Prisoner of the Vatican

by David I. Kertzer

  "Well then, permit me, Signor Count, first of all, to remind you that this Government is constitutional, and as you well know, the Minister who is in power today may change tomorrow, and be replaced by someone of a very different outlook. Then there is Parliament, which claims for itself the right of emending and approving or not approving all of the promises that you have been charged by the Minister to make to the Holy See. Now, are you able to guarantee that the Parliament in the future or some Minister who might succeed the current one will support and preserve unchanged any agreement on this subject that we may conclude today?"

  These remarks, Antonelli reported, seemed to unsettle the count. "Well, I hope so," Ponza replied, "and the Italians' good sense gives me good reason for such a belief."

  There followed a tense exchange in which Ponza tried to convince the cardinal that should a treaty with the Holy See be signed, future parliaments would view the papacy even more positively and the threat from revolutionaries would be greatly reduced. Antonelli rejected his arguments, turning the king's attempt to join the fate of the monarchy and the pope on its head:

  "Let's be frank, Signor Count. You cannot ignore the reason why it is the anarchists more than anyone else who are pushing for taking Rome. It is because they hope one day to be able to bury both the Papacy and the Monarchy here. Meanwhile, thank Heavens, in this little territory that has up to now been left to the Holy See, we find ourselves living in perfect tranquility, and in this way, I might add, the Pope's continued independence offers, at the same time, a shield for the Monarchy."

  Antonelli contrasted Rome's current peace with the upheavals that buffeted the Italian government, a result of its reliance on parliamentary democracy.

  "Do you really think, Signor Count, that under such circumstances the time seems right for coming here with these proposals?"

  The count did what he could to hold his ground: "But, indeed, the Government hopes that the steps proposed here will offer a way out of the difficult situation in which it finds itself."

  "I, on the contrary," concluded the secretary of state, "tell you that with measures like the ones that they are proposing, your Government is going to create an ever more difficult situation. And so it is useless for us to waste any more time on this topic. Let the Florence Government do what it wants. For its part, the Holy See will not and cannot agree to actions that have been planned to its detriment." 39

  When Pius himself received Ponza the following morning, according to one telling, the pope greeted him by bellowing, "What a bunch of hypocrites!" Undeterred, Ponza gave the pope both the king's letter and Lanza's list of provisions for safeguarding the Holy See.

  Ponza described the pope as "grieving deeply" as he recognized the approaching end of his reign as pope-king, but the Italian envoy saw some hope in his reaction: "He will not recognize the legitimacy [of the taking of Rome]. He will protest to all the world, yet he expresses too much regret for the French and Prussian slaughter not to give me some hope that it is not a model that he would want to follow."40

  Ponza then sent a telegram to Lanza, telling him of the pontiff's refusal of the king's offer. The die had been cast. The next day, September 11, the Italian troops crossed into the pontifical state. As they swept in, the soldiers plastered large posters addressed to the "Italians of the Roman Provinces" on the walls. Signed by Raffaele Cadorna, the head of the Italian army division in charge of the taking of Rome, they assured the populace that the army had come on a mission of peace, aimed at ensuring Italy's security and the well-being of the people of the Roman territories. "The independence of the Holy See," Cadorna pledged, "will remain inviolable, as will the freedom of the citizens, both more fully guaranteed than they ever were under the protection of foreign forces."41

  The Italian soldiers who pasted this proclamation on the walls covered up one put up the previous day from the head of the pontifical army, General Kanzler. It painted quite a different picture: "Romans! A horrendous evil is being attempted. The Holy Father, in His peaceful possession of His Capital and of the few provinces spared from usurpation from His dominion, is threatened without any reason by the troops of a Catholic king. Rome is therefore in a state of siege." Kanzler called on the citizenry to remain in their homes. The same day, he had telegraphed the commanders of the various divisions of his troops scattered around the Roman territories with the news that Ponza's ultimatum had been rebuffed. "We may be attacked at any time. Take measures not to get cut off."42

  As the Italian troops began their advance through the papal lands, Pius sent Victor Emmanuel a short note: "Count Ponza di San Martino has given me a letter that Your Majesty wished to direct to me, but one that is not worthy of an Affectionate Son who claims to profess the Catholic faith." The pope told the king that he would not respond in detail to his proposals, for to do so would simply "renew the pain that my first reading caused me." But the Lord's ways were not easy for mere mortals to fathom. "I bless God," wrote the pope, "who has seen fit to allow Your Majesty to fill the last years of my life with such bitterness." He concluded, "I ask God to shed his grace on Your Majesty, protecting you from danger and dispensing his mercy on you who have such need of it." 43

  4. Conquering the Holy City

  AS ITALIAN TROOPS marched on Rome from both north and south, the pope frantically sought help from Europe's great powers, but circumstances were against him. France was still locked in a war with Prussia, its capital circled by enemy troops, its emperor overthrown, and a new republican government not yet fully formed. Prussia was not only occupied with its war but was in the process of unifying all of Germany into a single state, while Austria, having been defeated just four years earlier by Prussia, was leery about acting on its own.

  Yet, from the pope's perspective, Austria had no excuse not to come to help him. After all, for decades it had been Europe's most influential Catholic power, its soldiers more than once going in to quell revolts in the Papal States in the nineteenth century. The last burst of papal diplomatic energy before the attack on Rome was thus, not surprisingly, aimed at the Austrian emperor. Within twenty-four hours of the pope's meeting with Count Ponza, Antonelli received a coded message from his nuncio in Vienna. In response to the telegram that the secretary of state had sent him on the ninth, he had arranged an emergency meeting with the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Count Friedrich von Beust. "Catholic Austria's abandonment of the pope," the nuncio told Beust, "would be viewed in the Catholic world as a form of parricide." Beust replied that he would speak with Franz Josef and get back to him quickly.1

  On the morning of the twelfth, Beust summoned the nuncio and gave him the bad news. Austria could do nothing to help, for if the emperor were to take a stand against the invasion of Rome and Italy went ahead anyway, the emperor's dignity would be grievously offended. This slight would be grounds for war against Italy, something that Austria wanted at all costs to avoid. Beust assured the nuncio that Austria remained devoted to the pope and that "all of the cities of the Empire were at his disposition" should he wish to flee Rome. The nuncio was furious. "It takes some nerve," he replied icily, "to invite me to move into your house while you do nothing to prevent me from being thrown out of my own." He begged Beust at least to announce publicly that the Imperial Government would be displeased by an Italian invasion. "But they would not even grant me this."

  The nuncio had his own theory about why the pope's pleas were being repulsed. Count Beust had often written against the Vatican Council's pronouncement of papal infallibility, and "I cannot get away from the conviction that this treatment by the Austro-Hungarian cabinet regarding the Italian invasion is nothing other than a vile vendetta against the Council's decisions." It did not help that Beust was himself not only a Protestant but a Freemason as well.2

  As the French military situation grew only worse, the pope's dwindling hopes of any help from that source were quickly evaporating. Jules Favre, the foreign minister of the new French republic, refused to publicly renounce the Sept
ember Convention or to offer France's approval of the Italian march on Rome. Yet, in private conversations, he made it clear that France would do nothing to stop the assault. In a letter written on September 10 to a colleague, he explained: "You know our opinion.... The temporal power has been a scourge to the world, it is prostrate, we will not resurrect it. But we feel too unhappy to trample on it."

  At this point the pope should have had no illusion about the prospects of getting any help from the foreign powers. Yet Pius was a man of deep faith, confident that God was on his side. As Ponza, the king's emissary, was leaving on September 10, the pope was said to have told him as he was going out the door: "I am neither a prophet nor son of prophets, but I tell you that you will not enter, or if you enter you will not remain."3

  On September 16, the Italian forces occupied the pope's port, Civitavecchia. All that remained was the final sweep into Rome, but the government still hoped to avoid seizing the Holy City by force, all too aware of the outrage such a scene would provoke among Catholics worldwide. After taking the port, the Italian war minister, at the king's request, instructed Cadorna to send a final appeal to the papal government to end its military resistance. Cadorna wrote to General Kanzler the same day. "I have the honor of informing Your Excellency," the letter began, "that Civitavecchia surrendered this morning to royal troops. Following this fact, the futility of further bloodshed should be all the clearer, especially considering the strength of the forces involved in the attack compared to those on the defense." Under these circumstances, Cadorna pleaded, "I judge it not without utility to renew the request that you offer no resistance to the military occupation of Rome." Perhaps not helping his cause with the pope, the Italian general added: "These sentiments are those of His Majesty the King, of the government, and of all Italians, including those in the provinces that have already been occupied by royal troops, who exult in the thought of being part of a common homeland." He concluded with the warning that, should it refuse his proposal, the papal government would be responsible for the many pointless deaths that would result.

  Later the same day General Kanzler sent his reply. "The taking of Civitavecchia," he wrote, "does not substantially change our situation.... You appeal to humanitarian sentiments, which certainly are no dearer to anyone than to those who have the pleasure of serving the Holy See. But it is not we who have in any way provoked the sacrilegious attack of which we are the victims. It is thus up to you to show that you are animated by such humanitarian sentiments, refraining from your unjust aggression." Addressing the loyalties of those living in the Roman territories, Kanzler insisted that the pope's subjects "have given indisputable proof of their attachment to the Pontifical government." Responsibility for any deaths that were to follow, then, lay clearly with Cadorna and his government, who, should they move on Rome, would assume an "immense responsibility before God and before the tribunal of history."4

  In the face of the pope's refusal to cede Rome, Lanza needed to find a way to take the city without unduly roiling the diplomatic waters. The problem was not military, for there was no question that the heavily outnumbered papal force could not long hold off the Italians. The problem was what would happen after Rome was taken. The memory of the Roman Republic of 1849 came to mind, when the French and Austrians heeded the pope's pleas and sent their armies to take back the lands he had lost.

  In mid-September, Lanza received a report from Rome offering a disheartening portrait of its population. Three classes lived there, his correspondent explained: the clerical class, the bourgeoisie (lawyers, doctors, merchants, storekeepers), and the lower class. The clergy, humiliated by the Italian conquest, would nurse their grievances and dream of the day they could take revenge on the usurper state. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, long excluded from influence by the papal government, would dream of having their greatest ambitions fulfilled, "but because it is impossible for all of them to put their hand in the till," Lanza's informer predicted, "they will become part of the opposition and the extreme party." Meanwhile, the lower classes, the basso popolo, "are wild and bloody and will remain in large part devoted to the sects, the instrument of vendettas on behalf of the revolutionary parties." He would not even speak of the aristocracy, he explained, "because they are too stupid to be capable of doing either good or bad."5

  On September 18, Italy's minister of war sent Cadorna instructions to attack, specifying that he spare the Leonine city, reserving it for the pope. The plan of attack Was left entirely up to the general, with the caution that "political conditions require, more than ever, prudence and moderation." The following day Cadorna sent final orders to his officers. His instructions regarding the right bank of the Tiber were clear. The Italian troops were to leave the Leonine city alone.6

  The pope, realizing that much of his remaining territories had already been occupied by the Piedmontese—he refused to call them Italians—went through the city to the scala santa, the holy steps, just across from the massive St. John in Lateran basilica. Believed to have originally been the stairway in Pilate's palace in Jerusalem and brought to Rome by the mother of Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, it had attracted pilgrims for centuries. The elderly Pius IX climbed the twenty-eight steps on his knees. At the top, before the crucifix, in a trembling voice he prayed to God to watch over his people. Those with him were brought to tears. Afterward, outside in the piazza, a general asked the pope to bless his troops. Pius then got in his large red carriage and waved to all the faithful lining the streets as he made his way back to the Vatican. Along the way he heard shouts of "Holy Father, don't abandon us!," for rumors were rife that he would leave Rome as soon as the Italian forces arrived.7

  The pope faced a difficult decision. Greatly outnumbered and totally surrounded, protected by only a ring of ancient walls that were far

  from impregnable against modern artillery, the pope's soldiers could not possibly prevail. To order them to fight was to consign many of them to a death that would, in a military sense, have little purpose. Yet he was loath to allow the Italians to take Rome without a fight, believing that to do so might be interpreted as showing that he had given his consent. On September 7, Pius called in his three generals and said that while they should mount a clear resistance to the attack, its aim should be above all to show that the city was being taken by force. Once they had made this clear, they should surrender.8

  The American consul in Rome, D. Maitland Armstrong, offers an enticing glimpse of what Roman life was like in the days preceding the final battle. As it happened, the consul had returned to Rome in mid-September using the same gate that the Italian troops would use to enter the city a few days later. He described the earthen barricades and deep trench outside Porta Pia and the piles of sandbags reinforcing the inner side. In these final days of papal Rome, Armstrong observed, the city "was in a state of quiet expectancy, almost, it seemed of apathy, the streets were comparatively deserted, most of the shops closed, all telegraphic and postal communication cut off, from the 12th until the 23d of September the mails were not received. On the walls were posted proclamations declaring the city in a state of siege, forbidding all people to enter or leave the city, or to assemble in any considerable numbers in the streets."9 He described a population having little enthusiasm for continued papal rule, noting that despite the desperate attempts of the authorities to attract volunteers to defend the Holy City, only two hundred in all of Rome were willing to enlist, and "with the exception of these and the few Romans already in its service not one of the people raised a hand for the defence of the Papacy." Unsavory men who had previously served the papal authorities as spies were now given uniforms and patrolled the streets, fueling popular resentment.

  At 5 A.M. on September 20 the attack began, moving along an arc that ran across a third of the city walls, with cannons booming out forty shots each minute. Armstrong gave this eyewitness account:

  The old walls generally proved utterly useless against heavy artillery, in four or five hours they wer
e in some places completely swept away, a clear breach was made near the Porta Pia fifty feet wide, and the Italian soldiers in overwhelming force flowed through it and literally filled the city, simultaneously the Porta San Giovanni was carried by assault. A white flag was hoisted over from the dome of St. Peter's. After the cannonading ceased the papal troops made but a feeble resistance, and they who a moment before ruled Rome with a rod of iron, were nearly all prisoners, or had taken refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo, or St. Peter's square.

  The Italian forces avoided unnecessary damage or bloodshed, according to Armstrong, as they aimed their fire solely against the outer walls and not into the city: the only noncombatant deaths came as the result of stray shots. Indeed, a bullet had gone through the American consulate's window.

  The disinclination of the papal forces to fight more fiercely, in the American consul's view, was reinforced by their realization that the people of Rome welcomed the Italians as their liberators, as "no private citizens made the least effort or demonstration in favor of the Papal Government." In all, Armstrong reported:

  it was an easy victory for the Italians, and the loss, in killed and wounded, on both sides, was not great, they were in over-whelming force, with very heavy artillery and they knew that the mass of Romans were their friends; the Zouaves [the papal troops], on the other hand, although they never could have imagined how much they were detested, must have, at heart, feared the people, and could not fight their best; they were a fine looking body of men, many of them, even the common soldiers, of superior education and refinement, some of them undoubtedly served the Pope from religious feeling, many for the sake of the romance and adventure of the thing, very few for pay, as it was ridiculously small.10

  The consul's account was mistaken on at least one count. While the troops in the major line of assault—under Cadorna's command—limited their fire to the destruction of the walls, the troops on the other side of the city, charged with creating a distraction, did not. Under General Nino Bixio, they lobbed cannon shots perilously close to St. Peter's itself.