Absolute Monarchs

by John Julius Norwich

  Camillo Cavour followed these developments with satisfaction, and in January 1860 returned to Turin to take over a new government. Scarcely was he back in office when he found himself swept up in negotiations with Napoleon III, and it was not long before the two reached agreement. Piedmont would annex Tuscany and Emilia: in return, Savoy and Nice would be ceded to France. There was a predictable explosion of wrath from Garibaldi, whose immediate reaction was to start planning his personal recapture of his native city and its return to Piedmont; but before he could do so another, far more promising opportunity suddenly presented itself—an opportunity not just to fight for a noble cause but to make history.

  ON APRIL 4, 1860, there was a popular insurrection in Palermo. It was not a success—the Neapolitan authorities had been secretly informed in advance—but it provided a spark for others throughout northern Sicily, and the authorities could not cope with them all. When Garibaldi heard the news, he acted at once. Cavour refused his request for a Piedmontese brigade, but within less than a month he had assembled a band of volunteers, who sailed from the little port of Quarto (now part of Genoa) on the night of May 5, landing unopposed at Marsala in western Sicily on the eleventh. They represented a broad cross section of Italian society, about half consisting of men from the professions—lawyers, doctors, and university lecturers—the other half drawn from the working class. Some were still technically republicans, but their leader made it clear to them that they were fighting not just for Italy but also for King Victor Emmanuel—and this was no time to argue.

  From Marsala the Thousand—as they came to be called, though there were actually 1,089 of them—headed inland. There was a degree of somewhat halfhearted resistance from the Bourbon troops, but by the end of May Garibaldi was master of Palermo and two months later of all Sicily. In mid-August he and his men crossed the Strait of Messina; on September 7 he entered Naples in an open carriage, King Francis II having fled on the previous day.

  Naples was the largest city in Italy, the third largest in Europe. For two months Garibaldi ruled it—and Sicily—as a dictator, while planning his next step: a march on the Papal States and Rome. But this step was never taken. Cavour, knowing full well that to allow him to continue might mean war with France, was determined to stop him in his tracks. Besides, Garibaldi was now far more popular than Victor Emmanuel himself; the Piedmontese army was deeply jealous of his recent successes; and there was always the lurking danger that Mazzini, who had arrived in Naples in mid-September, might persuade him to desert the King of Piedmont and espouse the republican cause.

  Suddenly Garibaldi found two formidable armies ranged against him: the Neapolitan and the Piedmontese. King Francis had managed to raise a new army, and not long after the Redshirts left Naples on the first stage of their journey north they found a force of some 50,000 drawn up along the bank of the Volturno River. It was there that they suffered their first defeat since landing in Sicily; outside the little town of Caiazzo, in their leader’s temporary absence, one of his generals tried and failed to cross the river, losing 250 men in the attempt. But on October 1 Garibaldi had his revenge. It was an expensive victory, with some 1,400 killed or wounded in and around the little village of Sant’Angelo in Formis, but it may well have saved Italy.

  Meanwhile, the Piedmontese army was also advancing south, into the papal territories of Umbria and the Marches. Its campaign was unspectacular but effective, its papalist opponents consisting of little more than an international brigade of volunteers, recruited from Catholic communities throughout Europe.6 It overcame a spirited resistance at Perugia, scoring a small victory over a papal army at the little village of Castelfidardo near Loreto and a rather larger one when it captured Ancona, taking 7,000 prisoners, including the commander of the papal forces, the French General Christophe de Lamoricière. That was the end of the papal army; henceforth there was no further trouble.

  Victor Emmanuel himself, accompanied by his long-term mistress Rosina Vercellana—she was dressed, we are told, to kill—now came to take titular command of his army. From that moment Garibaldi’s star began to set. The Battle of the Volturno had already persuaded him that a march on Rome was no longer a possibility, and now, with the king himself on his way, he saw that his rule in the South must come to an end. He gave in gracefully. He rode north with a large escort to meet the king, and on November 7 the two of them entered Naples side by side in the royal carriage. Victor Emmanuel offered him the rank of full general together with a splendid estate, but Garibaldi would have none of it. He remained a revolutionary, and for as long as Austria still occupied the Veneto and the pope continued as temporal ruler in Rome, he was determined to preserve his freedom of action. On November 9 he sailed for his farm on the little island of Caprera off the Sardinian coast. He took with him only a little money—borrowed, since he had made none during his months of power—and a bag of seeds for his garden.

  On Passion Sunday, March 17, 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed King of Italy. Old Massimo d’Azeglio, Cavour’s predecessor and successor as chief minister, is reported to have said, when he heard the news, “L’Italia è fatta; restano a fare gli italiani.”7

  LESS THAN THREE months after the royal proclamation Cavour was dead. He had spent his last weeks in furious debate over the future of Rome—in which, it should be recorded, he had never once set foot. All the other major Italian cities, he argued, had been independent municipalities, each fighting its own corner; only Rome, as the seat of the Church, had remained above such rivalries. But though the pope must be asked to surrender his temporal power, papal independence must at all costs be guaranteed: “a free Church in a free state.” He encountered a good deal of opposition, the most vitriolic from Garibaldi, who emerged from Caprera in April, strode into the Assembly in his red shirt and gray South American poncho, and let loose a stream of abuse at the man who, he thundered, had sold off half his country to the French and done his best to prevent the invasion of the Two Sicilies. But he succeeded only in confirming that, however brilliant a general he might be, he was no statesman. Cavour easily won the vote of confidence that followed. It was his last political victory. He died suddenly on June 6 of a massive stroke. He was just fifty years old.

  If Camillo Cavour had lived just one more decade, he would have seen the last two pieces of the Italian jigsaw fitted into place. Where Rome was concerned, Pope Pius was refusing to yield an inch; he held the Papal States for the Catholic world and was obliged by his coronation oath to pass them on to his successor. Napoleon III, by contrast, was becoming steadily more amenable to negotiation, and, by what was known as the September Convention, signed on September 15, 1864, he agreed to withdraw his troops from Rome before September 1866. The new Kingdom of Italy in return pledged itself to defend papal territory against any attack and agreed to transfer its capital within six months from Turin to Florence. Rather than improving the prospects of incorporating Rome into the new Italian state, the convention—which was to remain in force for six years—seemed to guarantee, at least temporarily, the status quo. On the other hand, by putting an end to the fifteen years of French occupation it cleared the ground for the next steps, whatever they might be, and by freezing the situation in Rome it enabled the government to turn its mind to the other overriding necessity: the recovery of the Veneto.

  But now, by a stroke of good fortune, there appeared a deus ex machina, who was effectively to drop both the coveted territories into Italy’s lap. This took the unexpected shape of the Prussian chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who was now well on the way to uniting all the German states into a single empire. The one stumbling block was Austria. He therefore proposed to Victor Emmanuel a military alliance: Austria would be attacked simultaneously on two fronts, by Prussia from the north and by Italy from the west. In the event of victory, Italy’s reward would be the Veneto. The king agreed, and Napoleon III had no objection. The treaty was signed on April 8, 1866, and on June 15 the war began. Six weeks later, it was over. A single battle di
d the trick. It was fought at Sadowa, some sixty-five miles northeast of Prague, and it engaged the largest number of troops—a third of a million—ever assembled on a European battlefield. The Prussian victory was total, and the armistice that followed duly provided for the cession of the Veneto. This was confirmed by a plebiscite, the result of which was a foregone conclusion. Venice was an Italian city at last, and Italy could boast a new and invaluable port on the northern Adriatic.

  Only Rome remained.

  ON DECEMBER 8, 1864, the tenth anniversary of the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Pius published his encyclical Quanta Cura. It was prompted by a speech by the liberal Count Charles de Montalembert at a Catholic congress held the previous year at Malines in Belgium. The time had come, Montalembert had declared, to scrap the age-old alliance of throne and altar, which was now dead on its feet. Instead, he called for a new attitude on the part of the Church. Let it now embrace the new democratic principles, doing away with the Index, the Inquisition, and similar repressive institutions and opening the way to free discussion. To Pius this was dangerous talk indeed. Montalembert and the Archbishop of Malines both received letters of stern reprimand, and work began on the encyclical—to which, when it appeared, was attached what was described as a “Syllabus of Errors.” It was this, rather than the encyclical itself, which caused widespread consternation, consisting as it did of a list of no fewer than eighty condemned propositions. Some of them were uncontroversial enough; others, on the other hand, seemed to many of the faithful profoundly shocking. Did the pope really believe that non-Catholics in Catholic countries should be forbidden to practice their religion? Did he genuinely condemn the idea that “the Roman pontiff can and should reconcile himself with progress, liberalism, and recent civilization”?

  Pius IX never lost his easygoing charm, his ready smile, his ever-present sense of humor; yet here was proof—if proof were needed—that he now identified himself with one of the most reactionary, intolerant, and aggressive movements of modern Church history. For the Ultramontanists, as they had come to be called, the pope was absolute ruler, unquestioned leader, infallible guide. No discussion was permitted, no suggestion that there might be two sides to an argument. Roman Catholicism was in danger of becoming something akin to a police state, illiberal and bigoted. As the Anglican convert John Henry Newman disgustedly wrote, “We are shrinking into ourselves, narrowing the lines of communication, trembling at freedom of thought, and using the language of dismay and despair at the prospect before us.” No wonder that Britain’s representative in Rome, Odo Russell, reporting back to his government, wrote of the pope’s “unbounded pretensions to absolute control over the souls and bodies of mankind” and his position “at the head of a vast ecclesiastical conspiracy against the principles which govern modern society.” “Liberal Catholics,” he wrote, “can no longer speak in her [the Church’s] defence without being convicted of heresy.”

  The shock wave soon spread across Europe. In France, the “Syllabus” was banned; in Naples, it was publicly burned; Bishop Felix Dupanloup of Orleans wrote that “if we do not succeed in checking this senseless Romanism, the Church will be outlawed in Europe for half a century.” Pope Pius, however, was unrepentant. Almost in defiance of the opposition, he summoned a General Council of the Church, to be known as the First Vatican Council and to meet on December 8, 1869, in St. Peter’s.

  It was by far the largest Council in history, attended by nearly 700 bishops from all five continents, 120 of them English-speaking. (There would have been more still if Russia had allowed its Catholic priests to attend.) The proceedings, it was agreed, should take place under two heads, the Faith and the Church. The Constitution on the Faith formally deplored the pantheism, materialism, and atheism of the time and caused few problems. That on the Church proved a good deal trickier. It had not originally been intended that the main issue should be that of papal infallibility, but as the Council continued its work this gradually assumed overriding importance. The debate was long and spirited, and the wording as finally accepted—by a majority of 533 to 2, but with many abstentions—disappointed the extremists on both sides. The Roman pontiff, it declared, was indeed infallible, his definitions “being irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church”; his infallibility was, however, restricted only to those occasions “when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when, in discharge of the office of Pastor and Doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church.”

  This decree was promulgated on July 18, 1870—not a moment too soon. The very next day saw the declaration of the Franco-Prussian War, and the instant withdrawal of French troops from Rome, followed by the Italian occupation of the city, brought the Council to a somewhat abrupt finish.

  BY THE END of 1866 Garibaldi was preparing for a march on Rome, even issuing a proclamation calling upon all freedom-loving Romans to rise in rebellion against the pope. Since the September Convention still had four more years to run, the Piedmontese government had no choice but to arrest him and send him back to Caprera. But he soon escaped—he was by now in his sixtieth year—reassembled his volunteers, and resumed his promised march.

  He had reckoned without the French. Napoleon III, who had withdrawn his troops in 1866 in conformity with the September Convention, now sent a fresh army, equipped with the deadly new chassepot rifles, which landed at Civitavecchia in late October. The volunteers, outnumbered and outclassed, stood no chance. Garibaldi himself managed to slip back across the frontier into Italy—and into the arms of the authorities. Back he was sent to Caprera, where he remained, this time heavily guarded under house arrest. Of his men, no fewer than 1,600 were taken prisoner.

  Yet again, by his swift reaction, the Emperor Napoleon had saved the temporal power of the Papacy; no one could have guessed that less than three years later he would be instrumental in bringing about its downfall. The prime mover, once again, was Bismarck, who had cunningly drawn France into a war by his threat to place a prince of the ruling Prussian House of Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain. That war was declared—by France, not Prussia—on July 19, 1870. It was to prove a bitter struggle: Napoleon would need every soldier he had for the fighting that lay ahead. By the end of August there was not a uniformed Frenchman left in Rome.

  Pope Pius was fully aware of the danger. Only his little mercenary army remained to protect him. Napoleon’s defeat at Sedan8 on September 1 and his capitulation on the second spelled the end of the Second Empire and the destruction of Pius’s last hopes. In the mind of the Italian government, the only question still to be decided was one of timing: should their army occupy Rome immediately—the September Convention was on the point of expiry and with the elimination of one of the signatories was anyway a dead letter—or should they wait for a popular rising?

  Meanwhile Victor Emmanuel sent a special emissary, Count Gustavo Ponza di San Martino, with a last appeal to the pope, writing (as he put it) “with the affection of a son, the faith of a Catholic, the loyalty of a king, and the soul of an Italian.” The security of Italy and of the Holy See itself, he continued, depended on the presence of Italian troops in Rome. Would His Holiness not accept this unalterable fact and show his benevolent cooperation? Alas, His Holiness would do no such thing. He would yield, he declared, only to violence, and even then he would put up at least a formal resistance. He allowed San Martino to take his leave with a final assurance: that he and his friends would never enter Rome. Only when the count was halfway to the door did he call him back. “That last assurance,” he said with a smile, “is not infallible!” Nonetheless, he was as good as his word. When Italian troops entered Rome by the Porta Pia on the morning of September 20, 1870, they found a papal detachment waiting for them. The fighting was soon over, but not before it had left nineteen papalists and forty-nine Italians dead in the street.

  Over the next few hours Italian troops swarmed through Rome, lea
ving only the Vatican and the Castel Sant’Angelo, from which there now flew the white flag of surrender. There was no more resistance. In May 1871, by the new Law of Guarantees, the government assured the pope of his personal inviolability and of his continued exclusive occupation of the Vatican, the Lateran, and his country residence at Castel Gandolfo. All three, however, would henceforth be the property of the Italian state, which would pay him 3.5 million lire a year in compensation. The papal court would remain as it had always been, as would the Papal Guard; the Supreme Pontiff would continue to maintain his own diplomatic service; and a diplomatic corps would continue to be accredited to the Holy See. Papal communications with the outside world were assured by the Vatican post and telegraph office, which issued its own stamps. But Pius doggedly refused to recognize what was obviously a fait accompli or to accept the compensation money. As “Vicar of a Crucified God,” he declared, he was perfectly prepared to suffer; but voluntarily to surrender the Patrimony of Peter, “the seamless robe of Jesus Christ”—that he could never contemplate.

  There was, however, one provision of the Law of Guarantees that he did accept: the right to appoint all Italian bishops. With the unification of Italy, all such appointments—237 of them—had been in the hands of Victor Emmanuel; their transfer to the Holy See completely transformed the attitude of the Italian episcopate toward the pope and immeasurably increased the power of the pontificate over the Church. It did not, on the other hand, do anything to change Pius’s view of the Italian government. Already three years before, his decree Non Expedit—which was to remain in force until after the First World War—had forbidden Catholics to stand or vote in elections, or in any way to take part in the political life of the new kingdom; now he voluntarily withdrew inside the walls of the Vatican, where he remained for the last eight years of his life. The plebiscite that was held shortly afterward registered 133,681 votes in favor of the incorporation of Rome into the Kingdom of Italy and 1,507 against. Rome was now part of Italy not by right of conquest but by the will of its people. Only Vatican City now remained an independent sovereign state.