Chapter 29

FOOTNOTES:[464]Vol. ii. 427.[465]Friedberg, p. 622;Quirinus, 797.[466]Vol. ii. p. 436.[467]Civiltá, VII. xi. 367.[468]The names are given inFriedberg, p. 149.[469]Vitelleschisays that of 157 absent only 38 were accounted for. The rest represented the Non-contents.[470]P. 216.[471]Vitell.andActa Sanctæ Sedis.[472]Civiltá, VII. xi. 347.[473]Ibid., VII. xi. pp. 479, 480.[474]Civiltá, VII. xi. 366.[475]Papal Conclaves, p. 312.

FOOTNOTES:

[464]Vol. ii. 427.

[465]Friedberg, p. 622;Quirinus, 797.

[466]Vol. ii. p. 436.

[467]Civiltá, VII. xi. 367.

[468]The names are given inFriedberg, p. 149.

[469]Vitelleschisays that of 157 absent only 38 were accounted for. The rest represented the Non-contents.

[470]P. 216.

[471]Vitell.andActa Sanctæ Sedis.

[472]Civiltá, VII. xi. 347.

[473]Ibid., VII. xi. pp. 479, 480.

[474]Civiltá, VII. xi. 366.

[475]Papal Conclaves, p. 312.

CHAPTER IX.

From the Great Session to the Suspension of the Council, October 20, 1870—The Time now come for the Fulfilment of Promises—Position and Prospects—Second Empire and Papacy fall together—Style of Address to the Pope—War for the Papal Empire foreshadowed—Latest Act of the Council—Italy moves on Rome—Capture of the City—Suspension of the Council—Attitude of the Church changed—Last Events of 1870.

Thereader may perhaps feel that we have now reached a point at which many prophecies await their fulfilment, and many calculations their test. The enthusiasts had, on religious grounds, foretold that the utterance of the "creative word," would be attended with portentous religious effects. A Baptism of Fire, a New Pentecost, a rapidly diffused reign of righteousness all the earth over, and other such expressions, intimated the marvels that were to inaugurate the fresh era. The calculating men had counted on the display of power and union, whereof the Papacy was made the centre, to produce a great impression upon princes and politicians; an impression to which they would, on the other hand, be predisposed by the fear of revolution.

Thus, when the consummation should be reached, and a ruler should be solemnly set up by the bishops of the whole Church before the kings of the earth, like, to use the favourite simile of the time, the Lord setting His King upon His holy hill of Sion; and when this king should be officially declared to have the government upon his shoulders, to be invested with all authority for the moral regulation of human affairs, they expected that the princes, bowing down, would accept him as their supreme judge and arbiter. Indeed, at one time, the confident talk, not merely of men among themselves, but of the publications most in the confidence of the guiding men,had been about laying down conditions to kings and governments on which they might hope to rule in peace. Hints had not been spared, that only two alternatives could be allowed to them—the acceptance of the new moral order on the one hand, or the loss of their places on the other.

The restoration of society to what was called the Catholic ideal, its reconstruction on the new divine basis, its deliverance from the chronic plagues which in modern times had wasted it, were at once to begin, and moral order was to smile where of late chaos had lowered. Already these theorists beheld society crying for the Pope as its saviour. Furthermore, during the days of preparation for the Council, and during its deliberations, only one among all the nations had been singled out for solemn blessing and glowing assurances that God would not forget her services to the Church. Italy had been warned and cursed. Austria and her new constitution had been formally condemned. Russia had been laid under every possible anathema. Spain, ever since her change of government, had shared the same condemnation. As to the heretical countries, they were generally left, without separate mention, in the depths to which their sins had sunk them. But the Ultramontane organs in Germany and France had marked Prussia out for signal detestation, and denounced the union of Germany under the leadership of Prussia for the relentless opposition of the Church of God. France alone was blessed with the withering benediction of the priest.

The hour had come that was to show how far the seers had read the future, and how far the calculators had reckoned well. So far as related to the great dogma, and the definition of it, all that had been designed was happily accomplished; indeed, more completely accomplished than had been proposed in any design avowed up to the eleventh hour. So far, therefore, both seers and calculators were justified. They had not seen a false vision, so long as they contemplated the dogmatic issue; nor had they reckoned without their host, so long as they had reckoned upon bishops, priests, and friars. Events were now to tell how far the transformation of Society intothe accepted model, how far the homage of kings, how far the self-surrender of Parliaments, how far the submission of codes to be remodelled by the Church, and how far the general consent of the human race to be guided by him who claimed to hold the place of God among men, were to pass from the realm of hope into that of experience.

The progress of the Council, and of opinion contemporary with its sittings, had dissipated many illusions. Even the bishops had to be conquered, and were not won. Europe had been awakened and had not been attached, but alienated. Great as the glories of the spectacles had confessedly been, and much as they dazzled spectators, they had not carried legislative effect, except where the artistic legerdemain had admitted of immediate application. The vote of the minority on July 13 was one symptom of failure. Their final record of dissent, put into the Pope's own hand, was a more serious symptom. Their flight from the last public session was more serious still. The absence of the representatives of the governments from that session was yet far more depressing. All, therefore, that was now to be hoped for from the Church was submission; and the very utmost that any calculating man dared to hope for from governments was endurance. The worst was that statesmen had learned much more than they were ever meant to learn, and had seen into matters a deal further than laymen ought to see. And so the first night of the new dispensation closed in under dull skies, both physically and morally.

When the Romans, always curious to see how facts can be dressed for appearance outside of the walls, looked to theGiornale di Romafor an account of the session, they found there that all the bishops who had not appeared—upwards of two hundred—were placed in one class, "absent from different legitimate and recognized reasons." This was followed by the assertion that "the great majority of them held the same doctrine as that which had been defined." Accustomed as the Romans are to this method of putting facts in vestments, the occasion was solemn before God and exposed to the eye of man.Vitelleschi wrote that in these representations the minority might find "a foretaste of the false statements and judgments they must in future expect." Some readily account for such assertions by saying that it was hoped that the documents which proved the contrary would never come to light. But much is due to the habit of reckoning on the power of a great organ to set officials upon repeating what it says, till the facts are forgotten. TheCiviltácopied these statements, and yet at a later date gave a truer account of the absentions.

It said: Cardinals, 42proand 4contra; Patriarchs, 6proand 2contra; Primates, 6proand 2contra; Archbishops, 80proand 18contra; Bishops, 349proand 47contra; Abbots and Generals, 40proand only 1, a Chaldean,contra. The same article, however, does not shrink from asserting that "many" of the minority votedPlacetin the public session.

The heaviest solicitudes of the Curia were now to begin. Events had been so guided that so long as they were dealing with their own instruments, the bishops and the clergy, they were left completely to effect their purpose. Now came the point where they were to operate upon mankind. That society which they had meant completely to subjugate, flattering themselves that they were about to restore it, was now placed face to face with them in an awful aspect, one which neither priests nor kings could fully interpret. Certain it was, however, that neither kings nor "peoples" were upon their knees before the Vicar of God, or were inclined to go down upon them. Some feared that instead of kings and nations appealing to him to save them, he would soon be found appealing to some one to save him. The fortunes of the restored empire of the Bonapartes, and those of the restored Papacy, had been bound up together. Men now watched and whispered, saying that as they had been strangely united in their lives, perhaps they would not be divided in their fall. The 13th of July, the day of the voting which gave the Pope his fatal majority, was the day of the incident at Ems. It was the day also on which the Duc de Gramont informed the French Chambers that, although the Hohenzollern candidate for the throne of Spain had beenwithdrawn, that did not close the dispute. The 18th of July, the day on which the Pope read out by candlelight the Decree upon his own infallibility, was the day on which Napoleon despatched his fatal declaration of war to Berlin. A baptism of fire had been often and pompously foretold as the result of the great dogma. After its promulgation all that the world ever heard of a baptism of fire was when Napoleon telegraphed to the Empress, whom the devout regarded as the true author of the war, telling her, in loud brag before the nations, how her boy had received his baptism of fire. That again was but two days before simultaneous sorrows sounded the knell of the empire and of the throne which sheltered under the shadow of its wing—the two embodiments of arbitrary will calling itself authority.

On August 4, the Pope was chafing at the news that the French troops at Civitá Vecchia had actually commenced embarkation. On the same day Bonaparte read the telegram from Wissenberg. On August 6, Count Arnim on the Capitoline was writing to Berlin to tell his government that Napoleon had declined an offer of the Pope to mediate between the belligerents, assigning as the ground that after the declaration of war negotiations were too late. That same day came upon Napoleon the double disasters of Wörth and Spichern. The reply of the King of Prussia to the same offer of mediation on the part of the Pope was to the effect that if the Pontiff would procure for him assurances of the pacific intentions of Napoleon, and guarantees against similar violations of the peace in the future, he would not refuse to receive them from the hands of his Holiness.[476]The total result then of the first attempt at political action abroad, in the new character, was a simple failure. At the same time political embarrassments at home were thickening, as they had done every day since the fatal July 13.

It was after Rome had learned that the sun of Austerlitz had not shone on the fields of Wörth and Spichern, that the first formal act occurred showing that the Council had neither been dissolved nor prorogued. All that the Pope had done was togive the bishops a general leave until November 11. Had everything gone smoothly, this arrangement would have enabled the men of the Curia to go on as if they were a General Council. The step to which we allude was merely the formal addition of certain names to the Committee on Church Discipline, to replace those who had left Rome. And this is registered on August 13.

Meantime an intimation was given of the style of adhesion to the Papacy in its renewed glory which would be acceptable at the Vatican. TheCiviltáselected for publication, "by preference," as it expresses it, an address from the Society of Catholic Youth in Bologna. It stated that, as if in recompense of the new and lofty honour to the Virgin Mary procured by the word of Pius IX, Divine Providence had exalted in his person the divine dignity of the successor of Peter to the summit of glory and power—

We shall ever keep our eyes fixed on Thee, the mirror of eternal Truth. We shall ever keep them directed to this Apostolical Chair, whence the waters of true wisdom and of eternal life perennially flow. Speak, then, O Infallible Teacher, and we, the youthful sons of the Catholic Church, will hear Your words as the words of eternal wisdom; Your judgment shall be for us the judgment of God; Your definition shall be as the definitions of God; Your instruction as the instruction of God. In your authority as Vicar of Christ we venerate the authority of God, and submitting our mind and our heart to that authority, we have faith to sustain the dignity of human nature in face of the pretentious tyranny of haughty intellect spoiled and blinded by guilty passions.[477]

The historical tales which had for years been carried on in the pages of theCiviltáunder the titleThe Crusaders of St. Peter, from which we have occasionally given scenes, rather strangely happened, in the number of theCiviltáfor August 24, to come to an end. It concluded with the list of the immortal dead, as recorded for the world in a monument which Italy may well preserve. The Pope did not know what a record of the exotic character of his own power he was putting up. Theideal of this monument, and of the methods by which the world was to be made Catholic, is given by theCiviltáin a very few words—

It was the conception of Pius IX that, in the Agro Verano, on soil consecrated by the tombs of the ancient martyrs, should arise the memorial of the crusaders of the nineteenth century. And another conception of Pius IX was the colossal group in marble which represents St. Peter in the attitude of committing the sword to a warrior in armour, who with the cross bears a flag, with the legend,The Catholic World. Peter is Pius; the warrior is the Christian army. The idea of the mission of that army glows in the authoritative action of him who gives the commission, and in the humble and generous action of him who receives the commission, and is admirably expressed in two texts of Scripture beneath, drawn from the Book of the Maccabees: "Take this holy sword, a gift from God, wherewith thou shalt overthrow the adversaries of my people Israel.... For victory standeth not in the multitude of the army, but strength cometh from heaven."

The names of the martyrs of this crusade are given, and among those who fell in the Battle of Mentana is only one Italian. France, Belgium, Holland, England, Ireland, and Germany are all represented, and Switzerland still more strongly. In the other most considerable engagement, that of Monte Libretti, there is again but a single Italian. Among those who perished by being blown up in barracks in Rome were several Italians, in large part musicians. That record is certainly worth the keeping of Italy at any cost, and the setting of it up is only one of the manifold evidences of how blinded the Papacy was in the last days of its temporal power.[478]Well might the Pope in the Syllabus condemn the doctrine of non-intervention.

On August 15, a great "function" was celebrated at Rome, in the Church of St. Louis of the French, in commemoration of the name-day of the Emperor Napoleon—that modern Charlemagne who restored the Roman Catholic Church in France, and whose nephew restored the Pope to his holy city. CardinalBonaparte, the Marquis de Banneville, and all the French notables attended in state. About the same time a sorely smitten man, accompanied by his boy, was crossing the drawbridges of Metz, turning their faces to the rear, amid gibes and nicknames from the French soldiery. While winding up the heights of orchard and of vineyard which overhang the beauteous dale of the Moselle, and when looking on the fair uplands of Lorraine, upon which were sleeping, in happy obscurity, villages like St. Privat and Gravelotte, like Rezonville and Mars La Tour, the withered Emperor and his yet unripe son might see French soldiers marching in retreat, but could not see the Germans by whom they were being already outmarched. Meanwhile in Paris the two elect ladies of the Golden Rose—Isabella and Eugénie—were spectators, the first sighing after a crown already lost, the second trembling for a regency attained as if only to expedite the breaking of the sceptre of her husband. Had either of them faith enough to believe that the Virgin could reward them for services done to the Holy Father by giving them the necks of their enemies? Our Lady of Victories, "terrible as an army with banners," to quote a favourite text with Jesuit writers, was propitiated at least by the Empress Regent.

So far the political calculations of the Curia had all been turned to vanity. Bavaria had not fraternized with the French, much less carried Würtemburg and Baden with her. The blast of invasion which was to sound the death-knell of German unity had proved to be its mustering-cry. Italy up to the present moment had stood in awe of France, but if the latter should receive another blow or two, matters might reach a pass at which the Italian government would have more cause to fear Garibaldi than Napoleon—and then?

News soon arrived that the Germans, out-marching the French, had met them in the villages which we have lately mentioned, the names of which were by that meeting written large on the memory of nations. The poor Pope saw that Bonaparte, whom he had used and hated, was not likely to retain power any longer to guard his temporal throne. He knew thatItaly was wiser than the first Bonaparte, who taught the French that the Pope was to be treated as if he had two hundred thousand bayonets—a lesson that has cost them dear. Italy adopted the principle that, in respect of bayonets, the Pope was to be counted as worth just as many as he could command. Italy would also treat him more wisely as a teacher. She would not incarcerate, exile, or personally insult him, but would leave him free to bless or curse as he felt moved, and to be heeded or disregarded according as every man felt persuaded in his own mind.

It was with hearts weighted with the heavy news from the banks of the Moselle that the Fathers of the Council met in their Congregation on August 23. How changed that gathering from the proud assembly of last December, which challenged the homage of all kings, and at the sight of which the Margottis and the Veuillots spoke of our Parliaments as puppet-shows! Those whose organs of the Press a few months before wrote as if neither kings nor presidents had any long tenure of power, except as they might make their peace with the Church, felt themselves to sit amid the indifference of mankind, and under the menacing strokes of Providence. The bishops who had warned them of their ignorance and folly, but had been crushed, were now far away. In the Congregation, the Fathers discussed some matters of Church discipline, but as the shadow of Sadowa had arrested all preparations for the Council during fourteen months, and that of Garibaldi for three or four, now a darker shadow, projected from Wörth and Gravelotte, was falling upon the remaining ecclesiastics, as the evening gloom of the Aventine falls on late gamblers in what was once the Circus Maximus. They had played for the certainty of the temporal power, and for the reversion of the lordship of the world. They had boldly staked all episcopal and clerical rights. The upshot was that the losers had lost, and that the one winner was to be a loser too. The next news showed them that, on the very day when they thus met, was completed the investment of Metz. Thus did they see the thrice beaten but still coherent army of Bazaine altogether cut off from the routedand disorganised army of MacMahon. They had fixed to meet again on September 1.

The Fathers probably felt that it was doubtful whether the Congregation fixed for September 1 would meet; but it was highly politic to keep up the airs of a General Council, because it increased the sanctity of the city, and made it morally more difficult for Italy to attack. Ere they met, it became known that at Beaumont, Failly—the faithful General Failly, the leader of the expedition of Mentana, lauded and blessed for his "prodigious chassepots"—had met the Bavarians, soldiers of that king whom theUnitánever wearied of insulting, and that at their hands Failly had lost his guns, his baggage, and his camp, a large part of his men, and all his reputation. The Congregation of September 1, did meet, and it was the last. While Bishop Quinn, of Brisbane, in Australia, was offering up the Mass, the undulating plateaux around Sedan were reeking with an incense which had, within the last few years, been invoked with lamentable frequency by the organs of the Vatican. As the Fathers were rising from their afternoon siesta, tens of thousands of blue and grey eyes, from all the heights commanding the city of Turenne, began to dance for joy at seeing the white flag waving from the old castle lying low down in the hollow—ay, the white flag waving over the Imperial head of him who to them represented the traditional devastators of the German Fatherland, but who was, to the bishops of the Council, the prince who for twenty years had been the stay of the temporal power.

No sooner had the news from Sedan reached the Agro Romano, than Curia and peasant alike knew all that was to follow. One week after that day the Fathers gathered, on September 8, for the last great ceremony, or, as it was called, "the last extra conciliar act."[479]The remains of the world-transforming host of December now speckled the noble Piazza del Popolo, pressing to the great church of Santa Maria. It was the Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin. All that theCiviltátells of the day is that there were great expectations,and that the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, then three months distant, would witness a splendid session. We should say that there was no expectation of the sort, except indeed among the few who really counted on the Virgin as being certain at last to work for the Pope the miracles which it had been so often suggested that she was in gratitude bound to perform. The majority calculated that she had acquitted all her debts to him by making him infallible. Desirable as it was to keep up the appearance that Rome was just then the seat of a General Council, they knew that though for us and other remote people beyond the mountains that might have a sacred sound, for the Italians it was not a name to conjure with.

On the very day when the Fathers were cheerlessly performing this final ceremony, a notification was sent forward by Victor Emmanuel that he was unable longer to stay the impetus of the nation, which panted to take possession of its capital. The letter of the king was weak and disingenuous. It was more like the work of a priest than of a soldier. He affected to be a good Catholic, while deliberately dethroning the Vicar of God. He affected to hope that the Pope would acquiesce in his own dethronement. The reply of the Pontiff was more worthy of his position, and more becoming his professions.

This hostile movement called out a quality in which Popes are surely infallible, that of appealing to foreigners for armed intervention against their own countrymen. Of all men, to whom should the Pope now turn but to the King of Prussia—as if the King of Prussia did not know at what the Pope and his instruments had been aiming! The date of the reply of King William was in itself a history. He wrote from the capital of fair Champagne. Already had the tide of war closed round the hot infallibilist Räss in his stately Cathedral of Strasburg; and, rolling on, it had, under the shadow of St. Remy, enveloped the deserter from the Opposition, Landriot, in his thrice beautiful fane at Rheims.

St. Remy sent no sufficing homage by the hand of King William. The soldier-king quietly declined to undertake anysuch political intervention as the priest-king desired. In one word, he dispelled the idea of the venerable applicant, that the cause of Prussia was implicated. The matter, said King William, is one "which does not, as your Holiness appears to think, in any way affect the interests of Prussia." That calm word would provoke many a vow to make the heretic feel that the Pope could affect the temper of millions of his subjects, and therefore the interests of his government.

Yet one week from the notification of Victor Emmanuel, and on September 15, rode up an Italian staff officer, with all the forms of war, to the Milvian Bridge—thatPons Milviusever memorable for the victory of Constantine and the death of Maxentius. The latest addition to its history of military incidents, which began with the conspiracy of Catiline, had been made one-and-twenty years previously, when the insurgent Romans defeated an attempt to carry the bridge made by the French under Oudinot. The point of meeting did not, therefore, seem to be one of good omen for Pius IX. The Italian officer was Colonel Count Caccialupi, or Chase-the-Wolves. He came from General Cadorna to demand, in the name of the King of Italy, the surrender of the city. On behalf of his Holiness, General Kanzler at once gave his reply. The place was to be defended. General Bixio on that day closed in upon Civitá Vecchia.

Meanwhile, Count Arnim, in the hope of averting bloodshed, plied between the city and the Italian camp. The Pope, however, was resolved upon resistance. He did, indeed, give orders that it should be continued only so long as to compel the Italians to open a breach, in order, as he said, to attest the fact that his capital fell by violence. That end, we might have thought, would have been equally well answered, without bloodshed, by surrendering after the first gun. The forces of the Pope numbered eight thousand, and those of Cadorna fifty thousand. Rapidly as the temporal power and the Second Empire were both rushing downhill, it appeared as if they were constantly to keep step. So did it fall out that on that very September 19, when the Prussians, defeating Vinoy, closed round Paris,Cadorna, coming up from the north, sat down before gates of Rome. His lines stretched from the Salara Gate to the Gate of San Giovanni, thus enclosing that cemetery of St. Lorenzo, where stood the monument to the Crusaders, with so many foreign and so few Italian names. Coming up from the south, General Angiolotti stretched from the Gate of St. Giovanni to that of St. Sebastiano. Early the next morning Bixio, coming up from Civitá Vecchia, which he had captured, took post before the Gate of San Pancrazio, remembered for the contest between Garibaldi and the French.

With the first light of September 20 did the chambers of the Vatican begin to rattle with the sound of other artillery than the joy-guns of St. Angelo. The last time that sound had disturbed those vaults was when it came as the voice of a French republic, commanding a Roman republic to make way for the most despotic rule in Europe. Now France was learning for herself what it is to hear the guns of the stranger before the gates of the capital; and Rome was feeling what it is to hear the voice of the Fatherland bidding the stranger depart. Of the two potentates who in 1849 thundered at the weak walls of poor old Rome, he who then acted the restorer was now an exile and a captive, while he who was then an exile panting for return, now sat in the halls to which he was then restored, but sat feeling in the thud of every gun that even within those halls he too would soon call himself a captive.

While the din pained the spirit of the aged Pio Nono, forty of the Italians attacking and twenty of the foreigners defending were killed, and a hundred and fifty of the assailants and fifty of the garrison were wounded. Reports came that the heaviest fire was directed against the Porta Pia, the gate particularly connected by name with his own name, adorned and restored by his liberality, and endeared to his military recollections by the triumphal entrance of his crusaders from Mentana less than three years before. A letter is published in which the Pope ordered General Kanzler to surrender as soon as a breach should be made. But it would not appear that he had really granted him power to do so; for theCiviltáexpressly says that the order to hoist the white flag was given by the Pope himself, and accounts for needless bloodshed by the delay which occurred ere that order could reach the gate that was beleaguered.[480]

Some five hours had passed since the horrid din began. No Michael with his legions of angels, no Madonna terrible as an army with banners, smote the host of the aliens. No Peter struck the barbarians with blindness. No Dominic, with a cohort of sainted Inquisitors; no Ignatius, with a celestial "Company," flashed death upon the worse than Moslems who fought for uprisen Italy. All these things had been expected. They came not, but instead of them came the news that a breach at the Porta Pia invited the Italians in. At last the poor old priest-king made up his mind to stay the futile flow of blood. He knew the temper of his zouaves. They would have stood and died like crusaders; but at last the word was given. There on the dome of proud St. Peter's was the white flag, and there did it float out upon the September breeze, and waved in the forenoon sun—waved over Pontiff and Cardinal, over the Circus of Nero and the Inquisition of the Popes. Was it real? Eyes would be wiped to see if they did not deceive. Eyes, ay, the eyes of soldiers, would be wiped from thick, hot tears. Could it be—could it ever be? Come at last! The hour for which ages had impatiently waited, for which myriads of Italians had died. Italy one! her arms outstretched from Etna and from Monte Rosa, clasping at last every one of her children, and even availing by their returning strength to lift up her poor old Rome from under the load of the priest and the stranger.

He who two brief months before had, amid deep darkness at noonday, read out, by artificial light, the Decree of his own unlimited power and irreformable law, lay down that night amid a rude and intrusive glare streaming from across the Tiber into the multitudinous windows of the Vatican. It came from the lights of Rome all ablaze with illuminations for the fall of the temporal power. In the piazza below lay the Pope's littlearmy of foreigners, passing their last night in the Holy City under shade of the basilica in which they had consecrated their bayonets to St. Peter, and within embrace of the two arms of the glorious crescent colonnade. For true it is that stone cupolas, and stone columns, put up by the distant dead, may be of real avail as stays of a power after the hearts and hands of willing men have ceased to hold it up. The soldiers passed the next morning in confused preparations for a departure. At noon a cannon was fired, and the Pope appeared on his balcony. He could not conceal his overpowering emotion. With the retreating steps of these prisoners of war, were about to vanish mystic visions of martial feats crowned by divine miracle. The soldiers raised their old cry,Viva Pio Nono, in loud and ringing tones; which, smiting against the basilica and the palace, were from thence rolled back, and flew across the stream, till the sound ofViva Pio Nonoonce more floated along the neighbouring streets of the capital. Uprisen Italy, quietly sustaining her uplifted Rome, hearkened in silence to the foreign cheer. Then, for the last time, did the Pope give to his beloved soldiers what they had so often received, his benediction. As he withdrew, when the corridors opened lone and long before him, when the doors closed behind, cutting him off from the only bayonets on which he could rely, no wonder if he felt that the palace of the Pontiffs had become a prison.

The crusaders, turning to the left, passed out of the Gate Angelica; then winding round under the windows of the Vatican, close by the garden walls, and along the Janiculum, they finally reached the Gate of San Pancrazio, where Cadorna and his staff awaited them to receive the formal surrender. Proud were the men under the red, white, and green, with the cross of Savoy, as they saw the head of the approaching column. As the first men of the French legion came up they insulted the Italian staff. According to theCiviltá, Bixio was so incensed that he reproached Cadorna for having conceded to such troops the honours of war. The friendly writer extenuates their misconduct by alleging the irritation cause by affronts received from the rabble in the streets on theprevious day. But when the zouaves came up led by the brave Colonel Charette, they behaved like soldiers (Civiltá, VIII. i. 212).

When the crusaders of Pio Nono passed away from the Gate of San Pancrazio, who would have dared to say that the sixty dead and the two hundred wounded of the day before were to be the last victims of war provoked by Popes abusing the name of the Prince of Peace? And who would not feel for the French crusaders, who, led by their priests, and thinking that they did God service, had for twenty years inflicted upon Italy, at the behest of the Pope, the miseries of foreign occupation, and now, in facing their own fair land, were to behold the foreigner seated in her proudest palaces.

From that day forth, when the Roman met the priest on the street, he felt that he was no longer bound, except at the dictate of his own conscience, to confess to him his sins; that, indeed, he was not even bound to purchase an Easter ticket, to be produced as evidence that he had duly presented himself in a tribunal in which, in fact, he had never set foot. From that day forth, when the friar entered the church of St. Ignatius, neither the great picture of the torments of the heretics, nor what, in his dialect, he might call the "divine"lapis lazuli, retained all its old brilliancy; for within those sacred walls the internal tribunal of the kingdom of God was no longer anything more than a voluntary confessional. From that day forth disappeared from the seats of justice on the Seven Hills the ecclesiastical magistrate, and with him the external tribunal of the Church. From that day forth appeared for the first time for long and weary ages, the civil magistrates, sitting in open court under the eye of all, to administer, with whatever shortcomings, a law which accepted the Christian principle of even-handed justice to Jew and Gentile; to those who said, We are of Cephas, and to those who only said, We are of Christ. In the eye of the Vatican this was the fall of the supernatural order, the godless triumph of naturalism; but in other eyes it was the substitution of God's good ordinance for the contrivance of priestcraft, which,conscious that it was not natural, called itself supernatural. From that day forth the Roman noble ceased to be a mere title-bearer and jewel-stand, for now a career in the government of his country opened before him. From that time forth the people ceased to be a mere populace, and entered on the dignities of a democracy. Law, letters, science, politics, diplomacy, and oratory now called upon the bright-browed child of the working man to come and grace them with his gifts, and not to sit doomed to the destiny of the incapable, unless he would put on the frock of the priest. From that day forth the double office of Despot-Pontiff, answering to the ideal of later Pagan Rome, was replaced by the mild office of the monarch, reigning at the head of an aristocracy and a democracy. The priest as a teacher of doctrines, as a celebrant of rites, or as a practitioner of charms, remained as free as ever he had been before; but as a power to impose himself upon all, and as exclusive king of men, his reign had passed away. Italy said, "For ever"; the priest replied, "Only for a very little time"!

On October 2 the Italian government took a plébiscite in the Roman States, to enable the people by a vote to record their own desire as to whether they would belong to the kingdom of Italy or to the Spiritual State. According to theCiviltá, the voting in the Holy City was 40,835 in favour of Italy, and 46 against. It must not be imagined that the total amount of dissent was represented by the 46. The partisans of the supernatural order generally abstained; but probably they would have done otherwise had they not known that, even if they all mustered, the majority would be overwhelming. They, as usual, cried out against bribery, coercion, and similar wrongs. Indeed, to read the Papal organs at this day, one might believe that ever since the national movement began, every vote and every battle has been carried against the preponderating mass of Italians by some few Freemasons, Jews, and invisible conspirators.

The Council which was to restore all things still sat. Not even a prorogation had taken place. Now, however, thePontiff, though not intending to dissolve it, determined to suspend it until a happier time. Exactly a month after Rome had passed into the hands of Italy, appeared on October 20 the Act by which the Council was suspended. In the Bull of Convocation the Pope had spoken of his intentions for the general benefit of society. In the Bull of Suspension it appeared that the particular society which best knew him and his remedies had spewed them out of her mouth. After having for many centuries had experience of his spiritual supremacy and temporal power, Italy had mournful proofs that they were socially evil. No land in Europe could produce a record of any dynasty which had so often brought into it foreign armies, to beat its people down, and to keep them under. No land in Europe could, from times within the memory of living men, produce such lists of the executed, the exiled, the imprisoned, and of those submitted to torture. No land in Europe had a ruling class among members of which public justice, when once free, had, week after week, to deal with such vile immoralities as the Courts of Italy had to punish in members of the priesthood. Italy had made the last trial of priestly rule with a prince personally free from the social blots which in the case of many of his predecessors had complicated questions of the public weal with questions of personal vice. Under Pius IX the system stood out more fairly to be judged by its principles and by its fruits. And under Pius IX Italy had rung with accounts of moral wrongs, of crimes of power, of curses uttered by the subject, such as had long since ceased to be heard of in other countries of Europe free from Turkish rule. The monstrosity that called itself a Spiritual State, and sneered at Lay States, was carnal, and vile to the core. The wave which, as soon as the breakwater of the Second Empire had been removed, rolled in at the Porta Pia, was even more a wave of moral scorn and of social execration than of political hostility.

The Council met amid florid promises that princes generally, at least Catholic ones, would accept the Vicar of God as their supreme judge, mingled with terrible citations of them all toappear before him, in order to find at one and the same time their correction and their deliverance in his infallible sentence. All this was uttered with the haughty spirit that goes before a fall. The fall after the haughtiness did not tarry, and was strikingly indicated by a phrase under the hand of the High Priest himself, in the Bull of Suspension: "We have been brought into such a position as to be entirely under a hostile dominion and power, God in His inscrutable judgments having so permitted it." Society had already beheld its self-proffered saviour clinging to the skirts of Napoleon III, and then crying to King William to save him from his fellow-countrymen. Now the kings heard their self-proffered judge himself declare that by a judgment truly supreme the temporal power had fallen—that power which he and all his bishops had separately and unitedly assured the Church was altogether necessary to the proper exercise of his office of universal bishop.

We heard theCiviltá, in September, foretell that when December 8 should come it would witness a splendid session. Now at last it came, a waymark noting the end of a very eventful year—eventful in the life of France, in the life of Italy, in the life of the German nation, and in that of the Papal Church. But the anniversary of the Immaculate, of the Syllabus, and of the opening of the Vatican Council, brought with it no splendid session. They who twelve months ago had met to sit in judgment on the nations were scattered, and were in various languages making strange explanations and dexterous appeals to allay the general disquiet relating to their political plans; and in doing so were creating in the minds of all who understood what they said, and who knew what they had done, an impossibility of ever hereafter trusting to representations of theirs. Meantime, without his seven hundred bishops, without his adoring crowds, without the glitter of fallen royalties and of quasi-civic dignitaries, without his beloved zouaves, yet still guarded by his stalwart and fantastic Swiss—for at that Court it is ever foreign steel that is true—the Pope, sitting in a palace of eleven thousand apartments, rich as any king, and free as any bishop in theworld, yet felt and called himself a prisoner. Therefore when the day of exciting memories came, it was, says theCiviltá, spent in mourning and desolation. But a new offering to the Virgin was to raise the sacredness of December 8, even in this year of sorrow, to a higher pitch than ever. Hitherto the patron of the Holy Church had been St. Michael the Archangel, under whose spear the first rebel fell—which rebel, as some time ago we saw, prefigured the latest rebel, Garibaldi. Indeed, after Mentana, St. Michael was, as military men say, "mentioned" in the Court journal. For theCiviltá, in relating the overthrow of the Garibaldians, did not fail to note the fact that "it was on the day consecrated to the Prince of the Angelic Host, to the Patron of the Holy Church, St. Michael," that the invaders crossed the border. But now the Immaculate, who alone is terrible as an army with banners, who alone destroys all heresies, was to be further exalted, by the raising of her husband to that celestial dignity which had hitherto been borne by the great archangel. It was, say the reverend college of writers in the ruling periodical, a grand consolation that amid the mourning and desolation wherein December 8 was passed, the Decree proclaiming St. Joseph as the Patron of the Catholic Church was promulged. They add that this Decree was issued to satisfy the Fathers of the Council, and that it might be considered as a firstfruit of devotion and piety reaped from the Council. The Italians said that St. Michael, as captain of the Lord's host, had not in late years wielded the sword to the satisfaction of the authorities. Others said that the reason of the slight put upon him was simply that St. Joseph was the patron of the Company of Jesus. Others again looked no further for an explanation than to the fact that a form of religion which now—whatever was imagined and in theory professed—had in reality no standard of faith left but that of thefait accompli, would naturally seek change for the sake of rest.

Certain it is that from centre to circumference of the Papal orb, the devout were besieging the altars of those powers among whom Modern Rome distributes the affairs of thatdepartment which was by Ancient Rome assigned to Mars. In England, as theCiviltáproudly tells, was formed "The Prayer League of our Lady of Victories, entirely composed of innocent children." In Vienna the arch-confraternity of St. Michael called the citizens to a solemn novena; Belgium moved in a similar manner, and Spain on December 8 beheld the faithful thronging to the altars of Mary. "Processions and pilgrimages" added a "splendid" demonstration, in which Belgium, Germany, and the Tyrol merited particular mention. The tomb of St. Boniface was besieged with pilgrims, praying that the tomb of Peter might be redeemed from the hands of the Italian Islamite. And the tomb of Henry the Emperor Saint, "fierce defender of the rights of the Holy See," was so beset with pilgrims on the day two months after the commencement of the captivity, that the streets of Bamberg resounded with the suppliant song ofeighty-twoprocessions seeking to move the warrior saint. In Munich, after exhibiting in "functions" within the Churches "all that is grand in the Catholic cult," the clergy, the archbishop, and the devout, in crowds said to comprise all Munich, paraded the streets chanting prayers for the ransom of the Pontiff.

If St. Michael had not retained his militant position, his confraternity in Vienna, conscious of where lay the sinews of war, sent loads of Peter's Pence. So in point after point of Europe the vows and bonds assumed in favour of Peter's Pence by fresh associations from Holland to Portugal, and from England to Hungary, are recorded. In England it was to the ladies that the "work" of raising Peter's Pence was assigned. The ladies of Vienna claimed it, the ladies of Madrid followed the example. And a valiant meeting in Belfast, and a meeting in Galway, resolved largely to swell the tide of Peter's Pence. The Catholic clubs joined in the movement, not only to console the Holy Father, but to condemn "the guilty policy of spoliation." Italy was grievously complained of for having dealt, by law, with certain Catholic Associations as political bodies, committing offences against the nation. But the great and splendid "work" of the Penceof Peter is not enough. The meetings and manifestoes are equally necessary, and of the manifestoes the spirit is breathed in these words, addressed to governments: "Do us justice; or if not, to shake you out of your indifference, we shall avail ourselves of every means which the law allows."

One brave claim of German Catholics is this: "As loyal subjects we demand that our rights and our interests shall be protected even in the territories of the Church." And politicians,knowing these things, will say and write that men moved from a foreign centre to make such claims of intervention on their governments are as good subjects as other men! They well know that such an agitation raised in the midst of a mortal struggle, if it succeeds, plunges the nation into a second war; and even if it does not succeed, diverts the nation from its own defence, and tends to divide it. But these German patriots say that they will embrace every opportunity that arises of pressing such rights as those above indicated upon their governments, by the Press, by "councils," by meetings, and especially by sending men to Parliament who will have courage to take up the Catholic cause. TheCiviltácharacterizes this language as the proclamation "of a vigorous, a continued, and a legal struggle against all governments which do not care for the cause of the Pontiff." "What the law allows," would, in the mind of many an honest Catholic, mean the law of the land; but on how many of such men could reliance be placed when, after all had been done which the law of the land allowed, they were instructed by sacred lips that when it contradicted the "divine" law it ceased to be binding, and that then the law in the case was God's law, which was whatever the Church declared it to be?

Geneva was made a chosen centre of activity, and the names of great and famous personages were paraded. While the ultimate ends to be aimed at were fitly expressed as "reinstating the Holy Father in his temporal sovereignty, and re-establishing the social reign of the gospel," the proximate ends were, to move the heart of Christ to mercy by pilgrimages and prayers, to act upon governments, to excite opinion by thePress, and to procure for the Pope means. Fifty meetings in the middle of December in the diocese of Fulda alone, while Germany was in the crisis of the war; the object of those meetings being to plunge her into a war with Italy! Indeed, it seemed to theCiviltáas if, awoke from the slumber of ages by the prayers of the Catholics around his tomb, St. Boniface had gone out anew upon his apostolic pilgrimage, to rouse up the ancient devotion of the people to the Holy See.[481]

One new society, which has not its name specified, is said to be already a great one. It is composed of all who had borne arms in the crusade of Pius IX. From Holland to Marseilles, from Canada to the Tyrol, they had bound themselves together in a common bond. We are not left in doubt as to what that bond might be. Indeed, we are told that "what it is cannot be obscure; their former enterprise makes it clear." To us the former enterprise would make the means clear—namely, war; but not so clear the end. They formerly warred to avert the fall of the temporal power. Were they now to go to war for the immediate and local object of "reinstating the Holy Father," and at the same time for the ulterior and world-conquering object of "re-establishing the social reign of the gospel"; that is, of forming the world into Spiritual States, or at least into States under the spiritual reign of the clergy? The object is prudently veiled in vague language, but language clear enough for the instructed; "full of warlike ardour in a meeting of Dutch and Belgians at Lovaine, they said that the aim of their union was to meet the future wants of the Church, was to conquer all the forces of impiety."[482]But even in the language put into the lips of soldiers, and into the resolutions of public meetings, the object is never defined so as to limit it to restoring the temporal power, and generally a wide object beyond that narrow one is allowed to transpire. When old crusaders undertake with "warlike ardour" to meet the future wants of the Church, we may divine of what kind her future wants are to be; and when such men undertake to conquer all the forces of impiety,we may expect a social reign of the gospel, ushered in by the zouaves—such a social reign of it as some of the spiritual princes of the Continent re-established when, after their Spiritual States had been shaken by the Reformation, Catholic leagues reinstated the prince-bishops in power. As to England, theCiviltá, at a date subsequent to notices already alluded to, names the Duke of Norfolk as heading a protest against the occupation of Rome from the noblest of the nation; Lord Campden and "Giorgio Clifford" as leading a universal subscription of English youth; the ladies as conducting the "work" of Peter's Pence; R. Martin as forming a league of prayer for persons of all grades; and Warteton (sic) as instituting "the crusade for Pius IX, a league of our Lady of Victories entirely composed of children."[483]How many British children are learning in this much-mentioned league by the inspirations of our Lady of Victories, to covet their baptism of fire in the projected crusade, we do not know, nor yet how they are to be taught to select the particular branch of the "forces of impiety" against which their first arms are to be proved. But, says theCiviltá—

there will be a struggle, there will be travails, there will be sorrows. But the victory is in their [the Catholics'] hands: of this the proof more than manifest is found in eighteen centuries of continuous combats and victories of Catholicism. As the great Matthias, indignant because before his eyes an officer of the king dared to burn incense to an idol, rose up crying, "Let him that is true to the law follow me," and commenced those grand struggles and grand victories of the Maccabees which are known to all, so the most fervent Catholics, indignant and horrified at the capture of Rome, pointing out the Revolution, in the meetings at Fulda and at Malines, at Ghent and at Geneva, as the cause of so much evil, as the enemy of Christ and of His Vicar, cried, "Let all that are Catholics at heart rise up and follow us in the fight." Their cry has been heard, and the general crusade is already begun.[484]

The development of thegeneral crusadehas been slower than the seers in their many Maccabean visions saw; but at the end of six years all the preparations for it are in progress,and the two-fold end is steadily kept in view: first, Rome is to receive back the Pope at the point of the bayonet; and secondly, the whole world is to accept "the social reign of the gospel" at the point of the bayonet too, unless nations, being timely wise, bow the neck and lick the dust where marches the Vicar of God. So man proposes. But since the day in 1850 when, as we heard at the beginning, a "salutary conspiracy and a holy crusade" were formally announced as the two things needful, much that man astutely planned and firmly proposed has not come to pass according to man's design, but has been strangely turned to the purposes of a clearer wisdom, and a kinder will. Even the monument in the cemetery of St. Lorenzo to the Crusaders, which exhibits Peter, under the effigy of Pio Nono, giving the sword to the Christian army, and commanding it to make a Catholic world, now bears, in addition to its texts from the Maccabees, a fresh inscription: "Ransomed Rome leaves to posterity, as a lasting sign of calamitous times, this monument, erected by the theocratic government to foreign mercenaries."

On the last day of 1870—that year of which the echoes will sound all down the vale of time, repeating the cry, "Man proposes but God disposes"—a strange sound was heard in Rome. Floods had brought sorrow into the city. Victor Emmanuel left Florence, and at four o'clock in the morning of December 31, for the first time, as king in his capital, set foot in Rome. In its sovereigns the city was familiar with titles of Saints, of Great, of Holiness, and of Blessedness, and with ancient titles noting many a shade of skill and power. But there was a title which was not only unknown, but seemed alien to all the traditions that had gathered around the place from the days of Sulla and of Catiline till now. As the burly king, amid the frantic joy which had marked his brief visit, was about to enter the carriage to return, a little girl approached with a nosegay of fair flowers, and said: "Take this,King Honest Man!"

If with the expiring hours of 1870 the reign of Craft died in Rome, and that of Honesty began, it would mark the mightiest of all the modern revolutions.

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