THROUGHOUT THE CITY there are still some traces of the battles fought to defend the Roman Republic, a brief but glorious adventure that lasted for five months. From February 9 to July 3, 1849, this small republic gave concrete form to the dreams and aspirations of a generation of Italian patriots who flocked to Rome from all regions of the peninsula. The streets on the Janiculum Hill, site of the republic’s fiercest defense, are named in memory of its heroes and the men who gave their lives to the cause: Dandolo, Sterbini, Bassi, Induno, Armellini, Saffi, Dell’Ongaro, Casini, Daverio, Mameli and others.
Going up the Via Garibaldi, rounding its steep hairpin turns, we come to San Pietro in Montorio. This church is packed with artistic masterpieces, and it’s also where Beatrice Cenci is buried, near the high altar but with no stone to mark her grave. Bramante’s Tempietto, commissioned by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain at the very end of the fifteenth century, is in the church’s courtyard, the spot traditionally thought to be the site of Saint Peter’s crucifixion. This is, of course, myth, and is likely attributable to the grand panorama visible here; before he was executed, the apostle saw Rome for one last time thanks to the hill’s spectacular view of the city. The name Montorio is a contraction of “monte d’oro”—golden hill—a popular appellation derived from the rich light it reflects at sundown.
On the left side of the church a cannonball is lodged partway up the wall, one last touching reminder of the furious bombardment that finally broke through the defensive lines manned by supporters of the Roman Republic. A little farther up the hill, near the memorial to the men who sacrificed themselves to the republic’s cause with the valiant cry now inscribed on the monument, “O Roma o morte”—Rome or Death!—the Republican battery was set up for the city’s defense. An ossuary in the memorial contains the ashes of Goffredo Mameli, among many others. Mameli was wounded in battle at the Villa Vascello, and at first it seemed only a bad leg wound, but gangrene soon set in, and even amputating the limb couldn’t save him. As they marched out of Rome, his fellow soldiers passed in front of the Pellegrini Hospital, where the poet lay dying in agony, singing “Fratelli d’Italia” (“Brothers of Italy”). He had written the words to that hymn, and it became the national anthem of the Italian Republic in 1946, with music composed by Michele Novaro. Mameli was only twenty-two when he died.
Another curious reminder of those troubled months is visible in the wall surrounding the Villa Sciarra, on Largo Berchet. It carries two stone plaques side-by-side: the one on the left is in Italian, dated 1871, and memorializes the sacrifice of the patriots who defended the Roman Republic; the other is in Latin, dated 1850, and celebrates the rapid restoration of the walls to erase all traces of that brief experiment, as well as the help French troops provided in taking back the city.
Remnants of the Villa Vascello’s former protective walls stand just meters outside the Porta San Pancrazio, before the Via Aurelia Antica forks off from the more modern section of the Aurelia. This spot became legendary as one of the last bulwarks of the resistance to the French. So little is now left that it takes a vivid imagination to see it as it was then, amid broadly sweeping fields, herb gardens, vineyards, and formal gardens. Here and there a magnificent villa rose up from the landscape, and the Vascello was just one of them. The grounds of the Villa Doria Pamphili begin just outside the Porta San Pancrazio and rise toward the so-called Arch of the Four Winds. This green oasis is now a cheerful place, filled with children, couples, and joggers, but in the past it was soaked—and not just rhetorically—with blood. The arch was designed by Andrea Busiri Vici in 1856, and built where the Villa Corsini had been, until it was destroyed by French artillery fire during the battle. The attackers took the building almost immediately, and used its elevated site to position their heavy siege canons. The finale of the furious battle for the city was fought between the Vascello and Corsini villas. The Republicans had barricaded themselves in the Villa Vascello and along Urban VIII’s walls, which were hammered by artillery fire, opening at least eight breaches in the walls around the Villa Sciarra through which French soldiers quickly stormed. Nevertheless, it took another month, and many more deaths on both sides, before Rome surrendered.
The promenade atop the Janiculum, shaded by large plane trees, also recalls these epic events, and the avenue is lined with busts of the many volunteers who fought for unification and Rome. A majestic equestrian statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, cast by Emilio Galdieri in 1895, stands at the center of the piazza at the promenade’s end. A monument to Garibaldi’s wife, Anita, was commissioned from Mario Rutelli and added to the piazza in 1932. A nineteenth-century cannon located in the small square beneath the piazza is fired every day at noon after the signal to do so is received from the Capitoline Hill. This tradition began in 1904 and has continued, uninterrupted, ever since.
The Roman Republic’s sheer heroism and tragedy make its story worth telling, but it’s even more fascinating when viewed as a sort of harbinger, at least in hindsight, of so many later events. The errors committed back then—fueled by foolish ambition, emotional outbursts, misunderstandings, passion, zeal, idealism, feuds, unlimited generosity, utopianism, visions, and divisions—are clear to us now. In the Republic’s few months of life—in the acts and laws it promulgated, and the behavior of its leaders—we can see a lot of what would later characterize, after 1946, another republic—present-day Italy.
The brief history of the Roman Republic starts a few years before its official founding, on June 16, 1846, when Monsignor Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, was elected Pope Pius IX. His appointment was met with widespread joy, the pealing of bells, sidewalk celebrations, and congratulations from courts throughout Europe. When his predecessor, Gregory XVI (Bartolomeo Cappellari), died on June 1, 1846, two thousand papal subjects languished in prison, and the Papal States suffered from widespread social backwardness, a result of the desire of those in power to preserve their privileges, paid for by the poverty of the lower classes. Even Metternich’s conservative government in Austria made it known during the conclave that it was time to elect a pope with slightly broader views, and Pius IX represented a reasonable compromise.
An attractive, jovial fifty-four-year-old with a bright wit, Pius IX was weak in theology and even weaker in political justice, but he was an excellent violinist. At first he seemed to want to keep his promise of reform, and a month after his election he declared an amnesty for political prisoners. Surrounded by young prelates who seemed open-minded, he permitted some freedom of the press, and allowed the city of Rome its own constitution. On April 17, 1848, he ordered the gates of the Jewish Ghetto torn down and declared the equality of Jews—a good decision, but one that calls for some clarification. The Jews were first emancipated in 1798, when the driving principles of the French Revolution surfaced in Rome, but freedom for the Jews proved ephemeral, and the restrictions that had governed their lives in the past were reinstated shortly afterward. The measures taken in 1848 were equally short-lived, and when Pius IX returned from exile in Gaeta, in the spring of 1850, the Roman Ghetto was re-established. According to Giorgio Bouchard, the trauma the pope suffered during his forced stay in Gaeta was so extreme that, when Rome was restored to him, he undertook a plan to roll back his reforms, including new provisions against the Jews. It took the arrival of the piemontesi in 1870, and their dream of unification, for the Jewish community to finally be liberated.
The new pope was popular for the first few months of his pontificate. Among other things, he sponsored a public works program that reduced unemployment and, as a consequence, reduced the high crime rate. Italians began to cheer for him, “Viva Pio IX”—“long live Pius IX”—and even Giuseppe Mazzini encouraged him, from London, to take a leading role in the movement to unify Italy. The severe and intransigent Mazzini could do so without fearing his policy would be confused with the “neo-Guelphism” of Vincenzo Gioberti. But regardless of its sincerity, Mazzini’s enthusiasm was misplaced, and if it was meant to encourage the pope toward reform, it failed.
In 1848 all of Europe was shaken by revolutionary fervor. In the region of Piedmont, Prince Charles Albert was constrained to allow a constitution in early March, and by the end of the same month he was forced to declare war on Austria. Rome was alive with trepidation—what would the pope do? Would he take to the battlefield to fight the “barbarians?” Pius IX wasn’t so inclined, however, and in a famous speech he declared that, as representative of a peaceful God, he couldn’t take sides in any war between nations. His troops were already on the march toward the northern border of the Papal States when they were recalled.
Events, however, transpired of their own accord. In September the pope named Pellegrino Rossi his prime minister. Rossi was a talented man, a naturalized French citizen, and professor of political economy; he was sent to Rome as an ambassador, and there he was made a count in reward for his diplomatic abilities. He accepted the position, but had a precarious path ahead; he had to restore the authority and reputation of the papal regime, and at the same time create a less backward administration and institute essential economic reforms. If anyone could pull off such a feat, it would’ve been Rossi, but he unfortunately never got the chance. Just two months after his nomination he was stabbed to death by a group of opponents as he was climbing the stairs of the Papal Chancery to open a session of Parliament. Among his assassins, perhaps, was Luigi Brunetti, son of Angelo Brunetti, a prosperous wine carter, liberal reformer, and well-known political figure better known as Ciceruacchio—little Cicero. (It’s interesting to note that in the monument dedicated to Angelo on the Lungotevere Ripetta the sculptor, Ettore Ximenes, represented him as he faced an Austrian firing squad, his son Lorenzo at his side; his other son, Luigi, was not included. The sculptor was criticized for this omission, but it makes sense if you consider that Luigi was deeply shadowed by his crime.)
Pius IX barricaded himself in the Quirinal Palace after Rossi’s assassination, and the crowd laid siege to it, setting into motion a chaotic revolt that had no real political scope. The people called on the pope to declare war on Austria, abolish entrenched privileges, allow an Italian constitution, and institute social reforms. They protested, and the Swiss Guard opened fire. After initially dispersing, the rebels regrouped. The crowd included a number of soldiers and members of the civic militia, its actions quickly escalated from chanting to fighting, and several attempts were made to occupy the pope’s residence. The papal secretary was killed during one of them, and Pius IX decided to abandon the city. He fled on the evening of November 24, dressed as a simple priest, with the assistance of Karl von Spaur, the Bavarian ambassador to Rome. Posing as a family tutor, he escaped south to Gaeta, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and therefore outside of papal and Roman jurisdiction.
Monsignor Emanuele Muzzarelli presided over the new government in Rome, and Giuseppe Galletti became Minister of the Interior. Muzzarelli was a liberal priest, but now found himself faced with terrible economic problems. The public coffers were literally empty, with no funds even for the day-to-day operation of the city. Interest-bearing loans were forbidden because of their potential resemblance to the sin of usury; this gives you some idea of the Papal States’ administrative backwardness, as the obvious result was a thriving black market of loans made with exorbitant interest rates.
Muzzarelli reacted as anyone would have—including poor Rossi, had he been given the chance—and steered a middling course, issuing treasury bonds to meet immediate financial needs while promising reforms, some of which he knew could never be instituted. In short, he attempted to govern, but it wasn’t easy, especially because the pope, still smarting from the trauma of the rebellion and his flight, declared from Gaeta that all acts of the new government were null and void. Rome answered that, in fleeing the city, he’d created a new situation that instead nullified his own power. On December 26, the government approved the convocation of a constitutional convention, and two days later parliament was dissolved, with new elections called for January 21, 1849, the first elections to include direct and universal (at least male) suffrage.
Facing this rapid turn of events, the pope committed another of his many political errors, and nominated a governing commission (essentially a government in exile in Gaeta), to be headed by Cardinal Castracane. Furthermore, he forbade “good Christians” from participating in the elections, an action he defined as sacrilegious, and threatened any who voted with excommunication. Many moderates didn’t vote, and the result was—with an extraordinary turnout of 50 percent of the electorate, and in some places as much as 70 percent—an elected assembly dominated by extremists. This just about brings us to the end of our quick pre-history of the Roman Republic. The new assembly was inaugurated on February 5, 1849; on February 9, from atop the Capitoline Hill, it proclaimed (with 120 votes in favor, 10 opposed, and 12 abstentions) the decreto fondamentale—the so-called Fundamental Decree—which read, “The papacy has forfeited de facto and de jure the temporal government of the Roman State. The government of the Roman State will be a pure democracy, and will take the glorious name of the Roman Republic.” The flag they chose was the Italian tricolor. This happened on February 9, 1849, and the new state would last only five months.
Following great emotion, many tears of joy, and the exhilaration regarding their glorious future, those who supported the new state were soon faced with the problem of governing it. The assembly chose a triumvirate to head the government. The public’s lack of confidence was such that merchants refused to accept both the coupons and banknotes printed by the treasury, so in practice coins became the only viable tender. The government tried to fix the situation by passing several urgent (i.e., desperate) measures. On February 21 the assembly voted to confiscate all church property—real estate, bank accounts, and valuable ecclesiastical furnishings worth a total of about 120 million scudi. This measure was not only insufficient, but also caused a great stir. The government then decreed forced loans, obliging anyone with an income greater than 2,000 scudi to hand a percentage of it “temporarily” over to the state, in sums ranging from one-fifth to two-thirds of their total income. Finally, it decreed the forced circulation of banknotes, with severe penalties for those who refused them.
The republic got off to a bad—very bad—start, giving rise to a new institutional system that required popular consensus, in a city where for many centuries the masses had been kept far from any sort of participation in public life other than processions, gifts tossed to the crowd, and holy rituals. Yet its beginning was even worse when you consider the fact that Pius IX made continuous appeals from Gaeta to the Catholic nations of Europe to help him re-establish his temporal domain. Acting as Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli sent a message to the chanceries of Spain, France, Austria, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies saying that, among other things, “The affairs of the Papal States have fallen victim to a devastating conflagration set by a party of rebels from every social class. Under the specious pretexts of nationalism and independence it has stopped at nothing to achieve full realization of its evil intentions. The so-called decreto fondamentale is a document brimming with the darkest of felonies and the most abominable impieties.” It concludes, “[The pope] turns again to the same powers, especially the Catholic ones, that have already demonstrated their decisiveness with great generosity of spirit … in the certainty that they will, with all promptness, offer moral support so that he may be restored to his seat.” The cardinal spoke of “moral support,” but he was in fact alluding to armed intervention, and that’s precisely how his message was understood.
In the meantime the Roman Republic was clinging to life despite the myriad problems it faced and the many disagreements that sprung up between its supporters. The vital economic reforms proved difficult to enact, as the expropriation of church property fueled an anticlerical current, while the humbler classes, who’d hoped for an immediate improvement in their situation, were disillusioned. At the same time military spending had to be increased to fend off the attack everyone thought imminent. In the meantime Charles Albert was again defeated by the Austrians, this time in Novara, in March of 1849. His first loss had happened in Custoza, in July of 1848, and it was now clear that the republic couldn’t count on him for much help.
Some have suggested, and I agree, that it was precisely this desperate situation that gave the short-lived Roman Republic its glory, and not the Romantic notion that favors the weak when they are threatened or bullied. The glory came instead from the legal principles on which the republic was founded. In less dramatic circumstances, perhaps, a constitution as advanced as the Republic’s might never have been written.
The governing triumvirate of Giuseppe Mazzini, Carlo Armellini, and Aurelio Saffi was formed in March. They immediately began to discuss the contents of the constitution, and it was soon clear that Mazzini in particular wanted to attach extraordinary and almost utopian political ideals to this experiment, which even he believed would be brief. This explains both the urgent practical measures the government passed and the very advanced—for its time almost inconceivable—ideas enshrined in the new constitution. In April the triumvirate decided to use impounded church property to house the very poor, and in this way the republic tried to encourage the participation of citizens who’d been marginalized in the past, and not only in terms of housing, by the papal administration. It also tried to reduce unemployment, the underlying cause of the city’s widespread criminality. Mazzini was the real engine of reform; in a less forgetful nation he would still be venerated, much like Lincoln in the United States or, on a different level, Montesquieu in France. But fate seems to stipulate that only truly great countries are able to keep the memory of their founding fathers alive.
In Mazzini’s ideology, the republic was “founded first and foremost on the principles of love, greater civilization, and fraternal progress for everyone, and on the moral, intellectual, and economic betterment of all its citizens.” His patriotic axiom was that revolution must be “by the people and for the people.” He thought a “Third Rome”—after Imperial Rome, which had united the whole of the ancient world, and Papal Rome, which united it under Christianity—would guide people toward universal fraternity by means of the liberty and independence of its citizens. Aware that this experiment was destined to be short-lived, Mazzini wanted the written constitution to preserve the strict political morality that had inspired it. The Roman Republic was the first European state to proclaim, in Article 7 of its constitution, that “civil and political rights do not depend on the exercise of religious belief,” and it was the first to eliminate the death penalty. Indeed, it enacted everything described in articles 2 through 21 of the declaration of human rights as approved by the French National Assembly in 1789. As the most advanced founding charter in Europe, it declared, among other things, “A democratic regime has as its rule equality, liberty, and fraternity. It does not recognize any noble titles or privileges conferred by birth or class” (article 2). “Municipalities all have the same rights. Their independence is only limited by state laws promulgated for the greater good” (article 5). “The head of the Catholic Church will receive from the Republic all guarantees necessary for the independent exercise of his spiritual authority” (article 8). Regarding the rights and duties of its citizens: “The death penalty or forfeiture of property is outlawed”; “the home is sacred, and entering it is forbidden except in ways and circumstances described in the law”; “the expression of ideas is to be free”; “education is to be free”; “the confidentiality of letters is inviolable”; “free association, without arms or the intent to commit a crime, is guaranteed”; “no one can be forced to forfeit property without a public hearing and just compensation”; and so on. No one had ever formulated such advanced laws before. Those who have some familiarity with the constitution of the Italian Republic, approved in 1948, will recognize that some of its principles were taken wholesale from this first document, written a hundred years earlier.
In Gaeta, in the meantime, Pius IX was preparing for a possible return to the throne by appealing both to European powers and the clergy. Addressing the diplomatic corps in February, he said:
Hasty papal subjects, as always led by the same dangerous and deadly faction of human society, have fallen into the deepest abyss of misery. We, as temporal prince, and even more so as Head and Pontiff of the Catholic Religion, hear the pleas and supplications of the vast majority of the aforementioned subjects, who ask that the chains oppressing them be untied. We demand at the same time that the sacred right of the Holy See to temporal dominion be maintained.
In a speech to the College of Cardinals given the following April, he further admonished:
Who is there who does not know that the city of Rome, principal seat of the Catholic Church, has now become—alas!—a forest full of wild beasts, overflowing with men of all nations, be they apostate, heretical, or masters, as they say, of Communism or Socialism, and animals with a terrible hatred of Catholic truths. These men, whether in speech, writing, or whatever other way they practice, have made every effort to teach and disseminate pestilential errors of every kind, and to corrupt everyone’s hearts and souls, so that in Rome itself, if it were possible, the sanctity of the Catholic religion would fail.
Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, tried several times, always in vain, to emphasize that the pope’s own spiritual interests should compel him to abandon his anachronistic pretensions to temporal power. Cavour, who would later become prime minister, returned frequently to this theme, arguing, reassuring, and inviting reflection. In March of 1861, for example, when the Roman Republic was already a distant memory, he declared to the chamber of deputies, “All those weapons with which both Italian and foreign civil powers have armed themselves will be useless when the papacy is restricted to spiritual power. And the pope’s authority, far from being diminished, will grow stronger in the sphere that is its rightful competence.” His exhortations were alternated with reassurances, “By whatever manner Italy wins the Eternal City—and it will get there, whether with an agreement or not—as soon as it has declared the temporal power of the Church forfeited, it will proclaim the principle of separation of church and state, and will immediately implement the principle of the freedom of the Church on the broadest bases.”
For Pius IX, who claimed his spiritual power could not be separated from his temporal authority, these guarantees weren’t enough. The motto Cavour thought so reassuring—“A free Church in a free State”—frightened the pope as much as popular insurrection. Let’s try to follow Pius along his tormented journey: on December 8, 1854, he declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, a decision that caused great perplexity, and not just in the Protestant world. The pope knew he was embracing popular religious feeling demonstrated, for example, by the “visions” of the shepherdess Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes only a little while afterward. Ten years later, on the exact anniversary of that proclamation, Pius released his encyclical titled Quanta cura. The notorious Sillabo was attached to it, in which he condemned progress, liberalism, modern civilization, and liberty, including the freedom of thought, in no uncertain terms. According to Pius, everything on the following list should be considered a grave error: divorce; the abolition of the papacy’s temporal authority; the belief that Catholicism is not the only State religion; the idea of the separation of Church and State; tolerance for the public exercise of other religions; the open display of any opinion or thought that does not conform with clerical directives; and the idea that the pope should conform to modern society. These errors were defined as “the greatest evil”—and then there was socialism. The pope saw the dangers of a free society, and was almost obsessed with them. He also understood that modernity was accompanied by religious indifference. In one of his encyclicals he issued a sorrowful lament:
But who does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?1
Today we can see how prophetic these words were. Greed and moral relativism are now characteristics of contemporary society in the West, dominated by money and a frenetic consumerism. Having identified a possible evil, Pius IX offered the wrong cure by advocating a return to an already impossible absolutism. His position was summed up in the proclamation of papal infallibility at the first Vatican Council, held in 1870. That meeting was manipulated so that the bishops who favored dogma prevailed, while those who opposed it were subjected to pressure and even threats. The dissident theologian Hans Küng has recently written that the first Vatican Council was “more like a totalitarian party’s congress than an open assembly of free Christians.” Many of the bishops who opposed the document left Rome before the final vote. The approved text affirmed, among other things, that “the dogma and principles defined by the pope are in themselves unquestionable (irreformabiles esse ex sese) and do not express the consensus of the Church.” In July of 1870 Twenty German Catholic historians left the Church. A few days later the Franco-Prussian War broke out and the council was suspended, never to be recalled.
Yet Pius IX’s passionate beliefs would have an effect on posterity. His successor, Leo XIII (Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci), in the 1888 encyclical Libertas (On the Nature of Human Liberty), returned to the issue of the fundamental rights of the individual, affirming that, “from what has been said it follows that it is quite unlawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, or writing, or of worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.”2 To be completely fair, however, I should add that this pope also wrote the famous encyclical on capital and labor, Rerum Novarum, which earned him the nickname “the workers’ pope.”
This mistrust of the individual’s rights as defined by the French Revolution continued after Leo’s pontificate. One of his successors, Pius XI (Achille Ratti), tranquilly declared—and this was well into the twentieth century—that “if there is a totalitarian regime, totalitarian in fact and by right, that regime is the Church. Because men are creatures of the good Lord, men belong entirely to the Church.… And the Church is the only representative of the ideas, thoughts, and rights of God.” Even John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla), so vigorous a defender of peace, reaffirmed in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, that “democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism” when it approves ethical positions opposed to the teachings of the church. John Paul repeated this idea frequently, and it’s revealing about who has ultimate authority and sovereignty when it comes to personal rights.
Let’s return to the Roman Republic. On April 25, with Neapolitan troops moving north, the French forces commanded by General Oudinot disembarked at Civitavecchia and prepared to march to Rome along the Via Aurelia, convinced the Romans would surrender without a fight. The triumvirate wrote a pathetic but noble letter (now preserved among the mementos in the Capitoline Archives) to the French commander:
Au nom de Dieu, au nom de la France et de l’Italie, Général, suspendez votre marche. Évitez une guerre entre frères. Que l’histoire ne dise pas: la république française a fait, sans cause, sa prémière guerre contre la république italienne! Vous avez été, évidemment, trompé sur l’état de notre pays; ayez le courage de le dire à votre Gouvernement et attendez-en de nouvelles instructions, Nous sommes decides de répousser la force par la force. Et ce n’est pas sur nous que rétombera la responsabilité de ce grand Malheur.
(In the name of God, in the names of France and Italy, General, stop your march. Avoid a war between brothers. Do not allow history to say: the Republic of France, for no reason, waged its first war against the Italian Republic! You have evidently been misinformed about the conditions of our country; have the courage to report this to your government and then wait for new instructions. We are determined to meet force with force. The responsibility for this enormous disaster will certainly not rest with us.)
These words obviously had no effect. Two days later the first French attack rained down on the Janiculum, the southernmost hill in a modest ridge that begins at Monte Mario and continues along the high ground of the Vatican. This ridge faces the Tiber River and the historic city center, and it offers both an extraordinary panorama of Rome and a strategically important military position. Most travelers and pilgrims who visited Rome approached along its path, as did the “barbarians” who came to attack the ancient imperial capital. In the medieval period the Via Francigena, which roughly corresponds to the present-day Via Cassia, was the most well-traveled road to Rome. It was inconvenient, though, because it arrived at the Milvian Bridge, where the river’s fluctuating levels made it difficult to cross. Therefore travelers often preferred to continue along the crest of the hills, following the Via Trionfale, an entrance route into Rome later described by so many nineteenth-century travelers on the Grand Tour. It originally had the added advantage of easy access to the ford at the Isola Tiberina and the Ponte Sublicio, which at the time were the only places the river could easily be crossed.
The French vanguard attacked on April 30. They expected only token resistance, and were surprised by the determination of the Italian forces. In a single day of fighting the attackers lost five hundred men to death or serious wounds. Volunteers from many parts of the peninsula had come to Rome, including large numbers from the northern regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, the Veneto, and Romagna. This battle, which involved fierce hand-to-hand combat, was fought on the grounds of the Villa Doria Pamphili and along the Via Aurelia. Facing a stiffer resistance than they had expected, the attackers retreated, chased by the volunteers until they agreed to a ceasefire.
One of the novelties of that brief but cruel war was the use of photography to document the combatants. For the first time, albeit when the skirmishes were largely over, someone thought of documenting the outcome of the conflict by photographing the battlefield and “posing” the French soldiers. Through these photographs we get a firsthand view of the rubble that the Corsini, Savorelli, and Vascello villas were reduced to, and can see soldiers preparing a meal next to a cannon, showing off their equipment or doing guard duty.
As the French attacked, two more columns of troops—one Austrian, the other, as noted above, from the Kingdom of Naples—were heading toward Rome. The Austrians faced staunch resistance in the city of Ancona, which slowed their progress, and the Neapolitans were defeated by Garibaldi at Velletri. The plan to encircle Rome seemed, for the moment anyway, to have been foiled; but everyone in Rome knew that the ceasefire would be brief.
People have always wondered why, after his first defeat, General Oudinot continued to attack the most highly fortified position on the Janiculum, when he might’ve chosen a less dangerous approach. In reality, there were other attempts; the French assembled a provisory bridge of boats in the Magliana area, just south of the Janiculum along the Tiber, and attacked the Milvian Bridge, upstream of Monte Mario, where they were able to break through despite some stiff resistance from defenders, who then retreated to barricade themselves in the Parioli neighborhood. Once they reached the Porta del Popolo, however, the French stopped. Oudinot concentrated the bulk of his thirty thousand men in the area between the Porta Portese and the Janiculum, in what is now the Monteverde neighborhood. This strategy was likely the result of the general’s fear that if he entered the city too early he’d run up against barricades and be forced to conduct combat by slowly proceeding from one street to the next amid dangerous nests of snipers. The head of the “barricades commission” was a young Lombard named Enrico Cernuschi, who’d been battle-tested in the “Cinque Giornate,” the famous five-day battle of Milan in March of 1848, and would, ironically, participate in defending Paris during the Battle of the Commune. (In Paris there’s a street and a museum of Asian art, begun with Cernuschi’s collection, named for him.) Despite all difficulties, once the French took the Janiculum it allowed them to dominate the city from above, safe from any guerrilla attacks.
On May 19 a ceasefire was declared, officially issued to evacuate French citizens living in Rome, but effectively issued to allow for the arrival of reinforcements. Viscount Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man in charge of French diplomatic affairs in Rome, who also later designed the digging of the Suez Canal, signed the ceasefire, but Oudinot violated the agreement and ordered an attack on the night of June 2–3. His excuse was that the ceasefire only applied within the city walls, not the surrounding area. This surprise tactic worked, and the French gained the high ground at the Villa Corsini. This gave their artillery optimum positioning during the worst days of the siege, and when Garibaldi (who had just been promoted to the rank of Brigadier General) attempted to retake the position he lost nine hundred men, including both the dead and wounded, in a single day. This overwhelming number gives you some idea of the sheer ferocity of these battles; Rome was under siege, re-supply was difficult, the discomforts and risks were great, and many wounded were brought down from the outposts on the Janiculum Hill.
At the political triumvirate’s side was a staff of women that worked to oversee the city’s hospitals. It consisted of three exceptional women, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Enrichetta Pisacane, and Princess Cristina di Belgiojoso. According to Balzac, Cristina was Stendhal’s inspiration for Sanseverina in the Charterhouse of Parma. She was beautiful, seductive, sensual, and well aware of the desire she aroused in men; many considered her a quasi-courtesan. She had married, separated, and had innumerable lovers, including Liszt and Musset.
Italian attempts to mount a counterattack continued for days, but all proved bloody and unsuccessful. Taking in the situation, Garibaldi created a second defensive line along the city’s Aurelian walls, which helped him resist the enemy for several weeks. In the meantime, batteries of French artillery continued to hammer the walls, opening wide breaches. The Italians were forced to retreat, and the French were able, from the new positions captured, to shower the city itself in shellfire. A few monuments were damaged, and several shells fell in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, causing some civilian casualties. When the walls around the Porta Portese were finally surrendered it became clear that the end was near.
The famous patriot and sergeant Giacomo Venezian from Trieste was killed in the Italian counterattacks, and men like Capitan Gorini, Giovanni Cadolini (who was little more than a boy), and the painter Giacomo Induno were all wounded. One of the most moving deaths was that of Luciano Manara, who was wounded while attempting a desperate resistance at the Villa Spada. Emilio Dandolo recorded a devastating account of his last hours, writing, “He begged me to take his body, with his brother’s, back to Lombardy to be buried. Noticing I was crying, he asked, ‘Are you sorry I’m dying?’ Seeing that I could not answer, stifled by my sobs, he added softly, but with the most pious resignation, ‘I’m sorry, too.’ ” His fellow bersaglieri carried the hero’s remains through the streets of Rome to the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, where Father Ugo Bassi presided over his funeral, calling him “one of the strongest sons the Fatherland has lost.”
The artillery shelling had become so violent that Oudinot was sent a letter of protest through consular channels. “This means of attack,” it read, “not only puts the lives and property of neutral and peaceful citizens at risk, but also those of innocent women and children.” It begged the general to refrain from “another bombardment to avoid the destruction of the ‘City of Monuments,’ considered to be under the moral protection of all the world’s civilized nations.” In Paris the left demonstrated against this expedition and in support of the tiny Republic, but the demonstrations didn’t move the government, and Oudinot was focused on quickly finishing his task—the artillery shells continued to fall.
Political support in France for this military expedition came only after some hesitation, as the following months soon made clear. In October of 1849, after the ordeal had been fully concluded, there was a debate in which both Foreign Minister Alexis de Tocqueville and Victor Hugo took positions strongly critical of the government. Both men were dismayed, albeit in slightly different ways, by the renewed papal repressions and because the restored papacy wanted to return to the ancien régime and forget everything that had been conceded in the 1848 constitution. Hugo, who’d initially favored military intervention, said that Rome had never had any legislation in the true sense of the term, but only “an accumulation and chaos of feudal and monastic laws,” held together for the most part by a “clear hatred for progress.” When the French deputies, including the liberals, approved the expedition, they never expected an outcome like this. “The National Assembly,” the great writer added, “voted for the Roman expedition given the issues of humanity and liberty the Prime Minister described to them; it voted to balance the Battle of Novara, to put France’s sword where Austria’s saber fell … to avoid it being said that France was absent when both humanity and its own interests called to it, and to defend, in a word, Rome and the people of the Roman Republic against Austria.”
Louis-Napoléon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was president of the French Republic; in a coup d’état in 1852 he proclaimed himself Emperor of France with the name Napoléon III. Hugo called him “Napoléon le Petit,” a mocking reference to the greatness of his uncle. As had so many others, the young Louis-Napoléon had dabbled in revolutionary activities. In Italy he’d been an adherent of the Carboneria movement, a secret political group, and as a twenty-year-old he’d participated in revolutionary movements in Romagna. As he approached his most important position, this mediocre man felt he needed the support of the Catholic Church, and this was the chief reason he decided to intervene in Italy in 1849. Hugo, however, alluded to another, equally important reason—his fear of Austria taking all the credit for saving the temporal power of the papacy. Louis-Napoléon feared the pope might undermine French interests across the peninsula. Thus France, which had wanted to impose a Republic in Rome at the end of the eighteenth century, fifty years later resorted to forceful means to suppress a second, spontaneously risen republic. Such are the adventures and contradictions of politics.
The French also played a part in the third and final episode of this affair. After his defeat at Sédan in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, Napoléon III was forced to withdraw the garrisons that had protected Rome since 1849; the same conflict had also caused the interruption of the first Vatican Council. This was the moment Cavour was waiting for, and on September 20, a clear, autumnal day, the bersaglieri of General Cadorna entered the city of Rome.
This is how the paper La Gazzetta, published on the afternoon of that fateful day, reported the news: “From Rome, September 20. This morning Italian troops, under the command of General Cadorna, opened fire at 5:30 on the walls of Rome between the Porta Pia and the Porta Salaria. At the same instant the Angioletti Division attacked the Porta San Giovanni and the Blixio Division the Porta San Pancrazio. At ten o’clock in the morning our troops, after a lively but brief resistance, entered the city. Papal soldiers stopped firing, and flew white flags from all the pope’s batteries. A negotiator was sent to General Cadorna’s headquarters.” The next day a brief communiqué issued by the War Ministry listed the loses at “21 dead, 117 wounded, and 9,300 prisoners.” Other sources put the dead at thirty-two Italians and twenty papal soldiers. A few days later, on October 2, the territory of the Papal States was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy by plebiscite.
But all this happened several years after the period we’ve been talking about; back in 1849 the Roman Republic resisted in any way it could. The villas where the defenders had barricaded themselves were now reduced to piles of rubble, the city walls were breached, and the hardships and dangers of the siege had worn out the city’s inhabitants. Mazzini, with visionary strength, wanted to call the people to arms, grab their bayonets, and retake the lost positions. Garibaldi, equally visionary, dissuaded him; in this case he was able to see the situation more realistically than Mazzini, with more military experience, and also saw that the soldiers’ morale was already resigned to defeat. Yet there were still several episodes of incredible valor at the Villa Vascello that are worth remembering.
On June 26, preceded by intense shelling, the French Zouaves tried to take the building, but were repelled by a small group of men. On June 27 the Villa Savorelli, just inside the Porta San Pancrazio, was abandoned. On the 29th, the feast day of Rome’s patron saints Peter and Paul was celebrated quietly, but that evening the dome of Saint Peter’s was illuminated to show the enemy the great serenity with which the siege was being met. After a violent thunderstorm that same night, three columns of French soldiers began to enter the city. Garibaldi, outflanked on the front lines between the Villa Savorelli and the Porta San Pancrazio, ordered those positions to be abandoned.
The next day Mazzini proposed three possible courses of action to the assembly on the Capitoline Hill—capitulation, the continued defense of the city with street barricades, or a total withdrawal of troops in an attempt to incite the provinces to rebel. The assembly decided to summon Garibaldi to hear his opinion. The general appeared covered in gunpowder and blood, and was given a standing ovation. Speaking slowly, he seemed moved; he admitted that any further resistance was useless, and announced he would leave the city with any volunteers who wanted to follow him, “Wherever we are, Rome will be, and the Fatherland, condensed within us, will live on.”
That afternoon the city sent a delegation to General Oudinot to negotiate its surrender. The conditions imposed, however, were so harsh that they were refused, and the triumvirate deliberated, letting the French occupy the city unconditionally. An armistice was signed on June 30, calling for the French to enter Rome three days later. Garibaldi assembled his troops in Saint Peter’s Square, and said to the huge crowd waiting there to salute him, “I am leaving Rome. Those who want to continue the war against the foreigners, come with me. From those who follow me I expect love, the strength of the Fatherland, and proof of daring hearts. I cannot promise pay, nor leisurely breaks. You’ll have bread and water when we find them. Once we pass through the gates of Rome, a step backward is a step toward death.”
At about eight o’clock that evening, having gathered up some four thousand men with eight hundred horses and one cannon, the strange army of Garibaldini, Lombard bersaglieri, students, revenue officers, and papal dragoons who’d joined the Italian volunteers set off. On July 3, around noon, squadrons of French infantrymen descended from the Janiculum to occupy Trastevere, the Castel Sant’Angelo, the Pincian Hill, and the Piazza del Popolo. At about four o’clock, in front of an immense crowd, General Giuseppe Galletti, president of the assembly, solemnly proclaimed the founding of the Roman Republic from a balcony on the Capitoline Hill and read its constitution aloud. On the evening of the 4th a battalion of Alpine soldiers occupied the Capitoline and invited the assembly to leave. The deputies signed a joint letter of protest which read, “In the name of God and the people of the Roman States who freely elected us as their representatives, in the name of Article 5 of the French Constitution, the Roman Assembly protests in front of Italy, France, and the whole of the civilized world the violent invasion of the French army into its seat, which occurred today, July 4, 1848, at seven o’clock in the evening.” It was the Republic’s last gasp. From a legal point of view, the constitution was dead just a few hours after it had been born.
In the face of a few hostile acts committed in the city, General Oudinot had a manifesto circulated throughout Rome. It began with these words:
People of Rome! The army sent here by the French Republic has as its goal the restoration of order so desired by this city’s population. A few partisans and misled people forced us to assault your walls. We are now in control of the city. We will perform of our own accord. Among the kindness we have met, a true demonstration of the real feelings of the Roman people, there are also some hostile noises that force us to immediately repress them. Take heart, those of you who are well meaning, the true friends of liberty. Know, you enemies of order and society, that if ever aggressive actions provoked by foreign factions are renewed, they will be severely punished.
The history of the Roman Republic ends here, but some of you may be wondering what happened to that strange group Garibaldi led out of Rome. The men headed northeast toward Tivoli, looped around, and continued on to Terni, Todi, Orvieto, Cittá della Pieve, Cetona, and Arezzo. It was a long peregrination, without any apparent destination. At the group’s approach several towns (Arezzo and Orvieto, for example) closed their gates and refused to allow them entry. The ranks became progressively thinner, and at the end of the long march the four thousand men who had begun were reduced to few more than a hundred. Garibaldi’s wife, Anita, was pregnant and ill, and traveling on horseback had fatally compromised her health. On the evening of July 31, Garibaldi left San Marino and, after marching all night and through the entire next day, reached Cesenatico, where he disarmed the Austrian garrison. With his few remaining men he embarked on thirteen local fishing boats, called bragozzi, at dawn on August 2 and set sail for Venice. His attempt at escape wasn’t successful, and the fragile fleet was surprised by the Austrian Navy at Punta di Goro. Five boats surrendered, while the other eight, including Garibaldi’s, managed to escape. The next day the remnants of the rag-tag army went ashore between Migliavacca and Volano and dispersed into small groups.
Anita was now so sick she had to be carried. She died on the evening of August 4, and Garibaldi couldn’t even take the time to bury her because of the men trailing him close behind. Dressed as a peasant, he left.
1. Quanta Cura, Encyclical of Pope Pius IX Condemning Current Errors, December 8, 1864. (http://www.saint-mike.org/papal-library/PiusIX/Encyclicals/Quanta_Cura.html)
2. Libertas, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, June 20, 1888. (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_20061888_libertas_en.html)