Chapter 22

In France the government showed its revolutionary leaning by forbidding a subscription which was undertaken for the purpose of presenting a sword of honor to Lamoriciere. It did even worse than this. It meanly persecuted the vanquished soldiers of the Holy See, as well as those who had hastened to fill their places. This was pure revenge. And now that the success of Piedmont was no longer doubtful, it could serve no other purpose than to establish the fact of the Emperor’s complicity. Such of the soldiers of the Pope as were natives of France were deprived of their rights of citizenship. Thus were noble youths, the flower of France, on their return from Castelfidardo and Ancona, deprived of the electoral franchise, and stripped of their right to serve on juries and in the army. Some even were interdicted from inheriting property on the pretext that, as strangers, their signatures required to be legalized. These men were, nevertheless, the actual defenders of a sovereign whom the government pretended to defend officially. The revolutionary papers audaciously said that the same law was not applicable to such French subjects as joined the bands of Garibaldi, on the ground that these bands were neither a government nor a military corporation. This odd interpretation completely met the views of ministerial jurisprudence; and so was presented the extraordinary spectacle of a country outlawing such of her children as served the same cause as her army, and in nowise molesting those who supported the opposite side. All political allusions in the pulpit were now repressed with increased severity. The bishops, however, could not be intimidated. Besides, as they could not be displaced, they were not so easily reached. Mgr. Pie, the eminent Bishop of Poitiers, ascended the pulpit the Sunday after the battle. “My brethren,” said he, “you all expected of me that I would speak to-day in my cathedral. It is according to the customs of the church to know how to honor her defenders, and to mourn for them when dead. And because, having taken upon myself a responsibility which I decline not, and having encouraged and blessed the departure of several of those youthful volunteers, I would be ashamed of myself if now, restrained by the fears arising from a pusillanimous prudence, I did not offer them the homage of my admiration together with that of my prayers. Your sympathies are already with my words. If they gave offence to any hearers, I would, indeed, be afflicted. But, by the grace of God, the country which we inhabit is called France, which warrants, or rather commands, that I should be candid.” In the absence of that fame which victory confers, the vanquished were consoled by that immortality which eloquence bestows on those whom it celebrates. So long as the great art of oratory shall be appreciated in the countries of Fenelon and Bossuet, the funeral orations on Lamoriciere, by Bishops Pie and Dupanloup, together with the fine pages on the heroes of Castelfidardo, by Bishop Gerbet of Perpignan, Mgr. Plantier of Nismes, and other writers, will not cease to be read.

“They died in order to defend us,” said, as if prophetically, Archbishop Manning, who succeeded Cardinal Wiseman in the new See of Westminster, already so illustrious; “the cause for which they fell is our cause. They are blind, indeed, who cannot see that what has been begun by the head will soon be undertaken against all the members; that the attacks will extend rapidly from the centre to the extremities; that revolutionary tyranny and the despotism of civil power will strive to establish everywhere, in detail, the domination which they are endeavoring to exercise over the will and the person of the Holy Father. We are at the commencement of a new era of penal laws against the liberty of the church. It is for us, therefore, that they have given their life. They died whilst the profane world loaded them with its curses, as died the martyrs in the Flavian amphitheatre, whilst the cry resounded, ‘The Christians to the lions!’ (_Christianas ad leones_), and in presence of thousands of spectators of the Imperial and Patrician families of Rome, and for the gratification of the multitude which thirsted for blood, and such blood as was most noble and innocent. Thus died He who is greater than the martyrs, assailed by the insults of the Pharisees and the jeers of the ignorant masses. It is, therefore, glorious to die for a cause which the world will not and cannot understand. If they had died to defend commercial establishments against the indigenous inhabitants of some distant country, or to repel the attacks of a neighbor, or to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, the world would have understood and honored them, as it did in regard to the combatants of Alma and Inkerman. But, to fall in battle for the independence of the Sovereign Pontificate, to sacrifice themselves for the liberty of Christian consciences, and that of the generations to come—this the world understands not, and for this we proclaim them great and glorious among departed heroes.”

Four months later, Mgr. Pie was obliged to refute a new pamphlet, entitled, “_France, Rome and Italy_,” and so endeavor to prevent new iniquities. He feared not to formulate the following terrible rebuke, which was denounced as seditious, but which history has already confirmed as a sentence:

“Pilate had it in his power to save Christ, and without Pilate He could not be put to death. The death-warrant could only come from him; _nobis non licet interficere_, said the Jews. Wash thy hands, O Pilate! declare thyself guiltless of the death of Christ. Our only answer every day will be, and the latest posterity will repeat the same: I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, who was born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered death and passion under Pontius Pilate; _Quipassus est sub Pontio Pilato_.”

It was no secret when these words were spoken, as it was to Lamoriciere and his brave army, that the government of the French Emperor encouraged and patronized the iniquitous aggressions of Piedmont, whilst it pretended, in the face of Europe, to support the Holy See.

(M77) “It was not Garibaldi and his volunteers,” said the Revue des deux Mondes, “that General Lamoriciere had to fight; the odds in that case would not have been so unequal. But he had the regular army of Piedmont before him—an army six times more numerous than his own. Nor was it the attack merely of a revolutionary party which was now directed against the temporal power of the Papacy. It was a government incomparably more powerful than the Pope’s, which decreed arbitrarily itself alone, and in the face of the other nations of the world, the suppression of this power, and which accomplished that suppression by the irresistible force of its arms, and under the eyes of our garrison in Rome.” Whilst Austria, not from any want of sympathy with the Holy See, but from the dread her cautious ministry, who had penetrated the designs of France, entertained of a new French invasion, looked tamely on from the heights of her quadrilateral, the French Emperor secretly expressed his approval of the Piedmontese attack on the Papal States, and at the same time publicly withdrew his ambassador at Turin, as a protest in the face of mankind against this unprovoked and unjustifiable attack. England, which could not be supposed to have much sympathy with the Holy See, notwithstanding the declarations of her best statesmen in support of the temporal sovereignty, openly pronounced in favor of the Piedmontese aggression on the Pope, who, in trying times, had been her most faithful ally. But the days of the elder Bonaparte were forgotten, and too much could not be done to conciliate the new ally whom the English had found in the second Bonaparte. So their representative, Sir John Hudson, remained at Turin, and was the confidential adviser there of Count de Cavour, while Sir Henry Elliot continued to reside at Naples after that city had become the headquarters of Garibaldi. The great Northern Powers, Russia and Prussia, acted a more honorable part. Even before the fall of Ancona was known, they both withdrew their ambassadors from Turin. Von Schleinitz, the Prussian Prime Minister, protested energetically against the unwarrantable aggression of Piedmont. M. de Cavour, who understood the tendencies of the time, replied to Von Schleinitz, as if uttering a prophecy: “I regret that the Court of Berlin should judge so severely the conduct of the king and his government. I am conscious of acting in the interests of my sovereign and my country. I might reply successfully to what M. Von Schleinitz says. But, be that as it may, I console myself with the thought that, on the present occasion, I am setting an example which Prussia, within a short time probably, will be happy to follow.”

The cannonade had scarcely ceased to be heard at Ancona, when the Holy Father raised his voice in a consistorial allocution of 28th September, which, although addressed to the cardinals, is intended for the whole civilized world. The allocution briefly enumerates the several acts of aggression successively committed by the Piedmontese. It then alludes to Cavour’s audacious letter, which was intended as a justification beforehand of the violation of territory, and the fearful bloodshed which followed. It expresses the false accusations, the repeated calumnies and insults which were put forward as a pretext for the invasion. It also rebukes “the singular malignity with which the Piedmontese government dared to call the Pontifical soldiers _mercenaries_, when so many of them, both Italians and foreigners, were of noble lineage, bearing illustrious names, and had resolved to serve in our troops without pay, and for the sole love of our holy religion.” The fact is established, to the disgrace of Piedmont, that the Papal government “could have had no intimation of the enemy’s purpose. The general-in-chief commanding our forces could not have entertained the thought of having to contend with the soldiers of Piedmont.” The meed of praise is awarded to the fallen warriors, together with the expression of unfeigned sorrow for their loss: “Whilst we must bestow merited praise on the general, his officers and his men, we can scarcely restrain our tears as we remember all those brave soldiers, those noble young men especially, who had been impelled by faith and their own generous hearts to fly to the defence of the temporal power of the Roman Church, and who have met with their death in this cruel and unjust invasion. We are deeply moved by the grief of their families; and would to God it were in our power, by any word of ours, to dry up the source of their tears!” If anything could be worse than the savage and murderous attack of Piedmont, it was the hypocritical pretence under which it was undertaken. The invaders came as “the restorers of moral order and as the preachers of tolerance and charity.” The allocution concludes by denouncing this hypocrisy, together with the diplomatic principle of non-intervention, of which France and Piedmont set such brilliant examples.

(M78) The King of Sardinia having violently seized Umbria and the Marches of Ancona, must also have a mock plebiscitum, in order, no doubt, to make it appear that these provinces were spontaneously annexed to his kingdom. The fall of Gaeta and the conquest of Naples by Garibaldi encouraged the ambitious monarch in these unjustifiable annexations, and although generally condemned by the European press, he most audaciously issued a proclamation in reply to the Papal allocution. All these nefarious acts, together with the outrages everywhere perpetrated against all who remained loyal to the Holy See and faithful to the sacred laws of the church, induced the Holy Father to publish the now celebrated allocution of March 18th, 1861. This allocution is perhaps the greatest doctrinal utterance of the Pontificate of Pius IX. But it must be considered in connection with the _syllabus_, which will now shortly be noticed.

The Emperor Napoleon had, indeed, suspended public diplomatic relations with the court of Turin. This was intended merely as a blind, for he continued to negotiate secretly, through Prince Jerome Napoleon, concerning Rome, and what yet remained to the Pope of his states. He appeared to bind Piedmont to respect the sovereignty and independence of the Holy See, and had no objections that the Pope should raise an army designed only for defensive purposes. On such conditions the Emperor would acknowledge the new kingdom of Italy. In all this there was a want of sincerity. Count Cavour, Prince Napoleon and the Emperor, were perfectly agreed that the Holy Father was, in due course of time, to be given up to his enemies.

(M79) In order to prepare the world for this consummation of Franco-Sardinian policy, there appeared a new pamphlet, entitled _La France, Rome et l’Italie_. It was signed by M. de la Gueronniere, and published on the 7th day of March. It was suggested, if not actually written, by the Emperor himself. The allocution already alluded to, dealt by anticipation with the chief points of this publication. It was, however, directly replied to in a letter of the eminent Cardinal Antonelli, to the Papal Minister at Paris. The cardinal begins by stating that the chief object of the pamphlet was “to throw on the Holy Father and his government the responsibility of the condition to which Italy and the Pontifical States in particular were reduced.” He then proceeds lucidly, logically, and not without eloquence, to attack all the positions assumed by the writer, and exposes the treachery, baseness and duplicity of the principal adversaries of the Holy See in its long struggle with revolutionary Piedmont, supported as it was by the Emperor Napoleon III. It will be recollected that it had been proposed, indeed it was one of the articles of the treaty of Zurich, that there should be a confederation of the States of Italy. The writer of the pamphlet audaciously accused the Pope of having rejected the plan of an Italian confederacy, just as if he and not the Emperor and his ally, the King of Piedmont, had violated the treaty which succeeded the battle of Solferino. “The official proposition of such a confederacy,” the cardinal states, “and of its presidency came only after the preliminaries of Villafranca and the treaty of Zurich; and the Holy Father showed himself disposed to accept it as soon as its basis should be defined. The author, nevertheless, says that it was then too late. He does not, in saying so, seem to perceive that he seriously insults his own sovereign, as if he and the other Powers had proposed as the basis of a solemn treaty and the great means of conciliation, a thing which was at that moment neither possible nor opportune. Be that as it may, it was only then that the proposition was made by the person authorized to make it; and it is unjust to pretend that his Holiness had taken any action thereon before it was laid before him. Since, therefore, the plan fell through independently of his refusal, how can he, without a positive act of calumny, be accused of obstinacy on this point?”

The cardinal’s letter is of great length. In one place he recapitulates the heads of accusation contained in the pamphlet. “Putting aside,” says he, “the unfounded assertions, the matters foreign to the case, which helped to fill up the pamphlet, the obstinacy which it imputes to the Holy Father amounts to his having declined an abdication which his conscience condemned, to his having deferred some reforms that were promised till the revolted provinces had returned to their allegiance; to his having proposed to recruit an army for himself instead of accepting the troops offered to him; to his having preferred the voluntary offerings of the faithful to subsidies furnished by governments which are not all nor always equally disposed to be friendly. And these acts of firmness, of noble disinterestedness, which must appear most praiseworthy to the unprejudiced mind, which have appeared and do still appear worthy of the admiration of Protestants, seem, on the other hand, to the Catholic author of the pamphlet, to be so blameworthy that he could not find more bitter words of censure were he to write against those who are alone responsible for the sad disorders of the present time. But this is precisely what is of a nature to surprise us. The Imperial government of France had given advice to his Holiness; it had also given advice to the Piedmontese government. Now, if the Holy Father must be accused of not having followed such advice, the Piedmontese government does not seem to have been more docile. His Holiness did not deem it expedient to do some things desired by the French government. But Piedmont did a great many things which the French government had publicly declared it was opposed to. The Imperial government forbade the violation of the neutrality of the Papal States; and to this the Piedmontese government responded by occupying the Romagna. The Imperial government disapproved annexation; and the Piedmontese government only answered by accomplishing annexation. The Imperial government forbade, in threatening language, the invasion of the Marches and Umbria; and the Piedmontese government responded by pouring grape shot into the small Pontifical army, by bombarding Ancona from sea and land, and by refusing to observe any of the laws of war acknowledged by all civilized nations. The author of the pamphlet allows his pen the most cruel license against the Holy See, but has not one single word of blame for the Piedmontese government. Who can explain such an attitude? The explanation is a very natural one, and is given on the last page of the pamphlet, where the author tells us that the Emperor of the French _cannot sacrifice Italy to the Court of Rome, nor give up the Papacy to the revolution_; which means that the Court of Rome must be sacrificed to the exigencies of the peninsula, that the temporal dominion of the Holy See must be done away with, because it is in the way of the unification of Italy, and that this suppression is to prevent the Papacy or the spiritual power from falling beneath the blows of the revolution.” It cannot fail to be remarked that in all the French Emperor’s manifestos appears the pretext of protecting the Papacy from the revolution, whilst, but for his interference, it needed not such protection. Pius IX. was quite able to contend successfully against whatever revolutionary element there was in the Pontifical States. With the aid of his allies, he could also have repelled the attacks of Piedmont, if unsupported by the French. But against a Power so great that it could command the non-intervention of all other Powers, he was powerless. It may have afforded a momentary pleasure to the Carbonaro Prince, Napoleon III., to annihilate, for the sake of his way of promoting Italian unification, the time-honored sovereignty of the Pope. It afforded him no lasting benefit. Germany caught the idea, and becoming unified, hurled her legions against the common European enemy, who, in his day of sorest need, found not an ally, not so much as one powerful friend even in that Italy for which he had done and sacrificed so much.

(M80) It now only remained for young Italy, revolutionized as it was, to assume and wear its blushing honors. Piedmont having seized Umbria and the Marches of Ancona, and having also, through her agent Garibaldi, taken possession of Sicily and Naples, was mistress not only of the greater portion of the Pontifical States, but also of almost all Italy at the same time. It became such greatness to have a parliament. Accordingly, the first Italian parliament assembled at Turin in February, 1861; and on the 14th of March, Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed King of Italy. It was not, however, till the 24th of June that the French Emperor found it convenient to recognize this extended sovereignty. In doing so, no doubt, he was consistent with himself, although quite at variance with the professions of him who had so lately withdrawn his ambassador from the Court of Turin.

(M81) Count de Cavour lived not to enjoy this recognition. He died on the 6th of June. This minister was a politician to the end; and he had no wish ever to be anything else. He was anxious, however, at the close, to have the merit of reconciliation with the church which he had so cruelly persecuted, both in the ancient State of Sardinia and in the newly-annexed territories of the “Kingdom of Italy.” Finding that his latter end was approaching, he desired the presence of Friar Giacomo, Rector of the Madonna degli Angeli. This Friar, with whom, as is related, the Count had had a previous understanding, faithfully came. M. de Cavour remained alone with him for half an hour; and when the priest was gone he called Farini, and said to him: “My niece has had Fra Giacomo to come to me; I must prepare for the dread passage to eternity; I have made my confession and received absolution. I wish all to know, and the good people of Turin particularly, that I die like a good Christian. I am at peace with myself. I have never wronged any one.” It is a trite saying that the ruling passion of a man’s life asserts its power at the hour of death; and the last recorded words of Count de Cavour would seem to show that to the end he was more bent on politics than prayer. As Friar Giacomo was reciting solemnly by his bedside the prayers for the departing soul, “Frate! Frate!” he exclaimed, whilst he pressed the Friar’s hand, “_libera chiesa in libera stato_!” (a free church in a free state). Admirable, no doubt. But how was the great idea to be realized, since the church could only be free when her ministers were dictated to, imprisoned, banished, and otherwise tormented? And what freedom for the state, unless it were free to tyrannize over and persecute the church? Judging Cavour and his party by their acts rather than their fine speeches, such was their idea of _a free church in a free state_. If it be true that, as men live so they die, it is not true that Count de Cavour died like a good Christian. None will be inclined to dispute with him the comfort which he claimed of being at peace with himself. But they who are aware of the violence, the spoliation, the rapine, bloodshed, and unspeakable suffering, in all which he was, at least, an accomplice, if not the direct cause, throughout the States of the Italian Grand Dukes, the Pontifical territories and the kingdom of Naples, will not easily acknowledge that he spoke truth when he said that “he had never wronged anyone.” But let us now be silent. There is _One_, and only _One_, who judgeth.