1848 (49 page)

Meanwhile, he faced vocal domestic opposition in the shape of the Italian Club established by followers of Mazzini. In early October the club and the radical press chastised the government for not being sufficiently energetic in its prosecution of the war. The danger for Manin was that, increasingly, the all-important cohort of non-Venetian troops, who had no particular loyalty to either the city or Manin, were being drawn into the club's orbit. At the same time, more conservative supporters of the triumvirate were becoming alarmed by the organisation's burgeoning influence, fearing, as one Venetian nobleman put it, that ‘new ideas' were being disseminated among the people, ‘especially the uneducated, ideas which are worse than those of the red republicans'.
¹¹²
Manin, though, had two trump cards: first, he knew that if it came down to street-fighting, he could still command the loyalty of most of his beloved Venetians; and second, General Pepe backed him. There was therefore no bloodbath when Manin struck against the opposition. On 2 October, the leaders of the Italian Club were arrested and deported. All soldiers were banned from joining political organisations. While some of the non-Venetian soldiers protested, Manin deftly sweetened his repressive pill by promising that on 11 October the Venetian assembly would meet to draft new electoral laws, implying that the large non-Venetian contingent defending the city would be enfranchised. Meanwhile, the Mazzinian pressure for a vigorous ‘people's war' against Austria had been defused.
¹¹³
As in Hungary, the looming presence of the Austrian counter-revolution concentrated minds and hearts on the existing government and ensured that there was neither a stampede of moderates back to the conservative fold nor a second revolution.

This was not true of Rome, however, where new life was unexpectedly breathed into the Mazzinian cause. In late September Pope Pius IX - swimming against the radical tide of the streets - finally appointed a moderate, Count Pellegrino Rossi, to lead his government. A lawyer and teacher with a sharp intelligence and a sarcastic wit, Rossi was a capable politician. He had liberal credentials: on his appointment, one of the more progressive cardinals jokingly congratulated him by saying, ‘I have known you extremely well, Sir, ever since you were burnt in effigy.'
¹¹⁴
Aged sixty-one in 1848, he had been exiled from Italy much earlier for supporting the Napoleonic regime. He eventually settled in France, where he entered the service of the July Monarchy as a diplomat. (His liberalism was of the conservative kind deemed acceptable by Guizot.) It was as an ambassador to Rome that he returned to his native land and where he won the trust of Pius IX. In 1848 he urged Pius to uphold the new constitution, but opposed any further political reform. Rossi's long-term vision for Italy was moderate, taking the shape of an Italian league led by the Papal States. He opposed Roman involvement in the war not only because it would galvanise the nationalists but because he saw that it would result in Piedmontese expansion.
¹¹⁵
He also feared that a second, republican revolution would bring about foreign military intervention and occupation by foreign powers.

Rossi therefore stood for the rule of law as enshrined in the papal constitution - and he would go no further. ‘In a constitutional government such as ours,' he declared, ‘everything would result in confusion and disorder, if the opinions and actions of the whole people did not . . . breathe a spirit of life into the law.'
¹¹⁶
His ideal reform was ‘from above' - imposed by the government and primarily for the sake of administrative and fiscal efficiency. On taking office, he forged ahead with reforming the administration, putting the state's finances on a stable footing and restoring law and order. He planned to root out corrupt officials, he imposed fiscal policies at the expense of the clergy, and he planned railway lines and new telegraph services. He called on his friend General Carlo Zucchi, a veteran revolutionary who had served with Napoleon, to command the armed forces and restore discipline. He opened negotiations with other Italian states, namely Piedmont and Tuscany (with the door being left open to reticent, unpredictable Naples), on the formation of an Italian league. Yet Rossi's pursuit of this monarchist federation and his stout defence of the constitution earned him the inveterate hatred of the Roman radicals. His idea for an Italian league threw a great obstacle in the way of the democrats' aim of summoning a
costituente
, which the Tuscan radical Montanelli had been invoking. A liberal monarchist alternative
-
which Rossi also opposed because it was obviously a lever for Piedmontese influence - had been summoned at the same time by Charles Albert's prime minister, Vincenzo Gioberti, and this met in Turin between 10 and 30 October. With these alternatives and the multitude of aspirations as to how the
costituente
would function, the path to be followed towards Italian unification was still far from clear.
¹¹⁷

The frustration of the radicals over the setbacks and disappointments of the year now concentrated on Rossi, and they were strengthened by demobbed soldiers, the
Reduci
(‘the Returned'), and by Neapolitan refugees who had fled the reaction in the south. One attempt at raising the Roman populace against the Pope, led by the Neapolitan exile Vincenzo Carbonelli on 24-5 October, was foiled because among those involved were undercover police officers who kept the government informed. The news of the October revolution in Vienna and the Hungarian victory over Jelačić seemed to present a golden opportunity to renew the war against the Austrians in Italy - and King Charles Albert himself had rattled his sabre during Gioberti's
costituente
. In the painful fortnight before the first session of the Roman parliament on 15 November, Rossi bore the slings and arrows of an outrageous radical press with remarkable stoicism and courage. He was likened to Guizot and Metternich, lambasted as a man who sought to restore the old despotism. His aims, claimed the radical leader Sterbini later, were to ‘tame democracy and to destroy, or indefinitely postpone, the conception of nationality'; he ‘sneered at the War of Independence; ridiculed the idea of a
Costituente
'.
¹¹⁸
He received hate mail - all of it anonymous - but he brushed off these poisonous missives with contempt, although the comments must have hurt, for Rossi's own son had fought against the Austrians in Lombardy.

Rossi struck back with a vengeance on 12 November, when he arrested some of the leading Neapolitan troublemakers, including Carbonelli (who had been preparing to raise the standard of insurrection at Trajan's Column), and had them deported. Exactly what happened next is murky, but it appears that a radical cabal - possibly including Sterbini and Cicerruacchio's son, Luigi Brunetti - met in a tavern near the Piazza del Popolo on 13 November and discussed ways of ridding themselves of Rossi once and for all. In what must have been a tense, seething but hushed debate, it was apparently agreed that Rossi should be assassinated at the opening of parliament in two days' time. People across the city were, in any case, anticipating some great demonstration of radical force. The exile of the Neapolitans, who were conducted to the port at Civita Vecchia on 14 November, and Rossi's show of strength - parading columns of
carabinieri
through the streets - increased the political temperature. Towards noon on 15 November, when Rossi arrived at the Chamber of Deputies, he had to alight from his carriage and walk through the great gate of the Cancelleria Palace and then some twenty yards along a passage that was lined with onlookers. The police had already noticed that clusters of
Reduci
, obvious in their grey tunics and blue trousers, had been ominously fingering their daggers and declaiming noisily against Rossi. Ten minutes before, they had cheered as Sterbini appeared to take his seat in parliament. When the prime minister's carriage approached, the crowd fell silent in an expectant hush. Rossi, the pallor of his complexion striking against his dark blue overcoat, made his way into the passageway. The onlookers closed around behind him, but Rossi pressed on towards the staircase at the end, wearing a defiantly contemptuous smile. He had just started up the steps when a young man struck him lightly on one side. When Rossi turned, another assailant - allegedly Luigi Brunetti - plunged a dagger into his throat, severing his carotid artery. Blood spurted out in a jet and the assassins escaped when the other
Reduci
around them also raised their daggers. Rossi, bleeding profusely, was lifted up by his friends and carried into a nearby house, where he died. ‘Order had only one energetic and highly intelligent representative left at Rome,' wrote the Belgian ambassador. ‘This representative was Monsieur Rossi, and that is exactly why he was killed.'
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The diplomat's remark was prescient, for the shellshocked authorities seemed utterly disarmed against the tide of popular republicanism that seeped through the city over the next few hours. Parliament suspended its session, although the radical aristocrat Canino scathingly shouted, ‘What is all this fuss about? Is it the King of Rome who is dead?'
¹²⁰
The Pope, in the Quirinal Palace, received the news of his friend's murder with stunned silence. Without Rossi's firm hand, the discipline of the
carabinieri
and the loyalty of the civic guard wavered: the former were already beginning to fraternise with the people, while even the commander of the regular forces warned that his men would be deeply reluctant to fire on the crowd. To pacify the gathering storm, Pius would have to appoint a ministry that supported at least the renewal of the war against Austria and the
costituente
. The radicals demanded more: that the constitution be revised. The government resigned, unable to defend itself yet unwilling to yield to the opposition. The hour of the republicans had come - and Sterbini, backed by the force of the Roman crowd that was mobilised by the Circolo Populare, the club of which he was president, was ready to seize the initiative. That night, a procession of clubbists and
Reduci
marched up the Corso cheering triumphantly, hailing Rossi's murderer as the new Brutus. With terrible cruelty, they stopped beneath the windows of Rossi's house, hurling up taunts and jibes at his bereaved wife, chanting ‘Blessed be the hand that stabbed Rossi.'
¹²¹
A ‘good many loathsome reptiles' had indeed emerged on to the streets.
¹²²

In the afternoon of the following day a crowd gathered on the Piazza del Popolo and marched on the Quirinal to press the radical demands. The palace was protected by a thin cordon of a hundred troops: a company of Swiss Guards, some loyal
carabinieri
and members of the elite Noble Guard. At three o'clock, the masses surged up to the locked gates of the palace, where two hapless Swiss sentries just managed to escape, one having broken his halberd over the head of an insurgent, the other having had his torn from his hands. The Pope confronted this desperate situation with stubborn courage and, though he had appointed the popular Giuseppe Galletti to lead a new government, he refused to give way any further. Acting as if he were oblivious to the thundering crowd outside, he ignored Galletti's entreaties to concede. Growing angry and impatient, the demonstrators started to chant, ‘A democratic ministry or a republic!' By now, there were an estimated six thousand armed people in the piazza, including regular soldiers, civic guards and
carabinieri
who had gone over to the radicals. When some of the crowd tried to burn down a side entrance into the Quirinal, the first shots were fired: they were aimed into the air by the Swiss, but the tension now boiled over into violence. The insurgents climbed into nearby towers to fire back and one of the Pope's secretaries was killed when a bullet shattered the window of his office. When a cannon was wheeled up to blast open the main gate, even Pius was persuaded that the time for concessions had at last come. Protesting to the foreign ambassadors (who had gathered around him throughout this ordeal) that he was yielding under duress, the Pope appointed a new government which included Sterbini, Galletti and Mamiani.

The constitutional regime was now rapidly unravelling. Parliament was in an uproar and unable to function effectively. Conservatives and moderates were screamed down from the public galleries. And in any case the murder of Rossi had caused such fear that the lower chamber was denuded by resignations and absences. The Pope's friends and political allies visited him only furtively - one travelled to and from the Quirinal with a brace of pistols for his own protection. The last straw was the publication of the ministry's programme, which included a declaration of war and the summoning of a
costituente
. In the evening of 24 November Pius disguised himself in the cassock of a humble parish priest and climbed into a carriage. After a twelve-hour journey through the night, he crossed into the Kingdom of Naples, where he took refuge in the coastal town and fortress of Gaeta.

His flight turned the revolution in Rome into an international affair: Catholic Europe was now thoroughly shaken. While the government of the secular French republic would do nothing unless the Austrians used the overthrow of the Pope as a pretext for an invasion of central Italy, in December Spain declared that Pius was under the protection of all Catholic states and called for an international congress to resolve the matter. Naples, which was protecting the Pope in more than just theory, agreed. Austria, seeing the opportunity to kill off the ideal of Papal leadership of a united Italy once and for all, readily assented. For his part, Pius at first adamantly insisted from his refuge that he still honoured the
statuto
, the constitution that he had granted his subjects. Yet, increasingly, he fell under the conservative influence of both the Neapolitans and his own retinue, including the shadowy figure of Cardinal Antonelli. The latter spotted the conservatives' opportunity in the collapse of the liberal, constitutional experiment in Rome. He calculated that a head-on collision between the conservatives and the radicals would finish with the triumph of the former, particularly if Pius secured international help. The Pope therefore disavowed the new government in Rome, and in December he appealed to the new emperor, Franz Joseph, ‘his very dear son', for assistance.
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