Chapter Nine
Vittorio Emanuele’s comment to the Venetian deputation that Italy was made but incomplete revealed his, as well as the national, obsession for Rome. It found expression in subsequent developments. During the Ministry of Alfonso La Marmora from September 1864 to June 1866, the diplomacy of the Third War of Liberation, and then the waging of the war, dominated events. In the aftermath of the conflict, following the transfer of Venice to Italy, the Roman question again loomed large. However, the Italians, plagued by domestic problems and pressed by the French to respect the remaining temporal power, proved unable to acquire Rome. The incursion and insurrection in Palermo in September 1866 revealed both the southern distrust of the northern government and the fragility of unification. Only the dispatch of troops from the mainland restored order, solving neither the pressing problems of Sicily nor bridging the gaping division between North and South.
At the end of the year, in December 1866, the last French troops departed from Rome under the terms of the September Convention. The French withdrawal was widely expected to return the Roman question to the forefront. Lord Stanley, the British Foreign Minister, warned Odo Russell, the special British representative to the Vatican, that they could expect not only a reopening of the issue, but material changes in the relations between the Pope and the Italian government. Her Majesty’s Government, the Foreign Minister continued, sought to avoid involvement in a matter which concerned Italy and the Roman Catholic Church, but did not impinge on English vital interests. Still, Lord Stanley worried that the open wound might disturb the tranquillity of Europe.1
Pius IX, fearing the worst, predicted that the French departure would encourage the revolution to storm the gates of Rome. He lamented that Napoleon sustained him only indirectly by ineffective means, questioning the Emperor’s will to keep his promise to uphold what remained of the temporal power. To the assurances that Napoleon was there, an irritated Pope retorted that he was here, and everyone knew that Paris was far from Rome. The Pope foresaw that the great distance, both physical and psychological, undermined the effectiveness of Napoleon’s commitment. He bitterly resented Napoleon’s failure to respond promptly to Vittorio Emanuele’s comment that Italy was made but not complete, revealing intentions that did not bode well for the future.2
Some feared that the imminent danger might encourage Pius to abandon his capital, provoking foreign intervention and plunging Italy into chaos. Among those concerned was the Comte de Chambord, the legitimist claimant to the French throne, who offered his sword to Pius, charging that Napoleon had abandoned the Pontiff to the revolution.3 The offer antagonized the Emperor without providing the Pope with the protection he required. Pius, for his part, complained of the machinations against him and his government, finding solace in that sovereign who was not only potent, but omnipotent. In fact while Volunteers’ threatened the integrity of his state and hovered on his borders, the Pope remained absorbed in religious affairs, announcing his decision to call an Ecumenical Council in Rome.4
In Florence Bettino Ricasoli, who had replaced La Marmora as prime minister in June of 1866, sought to resolve the Roman question by moral means, following the peace with Austria. His efforts proved abortive as Antonelli followed Pio Nono’s intransigent instructions. Meanwhile the Italian Chamber showed itself unwilling to approve the Baron’s legislation regulating Church-state relations in the kingdom, and the new Chamber, elected in March 1867, proved equally recalcitrant. In April the disappointed Baron resigned, and on 11 April 1867, Urbano Rattazzi assumed power. The Party of Action preferred Rattazzi to Ricasoli, who was disinclined to tolerate, much less sanction, private efforts to wrest Rome from Papal control.
While the Party of Action awaited some movement on the part of the Rattazzi government, Garibaldi invoked immediate action and initiated matters during the spring of 1867. The impetuous general, who despised Napoleon for toppling the Roman Republic in 1849, murdering the Second French Republic in 1851, abandoning Venice to Austria at Villafranca and stealing Nice and Savoy in the process, resented his interference in the Roman question. Forgetful of the disastrous consequences of the First War of Italian Liberation, when the Italians failed to resolve matters while working alone, the charismatic Garibaldi called for unilateral action to make Rome the capital of Italy. Critical of Cavour’s cautious approach during the tumultuous events of 1859–60, Garibaldi never appreciated his agile manoeuvring between Paris and the Redshirts, which secured a reluctant French acceptance of the absorption of central and southern Italy. The absence of Cavour in 1867 belatedly revealed the magnitude of his achievement.
Garibaldi and the government in Florence, seeking to duplicate Cavour’s realpolitik, hoped that a revolution in Rome would provide the pretext for intervention. Indeed, early in April, a pamphlet circulated in the Eternal City, calling upon its occupants to throw off the yoke of their priestly oppressors, and promising assistance in their struggle for liberation. Garibaldi was hailed as the leader of the insurrection in the remaining Papal province which contained slightly more than half a million inhabitants. Neither the Pope nor Antonelli were reassured by Napoleon’s criticism of the government in Florence or the antics of the volunteers. Nonetheless the Emperor pledged that if there were an invasion, French forces would reoccupy Rome.5 In the early summer of 1867, as Garibaldi both in words and actions showed his disdain for the temporal power of the Papacy, while discounting the French assurances to the same, the Italian government did little to restrain him. On the other hand, Rattazzi hastened to condemn the French for allowing one of their generals to inspect the Légion d’Antibes, which served Papal Rome, maintaining that this action violated the ‘spirit’ of the September Convention.
At this juncture the Italians dared to displease the French, who were preoccupied by developments on the Rhine and frightened by the prospect of German unification. Article 2 of the Peace of Nikolsburg of July 1866, stipulated that Germany would be divided into two spheres, with the South as well as the North permitted to federate. Even this German settlement generated fear and frustration in Paris, and to calm national sentiment Napoleon pressed for French territorial compensation. Originally asking for the frontiers of 1814, the Emperor’s emissaries escalated their demands by also seeking Mainz and the Bavarian Palatinate. In the face of Prussian reluctance to cede any German territory, Napoleon sought Bismarck’s diplomatic support for his acquisition of Belgium and Luxemburg – to no avail. After 1867 relations between Berlin and Paris deteriorated and a Franco-German war seemed inevitable.
Convinced that Paris was busy on the Rhine, Rattazzi believed he had some leeway on the Tiber. Thus, during the summer of 1867, when Garibaldi’s volunteers were preparing for an incursion into Papal territory, they were aided and abetted by Italian officials with the apparent blessing of the Italian government. General Genova di Revel, the Minister of War, condemned the inactivity of his government and its flagrant failure to live up to the commitment undertaken in the September Convention. His protest found scant support in the Italian capital, but was loudly seconded by the French government. France, humiliated by Prussia’s rapid victory in 1866, the reorganization of Germany and the creation of the North German Confederation, and humbled in Mexico, which French troops abandoned early in 1867, could not tolerate humiliation at the hands of the Italians.
After allowing Garibaldi to make speeches and issue manifestos against the temporal power for more than a month, Rattazzi suddenly shifted his course. Under pressure from his Minister of War, and also Napoleon, Rattazzi precipitously, if reluctantly, ordered Garibaldi’s arrest at Sinalunga on 23 September 1867. Although the hero of Sicily was shipped back to his island of Caprera, where he was granted complete liberty, a number of his volunteers slipped across the border into the Papal States. Restricted to Caprera, which was guarded by nine royal ships, Garibaldi managed to evade their blockade and reached the island of Madalena by canoe in mid-October. From Madalena he ventured to Sardinia, from which he sailed for the Tuscan coast, reaching Florence on 20 October 1867. In Rome the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, complained that if the Italian government did not openly aid Garibaldi and the volunteers who threatened the Papal States, all the available evidence exposed its encouragement of him.6 The French concurred with this observation.
The Italian government revealed its complicity by refusing to rearrest Garibaldi and take the field against his volunteers, who had already penetrated the Papal States, where they made little headway. Genova di Revel, the Minister of War, resigned in disgust. When Paris called upon Rattazzi to take steps to fulfil the September Convention and the French Council of Ministers threatened intervention if the Convention were not honoured, Rattazzi resigned. Thus when Garibaldi arrived in Florence and publicly called for an invasion of Rome, there was no government in place, and little inclination to block the march on Rome. Antonelli, watching these developments, labelled it a prearranged comedy whose plot was predictable. Napoleon hoped that Vittorio Emanuele and the Italians would come to their senses, and from 18th to 26th October he agonized as to whether to dispatch to Rome the troops gathered at Toulon.
On 26 October 1867, Napoleon ordered French forces back to Rome. Belatedly, Vittorio Emanuele appointed General Menabrea as prime minister. General Manabrea shared Di Revel’s conviction that the Italian government had to move against the volunteers to preserve its credibility. It was too late, however, Garibaldi had left Florence for Terni and rejoined his volunteers, and the French fleet was on its way to Civitavecchia. Events now proceeded apace. On 26th October, Garibaldi occupied Monte Rotondo, one of the strategic heights overlooking Rome, and word spread in the Eternal City that he was at the gates. Garibaldi, and even more so Vittorio Emanuele and Rattazzi, hoped that the volunteers’ daring would inspire a revolution in Rome, thus legitimizing Italian intervention and precluding a French intervention. The desired revolution never materialized, however, while in the countryside the population proved unreceptive to Garibaldi’s overtures.
Meanwhile word of the French landing at Civitavecchia and Menabrea’s condemnation of the volunteers led many of the latter to desert. The Papal forces, on the other hand, remained committed to Pio Nono’s cause. In Rome, Gregorovius, consistently hostile to the Papal position, ironically noted that it was easier for Garibaldi to overturn the rotten throne of Naples than to defeat the army of the Pope. The latter had remained loyal without one single case of desertion.7 The two forces met at Mentana on 3rd November, where they were joined shortly after by the French, who first made use of their new guns, the rapid firing chassepots. Pius, who applauded the performance of his troops, recognized that the volunteers, aided in a thousand ways by the Florence government and its ‘pathetic’ king, might have succeeded in their plot against him, but for French assistance.8 In the words of General de Failly, the ‘chassepots had done wonders’.9 Garibaldi was arrested and returned to Caprera. In December, when the Roman question was discussed in the Corps Legislatif, the French prime minister, Eugène Rouher, emphatically declared that France would never permit the Italians to take Rome. At the same time, the Archbishop of Paris wrote to Pius on Christmas day, reassuring him of Napoleon’s determination to preserve the integrity of what remained of the temporal power.10
The return of French forces to Rome, and the public opposition of the Paris government to the Italian acquisition of the Eternal City, undermined Italo-French relations at a time when Napoleon frantically sought allies in the expected war against Prussia. Once again Napoleon sought to resolve the Roman question by a European congress, but his proposal at the end of 1867 generated little enthusiasm outside Spain and the minor powers. Benedetti failed to persuade William of Prussia to participate. The Habsburgs agreed to attend, but displayed little interest, in the expectation that the idea would be dropped. Russia, likewise, proved lukewarm to the congress, agreeing to it in principle, but accepting only conditionally, which was tantamount to a courteous diplomatic refusal. England, in calling for a solution that would satisfy both the Pope and the Italians, was proposing an impossible programme, given the continuing enmity between Florence and Rome.
Costantino Nigra, the Italian representative at Paris, demanded a Franco-Italian understanding prior to the opening of the congress and a commitment from Paris that during its deliberations nothing would be approved that was detrimental to Italy. Rome continued to insist on the restoration of all its territory as a necessary precondition for any negotiation. Pius steadfastly refused to refer to Italy, continuing to speak of Piedmont. He deemed the people of the latter state good, deploring the fact that they were corrupted by evil leaders, who were responsible for the unfortunate condition of the peninsula.11 The contradictory and irreconcilable positions assumed by Rome and Florence rendered the congress abortive in 1868. Vittorio Emanuele’s attempts throughout the year to secure a modus vivendi with Rome, via French mediation, proved equally abortive.12
The year 1868 proved largely uneventful in the Italian peninsula, apart from the marriage of Prince Umberto to his cousin Margherita of Savoy, and Pio Nono’s setting of the opening date for his projected Ecumenical Council. While the latter event frightened Italians, especially as word leaked out of the Pope’s intention of having the doctrine of Papal Infallibility proclaimed, the behaviour of the Archbishop of Turin during the marriage, roused the anger of Pio Nono. In Archbishop Riccardi’s address to the clergy and people of Turin, on the occasion of the marriage of Umberto and Margherita, he called upon Italians to rejoice and share in the happiness of the couple, hoping that the Italian family, so long divided, might become one under this dynasty.13
The Archbishop’s conciliatory words were little appreciated by Pius, who refused to grant the plenary indulgence on the occasion of the tridium to celebrate the marriage. The Pope proceeded to criticize the Archbishop’s public speeches during the festivities, deeming them inappropriate. He expected such ‘drivel’ from a revolutionary bishop, but not from one such as Riccardi who was true and loyal. How could the Archbishop urge Catholics in the peninsula to rejoice, when millions of them were burdened by the unfortunate policies of the usurpers? The Pope then proceeded to catalogue the grievances of the Church and the Papacy against the Piedmontese. He concluded that in light of the war being waged against the Church, the Papacy, religion, and God, Italians should be stricken by tears of sorrow rather than those of joy.14 He transmitted more or less the same message to Vittorio Emanuele, insisting that in light of the iniquities committed against the Church and religion, he could not regularize relations with his government.15
While Italian developments reached an impasse during the course of 1868, dramatic changes exploded elsewhere in Europe. The deterioration in relations between Paris and Berlin continued, while a rebellion in Spain in the autumn of 1868 led to the flight of Queen Isabella and the vacancy of the Spanish throne. Eventually the two events were to precipitate the Franco-Prussian War, by leading to the prospect of a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain and the virtual French veto of this candidacy. The threat of a struggle prompted Napoleon to seek allies, and to open talks with both the Austrians and the Italians for the formation of a triple alliance against Prussia. The Tuileries began negotiations with Vienna about a possible anti-Prussian alliance as early as July 1868, when the Austrians were advised by the French to secure some commitment from Prussia not to pass the Main line. Vienna, in turn, suggested that Paris secure from Berlin the necessary assurances regarding the Peace of Prague.
France encountered graver problems in its negotiations with the Italians, who had given a warm reception to Prince Frederick William when he attended the wedding of Umberto to Margherita. The cordiality reflected the anti-French sentiment following the French return to Rome, and the growing conviction that they could only get into the Eternal City by aligning themselves with Prussia against their former ally. No less a figure than Mazzini communicated with Bismarck, through Count Usedom, the Prussian Minister in Florence, on the need to prevent a Franco-Italian alliance against Prussia. He denounced a Franco-Italian accord against the Prussians as a grave crime which would besmirch the banner of the new Italian state.16 During the course of 1868, when discussions for a Franco-Italian alliance had been conducted informally and secretly, only Vittorio Emanuele and those in his strictest confidence were aware of their content. However, during the course of 1869, when a concrete alliance was contemplated, the Italian Ministry necessarily became embroiled in negotiations.
The Italian prime minister, General Luigi Menabrea, who had denounced the adventurism of Garibaldi, remained equally firm in his insistence that Rome serve as the Italian capital. When the Italian parliament reopened in Florence in December 1867, he reported that the desire to see the Roman question resolved was not restricted to the revolutionary groups, but was broadly based in the peninsula. The truncated Papal State divided the kingdom physically as well as psychologically, thus aggravating the new kingdom’s southern problem. Furthermore, the Papal State served as a centre of conspiracy against the unitary Italian state, so undermining the existence of the latter. Small wonder then that the Party of Action capitalized on this real grievance, creating difficulties not only for Italy but for the whole of Europe. The agitation of the Garibaldian Party in Florence alarmed both Rome and Paris.
During the course of 1869, when Menabrea learned of the French desire to secure Italy as an ally in her impending war against Prussia, he immediately posed as a precondition the need to resolve the Roman question. Italy could not subscribe to the proposed Triple Alliance until the Roman issue had been resolved. Austria supported the Italian contention, but France did not. Napoleon promised to seek a diplomatic solution to the Roman question at the appropriate time, but for the moment could not, and would not, make any unilateral concession on the matter. Disappointed, Menabrea predicted that one day Napoleon might regret not having accepted the 400,000 Italian bayonets that would have been at his disposal, had he given his support on the Roman issue. In the face of the ministerial hostility to an accord without an understanding on the issue of Rome, Napoleon suggested a general agreement among the French, Austrian and Italian rulers regarding their common aims, while pledging general reciprocal support. There followed an exchange of letters in September 1869 along these lines. If Napoleon conceived of this as a concrete commitment for assistance, neither Vienna nor Florence shared his interpretation. Furthermore, Pio Nono continued to show himself illdisposed towards any compromise with the Italians.17
There were those who suggested that during the course of the inevitable Franco-Prussian conflict, the Italians should wage a ‘fourth war of liberation’ to seize Rome. This was neither diplomatically nor financially an easy undertaking. The three previous wars of liberation – in 1848–49, in 1859, and most recently in 1866 – had contributed to the vast Italian debt. The prospect of a future Franco-Prussian War, into which the kingdom was likely to be drawn, provided the rationale for massive increases in the budgets of the army and navy. The kingdom could not keep spending more than it raised without grave risk to its credit.
Menabrea’s Ministry, deeply disturbed by the impending Vatican Council and its consequences for Italy, introduced a series of remedies for the country’s fiscal problems.18 Essentially his government proposed to reduce the deficit by increasing the already high tax rate on consumer goods, while imposing a grist tax on the grinding of grain. The latter tax, first proposed by Quintino Sella who was Minister of Finance in 1865, was promulgated by Luigi Cambray-Digny, Menabrea’s Finance Minister, in July 1868. When it went into effect in January 1869, riots erupted throughout the peninsula, and in their wake hundreds of lives were lost.19 Criticized for both the riots and the repression, and accused of profiting from the privatization of the tobacco monopoly, Menabrea was forced to resign in November 1869.
Internal and international affairs, many of them centring on the still unresolved Roman question, combined to render the choice of a successor difficult. Vittorio Emanuele had found it difficult to part with Menabrea, not only because of his proven loyalty, but also because he appreciated that the king had assumed obligations with Napoleon regarding the projected Franco-Prussian conflict. Both the king and Menabrea clung to the conviction that they could persuade the French Emperor to let them go to Rome, in return for their participation in the Triple Alliance against Prussia. Giovanni Lanza and Quintino Sella, mentioned as probable successors, did not share Vittorio Emanuele’s optimism. The king’s worst fears materialized when Lanza presented his conditions for the formation of a Ministry: the dismissal of three favourites of the Crown (including Menabrea) from their court positions, and fiscal cuts in the military appropriations.
Vittorio Emanuele reluctantly agreed to sacrifice his favourites, but balked at slashing the military, which he claimed endangered national security during a period of European crisis. His views were seconded by General Cialdini, who was given the task of forming a government but did not succeed in doing so. The king, who threatened abdication, opened talks with Sella, paving the way for a reconciliation with Lanza. On 14th December, Lanza was made prime minister, while also exercising control over the Ministry of the Interior, and Sella assumed the Ministries of the Treasury and Finance. While Lanza called for economies in the military in order to placate the left, which provided this ministry with considerable support, as well as the right, which appreciated the need to balance the budget, Sella perceived other advantages in the retrenchment. Aware of the king’s desire to honour his personal commitment to Napoleon, Sella considered Italy’s lack of military preparedness a good pretext for keeping Italy out of the Triple Alliance and the war with Prussia.
Sella, who was aware of the military potential of Germany, concurred with the left, the Party of Action and the Mazzinians that Italy should not bind itself to the French Empire. He convinced Lanza that Napoleon would not open Rome to the Italians in return for their participation in the Triple Alliance, citing that even the new liberal Ollivier Ministry in Paris, was disinclined to compromise on the issue of Rome. In mid-July 1870, when the Vatican Council was on the verge of proclaiming the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, Vittorio Emanuele was shocked to hear of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He anxiously telegraphed Lanza, reminding him that the Crown had assumed obligations vis-à-vis Napoleon. Lanza and Sella remained noncommital. On 23 July 1870, the Gazzetta Ufficiale proclaimed Italian neutrality.
In Rome Pio Nono, who celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his elevation to the priesthood, and Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, who executed Papal directives, recognized the danger that a Franco-Prussian war posed for the Vatican, and sought to mediate peace.20 Napoleon responded that the precipitous course of events had rendered impossible the Papal peace efforts.21 Meanwhile discussions were opened between the French and Italians, with the French government announcing its intention of withdrawing its troops from Rome in return for the Italian government’s recognition of the September Convention of 1864. Assured of Italian compliance, the French withdrawal began at the end of July and was completed on 19th August. Even the Austrians realized that this was hardly sufficient to satisfy the Italians, specifying that to bring them into the Triple Alliance it was necessary to provide Franco-Austrian approval for their march into Rome. In July and early August Paris still proved unwilling to compromise, claiming that it could not defend its honour on the Rhine while sacrificing and shaming it on the Tiber.
By mid-August, following the evacuation of the remaining French forces from Civitavecchia, the unfortunate course of the war for France finally led Napoleon to alter his position. On 19 August 1870, Napoleon dispatched Prince Napoleon on a special mission to Florence to secure Italian assistance in the form of an expeditionary force of 70,000 men. In return, the Italians could ask what they liked, with the prince indicating that Napoleon had signed a blank cheque. Thus France belatedly provided the Italian government with its consent to march into Rome.22 But the consent had arrived too late. If such an agreement might have brought Italy into an alliance earlier on, at this juncture the prospect of entering a losing war seemed counterproductive, if not ludicrous. Whereas France had previously been in a position to exercise a prohibition on an Italian entry into Rome, she no longer exercised that option, unable to defend her own territory. Still Lanza and Sella moved cautiously regarding Rome. They saw the advantage of subsidizing rebellion in the Papal territory, to provide a pretext for intervention, but recognized the need to reassure conservative Europe by keeping the volunteers out of action. Finally, Lanza and Sella saw the importance of moving against Rome with the approval of the major courts of the continent.
The Italians, determined to complete the edifice of unity by taking Rome, began their preparations. An army corps for central Italy was formed by the Minister of War, Govone, and entrusted to General Raffaele Cadorna. Its instructions, for the moment, were to prevent penetration of the Papal States from Italian soil. To counter the complications that might result from revolutionary agitation, Mazzini was arrested in Palermo in August and Garibaldi confined to the island of Caprera. By this time even the king concurred that the military preparations undertaken to date, and the recall to arms of two categories of enlisted men on 10th August, should be directed to secure a solution of the Roman question. Parliament was called into session on 16th August, and asked to vote an additional forty million lire for the army. The left desired some statement that the monies appropriated would be used for the occupation of Rome, but the government avoided any direct statement or commitment beyond its cautious promise to safeguard national interests vis-à-vis Rome.
Methodically and carefully, the ministry made public its determination to move into Rome. At the end of August the Italians informed the French of the volatile situation of the peninsula, citing the need to protect the Papacy from revolutionary upheaval and the peninsula itself from chaos. On 29 August 1870, the Foreign Minister, Emilio Visconti-Venosta, alerted the other Powers of his government’s decision to intervene in Rome. He met little opposition. However, the majority of the Italian Cabinet, with the exception of Sella, still hesitated. The French disaster at Sedan on 2nd September, the capture of the Emperor and the collapse of the Empire shortly afterwards allayed their fears, while providing the justification for action. The September Convention, which had been signed with Napoleon, was clearly nullified and Italian freedom of action restored.
On 5th September, the Lanza Cabinet unanimously resolved to move immediately against Rome, assuring the Powers that the Papacy’s spiritual authority would be respected and protected. Count Ponza di San Martino was to be dispatched to Rome as a special envoy of the king, revealing the reasons that induced the Italians to move into the remaining Papal territory. To reassure the public that the government was finally acting, news of the mission was published in the official gazette. On the evening of 9th September, the Italian envoy departed with Alessandro Guccioli for Rome. Shortly after his arrival, he had a long meeting with Cardinal Antonelli, transmitting to the Cardinal Secretary of State a letter written by Giovanni Lanza along with a ten-point programme for the resolution of the Roman question.24
The next morning, 10th September, Count Ponza di San Martino who had been lulled by the cordiality and amiability of the Secretary of State, confronted an angry Pius IX. Setting aside diplomatic niceties, the Pope muttered that while the king claimed to write with the affection of a son and the faith of a Catholic, he had imposed an ultimatum. Furthermore, the king’s contentions that the Pope faced disorder and revolution requiring outside intervention was contradicted by the calm which prevailed in the territory. Not surprisingly the enraged Pope categorically refused both the king’s request to have his forces enter the capital and his government’s proposed solution to the Roman question. As the embarrassed and confused Count San Martino scurried out of the Pope’s presence – initially heading for a window rather than the door – the Pope formalized his opposition in a letter to Vittorio Emanuele, in which he made plain his rejection both of the king’s premises and his request to enter the Eternal City.25
On 11th September – the day of the Pope’s formal rejection of Vittorio Emanuele’s ultimatum – Italian forces crossed the frontier, preceded by a proclamation signed by General Cadorna but written by Visconti-Venosta. The Italian army, it proclaimed, entered the Papal territory to ensure tranquillity while respecting the independence of the Holy See. Its double function, acknowledged Visconti, was to mitigate any internal resistance, while reassuring the international community. As more than 50,000 Italian troops menaced Rome, the prospect that they could be stopped by General Kanzler’s men, numbering less than 15,000, was slim. The Pope, who continued to adhere to his calendar of events, despite Rome’s encirclement, believed in miracles and predicted that the Italians would not enter his capital.
By mid-September the Italian occupation of Cività Castellana, Viterbo and Civitavecchia paved the way for the Italian occupation of Rome. Cadorna asked Kanzler not to resist the Italian entry into the capital, in order to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, but his suggestion was spurned. Von Arnim, the Prussian Minister to Rome, urged Cadorna to give him time to plead personally with the Pope to reconsider his determination to resist the Italians, but his effort likewise proved futile. On 18th September, Lanza telegraphed Cadorna, that all peaceful efforts to enter Rome having failed, his troops were to storm its walls. The time and means were left to Cadorna, but Lanza advised promptness and prudence.
Pius had earlier outlined his course of action in contending with a forced Italian entry into Rome. He concurred with Antonelli that the diplomatic situation had changed dramatically since 1848, and therefore did not seriously ponder flight, as he had during the course of the First War of Italian Liberation. Furthermore, Pius considered it crucial that the Catholic world and the international community be cognizant of the fact that the thief entered violently, without any complicity on the part of the Papal government. For these reasons, and to preserve the honour of the men who so loyally and valiantly defended his cause, the Pope insisted that the invasion be resisted. He wrote to General Hermann Kanzler on 19th September that the duration of the defence be limited to the simple act of contesting the violence and nothing more. Thus he proposed that the moment the walls of Rome were breached, negotiations for surrender should begin.
Early in the morning of 20th September, Italian batteries began pounding the walls of the Eternal City. During the course of the bombardment, between six o’clock and six-thirty, a frightened diplomatic corps flowed into the Vatican, where Pio Nono celebrated Mass without interruption. Following Mass, the Pope received the diplomats in his library, protesting against the invasion. After nine o’clock, when Pius heard the walls had been breached at Porta Pia and an Italian entry was imminent, he informed the diplomats that he had issued an executive order to capitulate. Pius, deeply distressed, while seeking to avoid needless bloodshed, insisted that the world should know that the Italians had entered Rome violently, by breaking the doors down, rather than being admitted.26 They finally entered at eleven o’clock that morning.
Although Cardinal Manning, in the solemnity of Westminster Cathedral, denounced Vittorio Emanuele as a second Pontius Pilate, while in Dublin Cardinal Cullen predicted a disastrous end for the Italian king, and the Comte de Chambord deplored the Italian seizure,27 the only diplomat to protest against the Italian entry was Garcia Moreno of Ecuador. There were those who hoped that Prussia, in the process of defeating France and creating the German Empire, might provide some protection to the Pope, but that proved illusory. Visconti-Venosta realized that whatever sympathy Prussia had for the person of the Pope was tempered by Berlin’s desire for cordial relations with Italy. Nonetheless, the Italian Cabinet hastened to reassure the Powers of their intention of guaranteeing the spiritual independence of the Pontiff.
The capitulation, signed at the Villa Albani on 20 September 1870, left all of Rome, save the Leonine City, in the hands of the Italian troops. It also provided for the disbanding of the Papal forces, and this latter provision encouraged demonstrations and disturbances which frightened Pio Nono. The Pope and Antonelli, haunted by the memory of being besieged in the Quirinale Palace during the upheaval of 1848, determined to avoid a similar nightmare. They asked Cadorna to occupy the Leonine City, thereby assuming responsibility for the personal safety of the Pope and the security of the Vatican. Perhaps the two also wished to demonstrate the utter dependency of the Papacy, possibly sparking some movement for foreign intervention. At any rate, both Antonelli and Pio Nono saw all sorts of problems with the Italian proposal to leave the Pope the Leonine City. Above all, to accept this small piece of land in a corner of Rome signified the Papacy’s acceptance of the loss of the rest of the temporal dominion.
The Italians, for their part, appreciated the need to legitimize what Antonelli denounced as blatant aggression. The seizure and forced entry into the Quirinale Palace, early in October, roused the Pope who denounced the ‘Piedmontese’ treachery. To counter their stream of complaints, Lanza called for a plebiscite on 2 October 1870, barely two weeks after the collapse of the Pope’s temporal power. Despite the apathy the Romans had shown to all Italian initiatives for revolution, and their genuine loyalty to the Pope, if not the Papal regime, the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of union with the Kingdom of Italy. Out of 167,548 eligible votes 133,681 voted for union, with a mere 1,507 against.28 By the royal decree of 9 October 1870 (No. 5903), Rome and its surrounding territory were annexed. Assurances were given to the Pope of his inviolability and personal sovereignty.
Outraged by the Italian annexation of the Holy City, Pius was not to be placated. However, he denounced the vote, and the electoral violence and chicanery employed to secure it, and resisted the call to abandon Rome. He refused to accept the fait accompli, responding in his encyclical of 1st November, ‘Respicientes’, which launched a mass excommunication of the invaders. Condemning the intrigues and aggression of the House of Savoy and the Piedmontese against his temporal sovereignty, Pius claimed that they jeopardized the spiritual authority of the Papacy and the Church. Before God and the Catholic world, the Pope lamented, he found himself in a virtual prison, unable to expeditiously and freely exercise his supreme pastoral authority.29 The tone of his encyclical, and his diplomatic efforts to secure an end to the Franco-Prussian War,30 led the Italians to conclude that Pius and Antonelli were scheming to provoke foreign intervention.
The Italian fears were not groundless. Even the English spoke of the need for an international conference to regularize the position of the Papacy – a prospect attractive neither to the Italians nor Antonelli. Officials in the peninsula feared that once the Franco-Prussian War ended and peace was restored, there would be international interference in the conflict between the Italians and the Pope, which might undermine their belated acquisition of the Eternal City. To preclude the possibility of such diplomatic meddling, the Italian parliament sought to calm the apprehensions of the international community and the Catholic powers by guaranteeing the Pope’s personal immunity and complete liberty in the exercise of his spiritual power.
On 9 December 1870, the President of the Council, Lanza, presented a law project to stabilize and regularize the Italian possession of Rome by assuring the international and Catholic community that they would respect and protect the dignity and independence of the Supreme Pontiff. While in committee in the Chamber of Deputies in mid-January 1871, the governmental proposal was modified to specify that the Pope’s sovereignty was spiritual rather than temporal, and he exercised political authority over no portion of the Italian peninsula. The Law of Guarantees thus did not function as a treaty, which would have required the Pope to have some temporal authority, but simply as a law of the Italian state. It was discussed in the Chamber from 23 January to 21 March 1871, and approved by a vote of 185 for and 106 against. In the Senate, where it was examined and debated from 20 April to 26 April 1871, the vote was 105 for and twenty against. It received royal sanction, was published, and went into effect on 13 May 1871.
The Law of Papal Guarantees, which declared the Pope’s person sacred and inviolable also guaranteed his full freedom as head of the Catholic Church, including freedom of communication with the Church worldwide. Likewise, provision was made for the Pope’s complete diplomatic liberty. To implement these assurances, the law provided for the extraterritoriality of the Vatican and other apostolic palaces and buildings, and accorded the Pope an annual grant of 3,225,000 lire free of taxation. The second half of the law, which regulated relations between Church and state in Italy, represented a modified version of Cavour’s doctrine of a ‘free Church in a free state’.
The measure which provided full and free diplomatic access of the diplomatic corps to the person of the Pope satisfied the international and Catholic community that the personal sovereignty of the Pope and the freedom of the Church had been preserved. All the major powers eventually recognized the Italian acquisition of Rome, and while they maintained representatives at the Vatican, sent their diplomats to the Quirinale, which became the official residence of the king. Pope Pius, however, refused to accept the Law of Papal Guarantees, which he denounced as a monument of barbarous ignorance.31 Both the Pope and Antonelli feared that without any temporal power, the Papacy would be subject to the Italian government, whose good faith alone assured it freedom. The Law of Guarantees which satisfied the international community did not satisfy the Papacy, which refused to recognize its validity or come to terms with liberal Italy. Thus the ‘Fourth war of Italian Liberation’, fought and won in September 1870, did not witness a formal peace treaty until the Lateran Accords of 1929.
Notes
1. Kenneth Bourne, ‘The British Government and the Proposed Roman Conference of 1867’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, anno XLIII (October-December 1956), IV, 761.
2. Pius IX to Cardinal Bonnechose, 10 November 1866, Archivio Segreto del Vaticano, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Francia, Particolari, No. 183.
3. Comte de Chambord to Pius IX, 12 December 1866, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Francia, Sovrani.
4. Antonio Monti, Pio IX nel Risorgimento Italiano con documenti inediti (Bari: Laterza, 1928), p. 269; Eugenio Cecconi, Storia del Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano scritta sui documenti originali (Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1872), I, pp. 57–63.
5. Cardinal Bonnechose to Pius IX, 28 July 1867, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Francia, Particolari, no. 188.
6. Giulio Andreotti, La sciarada di Papa Mastai (Milan: Rizzoli, 1967), p. 59.
7. The Roman Journals of Ferdinand Gregorovius, 1852–1874, ed. Friedrich Althaus, trans. Mrs Gustavus Hamilton (London: George Bell and Sons, 1907), pp. 297–301.
8. Pius IX to Monsignor Luciano Bonaparte, 8 November 1867, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Stato Pontificio, no. 163A.
9. Le Moniteur Universel, 10 November 1867.
10. Archbishop of Paris to Pius IX, 25 December 1867, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Francia, Particolari, no. 191.
11. Pius IX to Archbishop of Turin, 31 January 1868, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Sardegna, Particolari, no. 30.
12. Vittorio Emanuele II to Pius IX, 21 July 1868, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Sardegna, Sovrani, no. 72.
13. Archbishop of Turin’s Address and Homily on Occasion of Marriage of Prince Umberto to Margherita of Savoy, 22 April 1868, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Sardegna, Sovrani.
14. Pius IX to Archbishop Riccardi of Turin, 14 May 1868, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Sardegna, Particolari, no. 33.
15. Pius to Vittorio Emanuele II, 7 June 1868, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Sardegna, Sovrani, no. 71.
16. Giuseppe Mazzini, Venezia e Roma (Rome: Castelli, 1875), p. 59.
17. Pius to Vittorio Emanuele II, 10 December 1869, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Sardegna, Sovrani, no. 79.
18. Count Alessandro Adorni to Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, 20 May 1869, ASV, Segreteria di Stato Esteri, 1869, rubrica 284, fascicolo 1.
19. Count Alessandro Adorni to Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, 6 January 1869, ibid.
20. Pius IX to Napoleon III, July 1870, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Francia, Sovrani, no. 85.
21. Napoleon III to Pius IX, 27 July 1870, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Francia, Sovrani, no. 86.
22. Andreotti, p. 72.
23. Gazzetta Ufficiale, 10 September 1870.
24. An English translation of the draft agreement will be found in my study Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli and Papal Politics in European Affairs (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 158–9.
25. Pius IX to Vittorio Emanuele II, 11 September 1870, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Sardegna, Sovrani, no. 83.
26. Paolo Dalla Torre, Pio IX e Vittorio Emanuele II. Dal Loro Carteggio privato negli anni deliceramento (1861–78) (Rome: Istituto di Studi Romani Editori, 1972), pp. 157–60.
27. Comte de Chambord to Pius IX, 3 October 1870, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Francia, Sovrani, no. 87.
28. Andreotti, p. 114.
29. Monti, p. 199.
30. Pius IX to Archbishop of Tours, 12 November 1870; Archbishop of Tours to French government of National Defence, 29 November 1870; Archbishop of Tours to King of Prussia, 19 December 1870, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Francia, Particolari.
31. Monti, pp. 203–4.