Mrs. G. Gretton

Accession of Pius IX.—The amnesty—His unbounded popularity—His reforms and concessions—Disasters entailed by the French Revolution—The encyclical of the 29th April—Revulsion of feeling—The Mazzinians gain ground—Austrian intrigues—Assassination of Count Rossi—The Pope's flight to Gaeta—Efforts of the Constitutionalists to bring about an accommodation—The republic is proclaimed in Rome—Excesses in Ancona and Senigallia—Moderation of the Bolognese—Their courageous resistance to General Wimpffen—Siege of Ancona—Extreme severities of the victors.

The amnesty to all political offenders with which, in July, 1846, Pius IX. inaugurated his reign, spread joy and gratitude throughout the pontifical dominions. Thousands of families received back their loved ones from exile or captivity, and the country awoke from the lethargy of despair. This act of grace, it was argued, would be followed by acts of justice;—nor did the Pope's career for nearly two years belie this conclusion. He collected around him the most enlightened men, lay as well as ecclesiastic, of the country, and in spite of the ill-humour of Austria, who did not scruple to express her disapproval of the course on which he had entered, proceeded steadily with his ameliorations.

Men spoke little in those times but of what the Pope was doing, or purposed to do. Unlike his predecessor, who shrunk from any discussion on public affairs, Pius invited all who had any grievances to report, or plans of improvement to propose, to come freely to his presence. He removed the most irksome restraints from the Jewish population; lent a favourable ear to projects of railroads and other scientific and industrial enterprises, as well as to the diffusion of instruction among the lower classes; and permitted the establishment at Rome of a political journal, the first known in Italy. The provincial councils, ineffectually recommended in the Memorandum of 1831, were organized; and the Supreme Consulta selected from their members was convoked. Finally, on the 8th of March, 1848, constrained by the example of the other Italian sovereigns, who themselves had yielded to the impetus of the French revolution of February, he granted a Constitution.

The proclamation of the Republic at Paris was a dire misfortune for the Italians. It precipitated events for which they were not yet prepared, and exposed a people still giddy with their sudden emancipation from a system of degrading oppression and restraint, to the contagion of the most levelling and socialistic doctrines. Their recently acquired privileges of discussion and inquiry were grossly abused, and many and grievous errors committed, which they themselves are now the first to acknowledge. But it is only fair to remember that the Pope took the first step in sundering the bonds which had hitherto bound the people of Italy so ardently to him. The famous encyclical of the 29th April, in which he publicly disavowed the Italian war of liberation against Austria, then waging on the plains of Lombardy,—notwithstanding that, only one month before, he had given unequivocal proofs of his sympathy for the national cause, and had blessed the volunteers on their departure from Rome,—for ever destroyed his prestige in Italy. Most disastrous in its immediate consequences to the success of the Italian arms, the results to the papacy, though more remote, were still more irremediable.

The revulsion of feeling all over the Peninsula was terrible; but nowhere more bitter or hostile than in the States of the Church, where this declaration was received as a formal retractation of the liberal policy which had won Pius his popularity.

The war he now branded as UNJUST AND HURTFUL, had been preached in his own dominions, with his full knowledge and consent, as a new crusade; his condemnation of it stamped him as Austria's vassal. The acts and deeds which had been a steady protest against the principles and the supremacy of the Cabinet of Vienna were at once and for ever annulled. His conscience had taken alarm: he remembered that above his obligations as an Italian king were those of Universal Bishop, and the conflicting principles of the temporal and spiritual attributes of the Papacy were brought into open antagonism.

From the encyclical may be dated the beginning of the end. The warnings, the threatenings, so long bravely resisted, all appeared suddenly to take effect. As if aroused to the conviction that the innovations he had sanctioned clashed with the independence of the Church, his mind now bent itself solely to repair the evil into which he had been led by the sympathies and weakness of the man usurping the higher duties of the priest. The Constitution especially clashed with the hierarchical polity; and hence the summer of 1848 was passed in unseemly contentions between the Pope and his lay-ministers, zealous on their side to maintain inviolate the power and attributes of the Chambers. These dissensions were no secret in the country, and unhappily opened a door to Mazzini, the chief of the republican party in Italy, and his adherents, who previously, in the enthusiastic confidence inspired by Pius IX., had found no hearing. Side by side with these revolutionists were agents of the Austrian police, and the reactionary party, seeking, under the disguise of the most fanatical democracy, to urge the population into excesses which should speedily justify an Austrian intervention. “We can all remember,” writes Massimo d'Azeglio to the inhabitants of the Legations, cautioning them against being this time the dupes of similar intrigues, “we can all remember, in 1848-9, certain journalists and street orators, who were only too successful in dragging the most ignorant and inflammable of the population into extravagant lengths; and whom afterwards, on the return of the Austrian army, we saw impudently walking about arm-in-arm with the officers, and sneering in the face of those they had led into error.”[13]

Still the catastrophe would not have been so immediate, but for the total defeat of the Sardinian army in Lombardy, in the month of August. The misfortunes of Charles Albert extended their influence to the furthest parts of the Peninsula. The Constitutionalists lost heart; the Republicans grew more overbearing. In the Roman States the dagger of an assassin took the life of the only man who yet stood between the Pope and the Revolution.

The prime minister, Count Rossi, was murdered in open daylight as he was entering the Capitol, where the parliament held its sittings. The upper and middle classes were paralyzed by this calamity; and the Roman populace, headed by a handful of furious demagogues, were suffered to assail the Pope in his own palace, and forced him to sanction the nomination of a democratic ministry.

What followed is well known. Indignant at this coercion, Pius fled from his capital, but unhappily, instead of accepting either of the asylums offered by France and Spain, he was induced to claim the protection of the King of Naples, which was tantamount to throwing himself into the hands of Austria. From the moment he became the guest of the unrelenting Ferdinand, his policy bore the impress of the influences surrounding him.

Great as had been the errors and ingratitude of the Romans, they did not abandon themselves to anarchy and licence. Count Terenzio Mamiani, recognised as the leader of the Constitutionalists, and all the local authorities, were strenuous in their efforts to avert the crisis which was equally desired by the two extreme parties. The Sardinian cabinet also laboured to save the constitution, and bring back the Pope to Rome, without having recourse to foreign Powers. It was not till the 8th of February, 1849, nearly three months after his departure, that the Republic was proclaimed—not till after the Pontiff had rejected every overture for an accommodation.

The scenes of bloodshed and excess ascribed to Rome at this time are almost entirely without foundation. Seven priests fell victims to popular fury on the discovery of some reactionary plot of which, they were the promoters; but beyond this crime, there is nothing to lay to the charge of a population to whom murder is more familiar than to any other in Christendom. On the contrary, fewer vendette, assassinations from personal motives, and fewer robberies, took place that winter in the Eternal City than in previous years.

But this moderation was not followed in Ancona, which has acquired a fatal notoriety from the atrocities perpetrated by its “Infernal Association” in the name of liberty and the people. In a previous chapter, I have related the fear and prostration occasioned by this secret tribunal. The gross culpability of Mazzini, when Chief Triumvir at Rome, in not immediately commanding the arrest of the assassins,—the inexplicable supineness of Mattioli, the governor or Preside—have left an indelible stain on the short-lived republic. The pusillanimity of the Anconitans in submitting to this reign of terror has also not contributed to raise them in the estimation of Europe. It was too evident they had degenerated since the days of Barbarossa.

The only other city in which these crimes were at all emulated was Senigallia, the birthplace of the Pope, about twenty miles distant from Ancona. Several members of the Mastai family were threatened, and had to escape for their lives; and in a population of eleven or twelve thousand, upwards of twenty persons, marked out for vengeance, were either killed or wounded by the self-styled patriots. Amongst the assassins, both here and in Ancona, were men zealous as Sanfedisti under Gregory. A band of the vilest rabble were about to commence similar proceedings at Imola, a town between Bologna and Ravenna, when they were summarily dealt with by Count Laderchi, the Preside. He did at once what Mattioli only did after months; or rather what it required a Commissioner from Rome to compel him to do at all. He collected the national guard by night, surrounded the haunts of the assassins, and arrested every one on whom a suspicion rested.

Bologna throughout these agitated times held a firm yet temperate attitude. The long continuance of their free institutions—for their distinct autonomy was respected till the end of the eighteenth century—had given this people a resoluteness of purpose, and intellectual development, not shared by their brethren in the more southern provinces, whom they had long ago nick-named the “Somari of the Marche.”[14] The city, which contained 75,000 inhabitants, ranked next in importance to Rome, and had long been celebrated for its university, the fame of which in the Middle Ages attracted students from all parts of Europe;[15] and its schools of painting and music. But since the Restoration it had participated in the general decline. Political restrictions and religious bigotry scared away the votaries of science and art.

In August, 1848, before any disturbances had taken place in Rome, an unjustifiable attempt of the Austrian general, Welden, to possess himself of Bologna, was repulsed with great bravery by the inhabitants, and the invading force compelled to recross the Po. This outrage on the rights of nations having been protested against by the Pope's ministers, Austria was obliged to wait for her revenge until officially summoned to invade the Legations. The long-desired moment, brought about by the madness of the Republicans, the weakness of the Constitutionalists, and the far-spreading intrigues of the Austro-Jesuits, came at last. In the spring of 1849, the Pontiff formally invoked the armed intervention of the Catholic Powers. France undertook to reinstate him in Rome; Austria was to deal with Romagna and the Marche.

Even the most sanguine might now be permitted to despair. Charles Albert, the champion of Italy, who had ventured upon a second appeal to arms, had just sustained a second overthrow. The bloody field of Novara seemed destined to be the grave of national liberty. General Wimpffen, at the head of 15,000 men, in all the flush and exultation of victory, advanced against Bologna. The town had no fortifications, and the inhabitants were without leaders, regular troops, or artillery. Nevertheless, they refused to open their gates to the Austrians, and resisted gallantly for ten days. No further opposition was encountered by the enemy till they reached Ancona.

Here a few undisciplined troops and volunteers had been got together, and the citadel put into a posture of defence. A short time before this, the assassins had all been placed in confinement; and the inhabitants, relieved from the palsying terror with which they had been oppressed, gave many redeeming proofs of courage and endurance during the four weeks of the siege. Unwilling to restore only a heap of ruins to the Pope, the Austrians were sparing of their fire, and contented themselves with harassing the citadel, while their ships of war intercepted all supplies or reinforcements from entering the port. At intervals, however, they would try the effect of more vigorous measures; and four or five bombardments of several hours, one of a whole night's duration, put the constancy of the Anconitans to the test. Numbers of houses were struck, much damage to property inflicted, many lives lost, but none shrank from danger. Even ladies of the nobility went forth amidst falling shot and shells to continue their ministrations to the wounded in the hospitals.

The defence of Ancona was rather a protest of the citizens against the forcible restoration of the Pontifical Government, than the death-struggle of the republic. Gambeccari, the commander of the garrison, and the Preside, Mattioli, passed their time in a bomb-proof vault of the Civic Palace, playing cards, satisfied with the knowledge that when the town thought fit to capitulate, an English man-of-war was waiting in the roads to carry them in safety to Corfu.[16]

The reconquered provinces were brought to a heavy reckoning. I have already quoted some instances of the severity with which martial law was enforced in Ancona. In Bologna, the executions for trifling infractions of this Draconian code amounted to fifteen. The retention of a rusty fowling-piece, a broken bayonet, or even the simple possession of a few ounces of powder and shot, was there punished with death. As in Ancona, so also in the Romagne, the disarmament was so rigidly enforced, that landed proprietors were not allowed to retain the fire-arms necessary for the defence of their country-houses against brigands. The arms thus sequestrated in the Marche were laid up in the fortress of Ancona, with a promise of restitution. But some years afterwards the greater part were broken up and sold as old iron; the Austrian officers, meantime, having made use of the best in their shooting excursions. The communes were saddled with the large expenses always incidental upon a military occupation like the present; in addition to which they were required to provide new barracks, riding-schools, and similar establishments for their unwelcome guests at Bologna, and to defray the cost of additional fortifications at Ancona.

These restraints and grievances, as well as the domineering insolence of the Austrian authorities, were looked upon by the Papal Court as a part only of the chastisement of its rebellious children. The remainder it took upon itself to inflict.