spread through Rome, papal police raided the city’s cafés, destroying the copies they found, and searched for the clandestine printer. With the French president’s rejection of the pope’s plans now made public, reported the French newspaper Débats, a break between the pope and France seemed unavoidable. The correspondent speculated that instead of returning to Rome, the pope would likely move to one of the cities of his realm under Austrian control, perhaps Bologna or Ancona.7
Rayneval returned to Gaeta. His first report back to Paris struck a dark note:
Experience has counted for nothing. The real needs of society have counted for nothing. France’s advice has counted for nothing….The men the cardinals surround themselves with would render the most perfect institutions fruitless….In Rome, where prominent, well-educated, distinguished lawyers are to be found in large numbers, they went and found a perfect unknown to be Minister of Justice. For Minister of Public Works they chose a contractor who had built a bridge, for Minister of Finance an accountant. This is what they have in mind by putting laymen in government.
It was now Esterházy who had the pope’s ear. The Austrians had further strengthened their position a week earlier, when Venice, the last holdout against the Austrian army, finally surrendered, succumbing to prolonged bombardment, famine, and cholera. “Repression,” Rayneval reported, “that is the key word for the Roman policy….They are persuaded here that everything is going badly because they have not executed enough people, nor imprisoned enough, nor punished enough.”8
