CHAPTER XIX

 

ROUHER'S JAMAIS

On a dark night Garibaldi succeeded in evading the Italian cruisers, and a North American vessel brought him to Florence. There he delivered exciting speeches in the old style, and the revolutionary central committee in the capital, inflamed by his presence, urged an advance upon Rome. Garibaldi himself proceeded southwards; on 23rd October he reached the border of the Papal States, and his red shirts began at once in small bands to cross the frontier. Under such circumstances there was nothing else for Victor Emmanuel to do but to dissociate himself from the policy of the volunteers. On 27th October he issued a proclamation to his people, in which he declared that the free corps, who had invaded the papal territory, were acting without authority from him or from the recently formed Cabinet, and he disclaimed any idea of wishing to injure the Pope’s spiritual power. General La Marmora, who had been sent to Paris to influence Napoleon III, exerted all his strength, in conjunction with the Cavaliere Nigra and the Marchese Pepoli, to induce the Emperor to abandon the plan of a new intervention. But the eloquence of the Italian diplomatists was wasted. On 28th October the French fleet left Toulon, and two days later a French auxiliary corps under General Failly entered the Porta del Popolo. Garibaldi by that time had already occupied Monterotondo (the ancient Mons Eretum) a few miles from Rome, and it was his intention, if the attack on Rome should fail, to go by Tivoli, where he expected reinforcements, to the Abruzzi, in order from there to set in motion the South Italian Radicals. The Italians, however, under General Cialdini, had crossed the papal frontier in order to stop the progress of the volunteers; but before the Italian troops reached the Garibaldists, General Kanzler, who led the papal army, had made ready for the attack. On 3rd November, early in the morning, 5,000 papal soldiers, reinforced by 2,000 French, advanced against the volunteers, whom they encountered near Mentana. The papal troops were repulsed, but when the French came to the rescue the Garibaldians were forced to retire, after suffering heavy loss. Garibaldi himself was again taken prisoner and brought invalided to Caprera; but, in order not to give the friends of the Papacy in Italy and elsewhere any ground for complaint, the Italians immediately withdrew their troops from the Papal States. This was not done without self-constraint; it affronted the national feeling of the Italians very much to be obliged to leave the Papal States, while the French were allowed to remain there.

A fresh affront was inflicted upon them when the French minister, Rouher, declared on 5th December 1867, during the debate in the Legislative Assembly on the Italian question, that Italy would “never” obtain Rome and the rest of the old Papal States. Rouher’s jamais caused the greatest excitement everywhere. Jules Favre in his indignation at the Conservative policy of the government described the meeting of 5th December as a counterpart to the meeting in the Racquet Court, and the Italians were furious when they read the words of the French minister. At the very time that Rouher was speaking, Menabrea had declared, in the Chamber of Deputies at Florence, that Cavour’s programme was still the programme of Italy, and that Rome was as important for Italy as Paris was for France. Rouher’s jamais therefore sounded like a challenge, and Victor Emmanuel exclaimed indignantly: “We will teach him jamais”, and he was not appeased until Rouher had apologized, and declared that the obnoxious word had escaped him in the heat of debate.  

But the Menabrea ministry was so weak upon its feet that the Chamber refused it a vote of confidence, and Italy was again thrown into a painful ministerial crisis, which ended in Menabrea remaining in power after exchanging some unpopular ministers for others who were more acceptable to the national feeling and to the Radicals. But the new ministry was not more successful than the former in inducing France to recall her auxiliary corps. The Marquis de Moustier informed Nigra that the new occupation was a necessary consequence of Garibaldi’s last rising, and that affairs in Europe and Italy were of such a nature that France would not be able to justify the recall of her soldiers. Menabrea therefore declared in the Chamber that for the present the government would abstain from making any more proposals to France, since these could only serve to show how great was the difference of opinion between the two countries with regard to Rome.

 In the autumn of 1867 Gladstone came to Rome, and Manning and others entertained great expectations from the famous statesman’s sojourn in the Eternal City. The Archbishop of Westminster begged his Roman friends to be sure to show Gladstone every possible attention. The ex-minister had long been silent about Rome and the temporal power of the Pope, but he had declared himself in favor of the Pope’s independence; it was therefore possible that he might be won as an ally. But Manning uttered a warning against Lord Clarendon, who was also in the south, with a Cavete ab hominibus. Massari relates that Lord Clarendon, who brought a greeting from Victor Emmanuel to Pius IX, besought the Pope to bless the King of Italy. After giving several reasons against doing such a thing, Pius IX said at last that he did not trust in armed forces, but only in the miracles of Providence. The noble lord is reported to have replied: “Providence can certainly do miracles, and it has done many in the last ten years; but, Holy Father, they have all been in favor of Italy”.

 Thus the conversation ended. The well-informed writer, who, under the name of “Spectator”, wrote the ecclesiastical leaders every month during a long period in the Allgemeine Zeitung, says that he received from a trustworthy source an account of an interview, which Gladstone, Lord Clarendon, and a third well-known English statesman had together with Pius IX. The English politicians derived the impression from the conversation with the Pope, that a peaceful solution of the Roman question, in spite of all that had happened, was by no means impossible. On their way home they informed the government at Florence of their observations, and the government accordingly sent a clerical representative to the Vatican, in order that in a secret audience he might influence Pius IX in the direction of a peaceful settlement. When the representative of the Italian government had told his errand, Pius IX looked long in silence through the window over the Piazza di S. Pietro. Then he turned round, held his hand before his brimming eyes, and exclaimed: “Yes if only there had been no legge Siccardi”. After all, the Sardinian church policy was one of the greatest hindrances to a reconciliation between the kingdom of Italy and the Papacy.

ILLNESS OF VICTOR EMMANUEL

But Victor Emmanuel continued to hope that he would win Rome as he had won Venice. At the end of January, 1868, he expressed to Massari, who had just returned from a visit to Rome, his firm hope that the Italians would obtain the papal city. If Italy were again involved in a war, it would, he thought, be absolutely necessary first to solve the Roman question. But, for the moment, there was no prospect of a solution of the question, and, at the close of the year 1869, Victor Emmanuel, who was then staying at San Rossore, was taken so ill that he expected to die. He hastily had his marriage with the Countess di Mirafiori blessed by the Church, and he also called for a priest in order that he might receive absolution. The priest drew a paper from his pocket, and asked the dying King to sign it; it was a revocation of all the steps which during his reign he had presumed to take in reference to the Church. Victor Emmanuel had still sufficient mental power and clearness to draw the priest’s attention to the fact that it was impossible for him, as a constitutional king, to sign such a political document without the knowledge of his responsible ministers, and he commanded the priest to go into the adjoining chamber, where Menabrea was in waiting. The poor clergyman obeyed, but excused himself to the Prime Minister, by saying that he was acting under the injunction of the Archbishop of Pisa, Cardinal Corsi. Menabrea told him to give the King absolution without delay, and threatened to arrest him if he dared to refuse. The priest then obeyed, and afterwards Pius IX sent his blessing and forgiveness by telegraph.

Victor Emmanuel did not die that time; but, as the Civiltà Cattolica says, he rewarded the great goodness and clemency of Pius IX by crowning the work of revolution in entering Rome and setting up his throne in the Quirinal.

The obstinate refusal of France to give up intervention produced great coolness between the Court of Florence and the Tuileries, but at the same time a rapprochement took place between Italy and Austria. After defeat on the battlefield, the empire had dropped the ultramontane banner, and on 21st December 1867 the Emperor Francis Joseph,”with a heavy heart”, signed the new constitution, which secured to his subjects religious liberty and the freedom of the Press. Cardinal Rauscher appealed to all Roman Catholics in Austria to work by all lawful means for a better state of things, to prevent the schools from becoming places for the unchristianizing of the young, the Press from obtaining the right of inveighing shamelessly against everything that was high and holy, and boys of fourteen years of age who wished to escape an examination in religion from declaring themselves not to belong to any denomination.  The protest of Rauscher and of the rest of the bishops was ineffectual; and naturally it availed nothing that Pius IX, in a solemn allocution, called the new Austrian constitution “abominable”. Von Beust pointed out to Antonelli that the Papacy in its ingratitude overlooked the fact that the bishops of the empire could still discuss matters freely with Rome, and treat independently with their priests, and that the Church kept its property intact. The Austrian government proposed new legislation concerning civil marriage and state superintendence of the schools, without any regard to the displeasure of the bishops. Rauscher in vain endeavored to prove that the new laws were a breach of all agreements with Rome, and a blot on Austria’s bright scutcheon; but on 21st March 1868 the Upper House passed them in spite of his protest.

The Concordat thus received a fatal blow; and before the final vote in the Upper House, the Austrian ambassador at Rome, Count Crivelli, had already been ordered to open a negotiation with the Vatican as to an extensive change in the Concordat. Pius IX did not seem quite unwilling to agree to such a change. He remarked jestingly to Count Crivelli: “The Concordat is like a lady’s dress; it might be let out or taken in, but it ought not to be taken off”. But when it came to the point, Rome would not give way to Austrian Liberalism, and the bishops and priests continued to agitate for the maintenance of the Concordat, and for the repeal of the new laws. South German Ultramontanism observed with indignation that Josephinism, which was believed to have been vanquished by the Concordat of 1855, was rising with new vigor in the Roman Catholic empire; and it would have been glad to widen the gulf between the South German states and Prussia in order to stay the Protestant power of the North in its victorious path. At the same time French Ultramontanism, headed by the Empress Eugenie, was inciting Napoleon III to a war with Prussia. The war came, but the South Germans fought by the side of the Prussians, and Napoleon III succumbed in the struggle. With the fall of the French empire the September Convention came to an end, and Italy obtained a free hand with regard to Rome.